Lecture Topics
A selection of the author's speeches:
- Think Before You Click: How to Improve Your Happiness, Boost Morale, and Create High Performance Teams by Applying a Little Mindfulness to Your Practice of Email
- In Search of the Perfect Email: The Science and Art of Great Electronic Communication
Other Areas of Expertise
- Business/Economy
- Communications/Media
- Social Media and Technology
More Information
Will Schwalbe
New Media Expert and Co-Author of Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
Base: New York, NY
- Photo: Josef Astor
Will Schwalbe is the coauthor with David Shipley of the acclaimed book Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home (Knopf 2007), which was a national bestseller and was shortlisted for the Quill Award for the best business book of the year and Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better (Revised Edition, Knopf 2008). Will is the founder and CEO of www.cookstr.com, a new site dedicated to featuring recipes from many of the best chefs and cookbook authors in the world. Until recently, he was senior vice president and editor in chief of Hyperion Books, a division of the Walt Disney Company. Authors he worked with at Hyperion include David Halberstam, Mitch Albom, Jamie Oliver, Linda Greenlaw, Mike Wallace, Bob Newhart, Marshall Goldsmith, and Chris Anderson. Previously he was a journalist, writing articles and reviews for such publications as The New York Times, the South China Morning Post, Insight for Asian Investors, Ms. Magazine, and Business Traveller Asia. He is on the board of governors of Yale University Press, the Asian American Writers Workshop, and the Kingsborough Community College Foundation. He has appeared several times on National Public Radio, and on Today, Good Morning America, CBS Sunday Morning, The Colbert Report, CNBC's Power Lunch, and BBC's The Money Programme, and been quoted in publications around the world. Will has spoken about email with David Shipley and alone at the U.S. Treasury Department, the Mayo Clinic, Wharton, Seton Hall, Ernst & Young, the Delaware State Department of Health and Human Services, the Southeast Asian Refugees Action Committee, the Non-Profit Coordinating Council of New York, Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher, and Scholastic Books, among other companies and organizations. He lives in New York City.
Works by this Speaker
Send (Revised Edition)
Send—the classic guide to email for office and home and an instant success upon its original publication—has become indispensable for readers navigating the impersonal, and often overwhelming, world of electronic communication. Filled with real-life email success (and horror) stories and a wealth of entertaining examples, Send reveals the hidden minefields and pitfalls of email. It provides clear rules for handling all of today’s thorniest email issues, from salutations and subject lines to bcc’s and emoticons. It explains when you absolutely shouldn’t send an email and what to do when you’ve sent (in anger or in error) a potentially career-ending electronic bombshell. And it offers invaluable strategies to help you both better manage the ever-increasing number of emails you receive and improve the ones you send.
In this revised edition, David Shipley and Will Schwalbe have added fresh tales from the digital realm and a new afterword—“How to Keep Email from Taking Over Your Life,” which includes sage advice on handheld etiquette. Send is now more essential than ever, a wise and witty book that every businessperson and professional should read and read again.
Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
The following ''smoking gun'' email, written by an employee of the maker of the drug Phen-fen, was admitted as evidence at a recent trial: ''Do I have to look forward to spending my waning years writing checks to fat people worried about a silly lung problem?'' This email also played a key role in a court case: ''I am very uncomfortable with how these transactions were handled. What do you think I should do about it?'' These missives, written by professionals who presumably knew what was appropriate to put in an email, cost their employers millions of dollars and resulted in each individual losing his job.
In business and in life, email and electronic messaging (texting, IMing, BlackBerrying) has supplanted traditional conversation. We make plans and strike deals, request favors and fulfill assignments, all via email. It is the medium we need to master to succeed in the world today, and though we may know how to email, few of us know how to email well.
Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home is the first book that explains how, when, why, and if you should email. David Shipley and Will Schwalbe have written a Strunk and White for the email generation that is e-ssential, whether you're a veteran CEO or a recent graduate entering the working world.
If you've used email for more than, oh, two months, you know how useful it is—and how devastating mistakes made with it can be. In Send, Shipley and Schwalbe detail:
—How to apologize via email—and how to properly pay for those all-too-common email ''oops.''
—Why the CC and BCC (mine)fields are problematic and how to effectively negotiate them.
—Why ''please'' and ''thank you'' actually shouldn't be used in email.
—How email can land you or your employees in court or, worse, jail—and how to avoid making the e-mistakes that will get you there.
The first guide of its kind, Send brings every emailer vital tips and tricks to ease any miscommunications and increase his or her email efficiency. The goal? To craft email that is so effective, it actually cuts down on email. Send is funny, engaging, and practical—an indispensable guide that will not only help you learn how to email better but also teach others how better to email you.
Praise for Send:
''This is just the book I've been waiting for.''
—Bill Bryson
''The Internet has finally found its Emily Post. If after you've read this you fail to change your emailing habits, you're doomed. Read it or weep.''
—Michael Lewis, author of The Blind Side and Moneyball
''A fascinating, entertaining, and, above all, informative look at email—and how it changed the way we communicate with one another. What Strunk and White is to style, this book is to email. It's a terrific read. I highly recommend it.''
—Charles Osgood
