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Don’t Send Big Files to the Media

By Hervé St-Louis
July 16, 2012 - 16:32

This may sound harsh but really it is not. Do not send big attachments within email to the media and specifically comic book media.  Comics are about images, big ones. I get it, but on an average day, I personally receive two full comic books for review as Acrobat files on my personal ComicBookBin account. It’s just not sustainable. I don’t have time to read every email the moment they are sent to me. That’s normal; most people cannot keep up either. I’ve pleaded several times on Twitter to comic book publishers and creators to please understand that you just cannot send someone a files of 6 to 20mb unannounced and unexpected. That’s just bad etiquette and asking for trouble.

I understand when you’re sending that file, you’re excited and you want to share your work or something someone you’ve worked with for months to the entire universe. You want others to discover this gem and share it with the public. I get it. But there are dozens of people like you every day with the same intent. Smart publicists and marketers have already figured out that adding links where images can be downloaded separately is the way to go. That gives guys like me an opportunity to download your images and previews on my own terms and continue to manage my email box. It also limits the bounced emails a lot of people receive from my always full near capacity mailbox.

Right now, it takes but one large download to fuck up my account. I’m running at the limits. I cannot increase my personal mailbox. I’ve increased it over the years to what it is now, but for many architectural reasons beyond this discussion, I can’t increase it anymore and setting up shop with another host is not an option. It costs money and ComicBookBin can’t afford it. We don’t have enough advertisers.

As a general rule, if the total of your attachments are over 1mb, send a link where they can be downloaded separately by the media outlet. Also remember that these days, many people get their emails on their phones first. Every 20mb attachments cuts into a cellphone user’s data usage and that costs money - tons of money as you probably know. Be cool and limit your press release to plain text and add any large images or previews as links that people can use to download.

Thanks for your comprehension

Last Updated: November 10, 2023 - 14:53