If Shakespeare had a website ......

The phone rang and it was a gentleman who had bought my book recently, he wanted to chat about it. Whilst I am happy to talk to as many people as I can, it struck me as something I have never done myself, ringing another author after reading their book.

I, like lots of people have been reading all of my life from way back when I was a child, and so books are a part of my life. It never would have occurred to me to find out which town the author of the book lived in, get a copy of that telephone directory, look them up, and give them a call, but now, it’s so easy to do so.

The Internet has given us so many things that were either just not possible before, or simply too time consuming to do. It’s opened up the world to us all in so many ways and it’s the norm for authors to have websites themselves. Whilst they may not advertise their telephone number freely, you can very easily email, tweet, connect or follow many of these great people online, and if you are connected to someone who knows them well, hey, getting their telephone number might not be that hard after all.

Can you imagine looking up the telephone number for Seth Godin and having a chat about creating your Purple Cow, or calling Richard Branson and having a chat about how he started Virgin Records, or John Grisham that you disagreed with the verdict in the last case? It’s entirely possible to do (although you may struggle getting past their assistants), but emails do get through in most cases.

If Shakespeare had had a website all those years ago, how neat would it have been to drop him an email about getting a pound of flesh from someone? Everyone is so much more accessible purely because of that little phenomenon, the Internet.

Who would you like to chat over their books with?

Linda Coles is the author of “Learn marketing with social media in 7 days” (Wiley) and is a speaker and trainer on building relationships. She lives in New Zealand on a fig orchard.