Progress on newsletter

It couldn't be easy.

The best way to handle this, according to Mail Chimp, is to send an email to everyone on my list and give them the link back to the newsletter and let them re-sign up for it if they wish to continue receiving it. Those who "opt in" and sign up will form the core of my new list; everyone else will be dropped.

I have two email clients I could use; both allow me to import from a .csv file. Neither one works. For each one I get an error message, despite my having saved, re-saved, transferred and downloaded again. Just under two hours spent fruitlessly trying to get the email list from their server to my email client. I gave up.

So now, since I manually importing each email address is the only way to go, I'm only going to "import" the emails of those people who have actually been opening the newsletters. Of course, since the email will be coming from a source they don't know, there's a good chance the email will end up in spam folders as well.

In other words, I can't win on this one. This all is very discouraging. I'm nearly ready to bag the whole thing. I won't. But it's enough to make me throw up my hands in disgust at a few thoughtless people! Grrr.

Short story version: I'm in the process of hand-entering the emails of several hundred people. This takes time. Time away from writing, time away from releasing my newest book. And worst of all, time away from my family.

Please bear with me. It is my most sincere hope to have all the addresses into one of my email clients by Tuesday or Wednesday. Once they're in, I'll send out an email with the opt-in link. I'm holding the release of Shooting Star until this mess is cleaned up.

Thanks for your patience and, as always, play safe!
Diana