First mass-mailer goes out
Yesterday I sent 25 copies of my CD demo to various industry people around the world. My initial mailing went out to record labels, magazines, and journalists in places like the United States, Germany and the U.K. I have another 25 contacts on my mailing list for round two (tomorrow), and I intend to expand the list by another 25 mailers to various companies in places like the EU, Japan and Brazil.
The big thing about this mailing was preparing the package and paying for it. I guessed the postage would cost about $90 and I was close – it came to a hair under $100. Paying for shipping for a small package that weighed 111 grams (CD, one page info sheet and cardboard mailer) was around $2 for Canada, $4 for the U.S. and $8 for the UK and Germany.
In a business sense, what I’m doing is advertising my product with a system commonly called ‘direct mail.’ Each CD’s total cost is about $5-6. Not too bad. Of course I really have to make sure I’m sending the discs to an appropriate audience. I’m not going to discriminate on size, ;cause certainly smaller labels might dig my tunes, but I should try to avoid labels that deal mostly in straight ahead rock or any other narrow genre. But of course, maybe I’ll be the first ‘electronic’ artist on a label that is trying to branch out. We’ll see….
