Go, Laura, you mail processing fool!

I need a final push. I think I have finished all the data cleanup for my year-end report. Now I just have to move into putting the numbers down on paper and getting it filed. I know there will be last minute stuff that crops up. I just wish I was already at this point this morning. But I'm at it now, so I just need to finish already. I hate this stuff.

ARGH NUMBERS WHY? LINE UP, NUMBERS!

Listen numbers, don't make me come out there....

Back to 7612 this morning. I think today I will jump into the middle of the pack instead of the most recent since it is harder to delete current stuff and I get caught up in actually dealing with the content of the email. Maybe below 7000 today?

Liese, I hope you got it figured out.

Laura, sounds like a good plan!! Maybe plow through some old ones, then set a time to deal with new ones?

NUMBERS NUMBERS NUMBERS NUMBERS.

I am at the hotel. I have the display partly set up, but tomorrow I still need to buy a few things and finish up. I've got about an hour before precon, so I have time to work some.

Speaking of numbers...writerly folk, I need help with a price to offer for doing a monthly newsletter...sample here.

I don't want to do it, necessarily, but the original deal with my friend was that I would write pieces in each newsletter that could be co-branded with the doggy lama. As you can see, she 'forgets' to add my link, or even business name.

She doesn't mean to, I know. She dislikes this task as much as I do.

At one point, she offered to pay me more if I took over the function. If I do so, I can control my image.

I just need to know what to charge.

I need a 'per package' price, because as soon as I agree to do this one, she will hand off two others, I'm sure.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

How many pages? How frequently? Will you come up with all the content and ideas? Do you know what you'll put in the third newsletter you do? Who's doing the layout?

Ginger, it's an ezine with roughly four segments per edition.

It's in wordpress and I would be doing the layout and graphics.

I've already written the doggy lama segment through May of next year. The company would give me the 3 additional ideas and I would do the writing.

I will contribute ideas as issues arise...goodness knows, we have PLENTY of 'issues' to remind clients about.

The other newsletters she would want me to do are shorter...one is the employee newsletter with timely policy reminders and tips...and one for company-wide stuff. That one doesn't come out often.

Website hired gun hiring question:

If a small press with a small (but fantastic) catalogue and a very tiny budget also has a website which is drab, ugly, full of broken links, rarely updated, and basically a drag on the business, and 2/3 of the staff were firmly in favor of a website overhaul, by brute force if necessary, what would they expect to have to pay to get an outside professional to do the fixing?

It wouldn't be a building-from-scratch job -- the site is already up and running and essentially functional; it's just visually ugly and rarely updated, and I'm pretty sure that its lumpishness has torpedoed us with at least one local bookseller. Assuming we were able to wrest control from the person supposably in charge of it (which will be another monumental task in itself), what would we expect to have to budget to get someone with a formal design background to revamp it?

And how do you deal with a recalcitrant business partner who, however brilliant, is clearly overwhelmed but so far hasn't been willing to cede control of any one task, even to make all the others easier and make the business better, without a battle?

JZ, take a look at Squarespace - they do a really good job of drag'n'drop design for people with no HTML or CSS skills. (And they sponsor at least one of the podcasts I listen to regularly so if you want I can dig up a discount code.)