Below is a copy of an e-mail I sent out to several friends and family this weekend announcing the e-mail newsletter I’m creating covering great books and wine. Since I don’t have a lot of your e-mail addresses and I know that I missed a lot of people in my initial round of e-mails, here is my attempt to reach everyone.
If you want to receive the quarterly newsletter send an e-mail with “subscribe” somewhere in the body to:
cameron.schaefer@gmail.com
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Friends,
**Total Reading Time: 3-5 min**
I hope this note finds you enjoying your Fall, my favorite time of year. It’s rare for me to send out a mass e-mail, but over the past few weeks I have had an idea bouncing around in my head that I just can’t shake, so I thought I would send it your way to get some honest feedback. Here it goes…
Two things in life that I really enjoy are: BOOKS and WINE.
I’ve been an avid reader my entire life, going through a book every week or two, and have recently begun to explore the fascinating and incredibly diverse world of wine.
Great writing and wine-making have a lot in common. Both are the work of an artist and require imagination, persistence, experimentation and love. The writer starts with a blank piece of paper, the winemaker with a vineyard and each must take the basic elements of his or her craft and turn them into something inspiring.
Since I enjoy exploring both books and wine so much, I thought it might be fun to let you in on my journey. After all, things aren’t nearly as fun unless you can share them with others.
My plan is to craft a quarterly e-mail newsletter highlighting some of the BEST books and wine I have experienced during that time. No fluff, just my honest opinion on what has really caught my eye and taste buds – what I’ve found worth sharing with my friends!
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If you’re already convinced this is something you would like to be a part of (I don’t think you’ll regret it), you can stop reading now and simply reply to this e-mail with the word “Subscribe” in the body of the e-mail. If you’re skeptical, but interested, continue reading. If you know right now this is NOT something you want to be a part of, no problem, don’t do anything – you won’t be e-mailed anything further (don’t worry, we can still be friends).
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So, for you skeptics, I love you guys because I am right there with you saying, “Sell me on this!” Here’s a few questions you might be asking:
“Cameron, you already have a blog, why don’t you just publish a quarterly blog post instead of sending out an e-mail newsletter? Aren’t those lame and old-school?”
I do have a blog and many of you are already subscribers, however, I’m looking at this newsletter as more of a supplement to my blog, an insider’s guide for a select audience. I subscribe to a few different e-mail newsletters and have found them very useful, even when written by people who already have a blog. This newsletter will be more personal and detailed than most of my blog posts since it will only be coming out 4 times a year and I will know exactly who will be reading it. Rest assured, the content of the newsletter will be completely original, not just a copy of previous blog posts.
“But Cameron, lately all you’ve been reading is books on war and politics, I don’t care about those things so why would I want book recommendations on them? Oh yeah, and don’t you just drink red wine?”
This summer I made it my goal to educate myself on warfare after realizing how little I actually knew, especially being a military officer. While I still plan on continuing that education, the initial blitz is over. I’ve already gotten back to reading books on a variety of topics from crime to gardening to aliens from Mars – both fiction and non-fiction. You can be confident that by signing up for this newsletter you’ll be receiving book picks covering a wide range of topics and genres.
The same goes for wine. I started out drinking red wine, mainly Merlot, simply because that’s what my dad drank for many years (all boys like to imitate their fathers) – however, I’ve since branched out. Part of the fun of exploring wine has been trying ALL KINDS from every corner of the globe, both Red and White (I’ve become a huge fan of Riesling and Viognier and Fume Blanc). If you’re expecting page after page of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon or Washington Merlot you’re going to be disappointed. Hopefully I can introduce you to new wines a bit further from home, the ones you may have wondered about, but have always been to nervous to try. Bottom line: If you enjoy wine at all, there will be something for you in each newsletter.
“You’re not a wine expert, you just started tasting it a few years ago, why should I listen to you for which wines to try?”
The very fact that I’m not an expert helps ensure that my views on various wines will be completely independent, unique and untainted by relationships with those in the industry. Wine experts can often be so smart on wine that they leave the rest of us in the dust with their terminology and swagger. I’ll simply try a bunch of different wines and tell you what tastes good! Taste in wine is obviously very subjective, but I invite you to try out some of my picks. If you hate them you can let me know and unsubscribe at any time, no hard feelings.
In addition, I am continually seeking to learn more about wine, how it’s made, what makes some wines last decades and others a year or two, why the ’05 Bourdeaux has been so popular, etc. – as I pick up interesting tidbits of information I will pass them along to you with my recommendations.
So, are you convinced?! I hope so – I think too often we look to experts for recommendations on what to read and drink instead of the people we know and who know us. It’s my hope that I can provide you with some good book and wine picks each quarter and I hope you will send me yours as well. In the end, blogs, twitter, e-mail, etc. are only as good as the relationships they produce and enhance.
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If you’re ready to subscribe now, just reply to this e-mail with “SUBSCRIBE” in the body of the e-mail. No further information is required and you will begin receiving the newsletter as soon as it rolls off my fingertips. If you don’t want to subscribe, do nothing, you will not be e-mailed anything further.
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Thanks for giving me a slice of your busy day, I can’t wait to hear back from you!
-Cameron
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