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If you’re a person who is a creative professional, it’s generally a very good idea to be contactable.  Specifically, it’s a good idea to have a clear method on your website for people to contact you.

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It can be a direct e-mail address or phone number.  It can be your agent’s e-mail address or phone number.  It can be an e-mail form.

But here’s the thing: if you don’t have a clear way for people to get in touch with you on your website, how will they get in touch with you?

If you’re like, “my dream job is to draw covers for The New Yorker!” or “I want to illustrate J.K. Rowling’s next novel for kids!” or “one day, I’ll be a Penguin classics cover artist!” that’s great!  Those are all wonderful — and not necessarily impossible to achieve — dreams.

But you need to put some contact information on your website, because when the art director of The New Yorker discovers your art and wants to talk to you, you don’t want her to have to read your entire blog, go through your twitter, facebook, and tumblr posts, and look at your portfolio and not find an e-mail address anywhere.

Having an e-mail address (or form, or whatever) on your site does tend to mean that you get a little more spam.  And you may get e-mails from fans (this can be positive or negative, depending on your taste in e-mails from fans) and other random people (family, acquaintances you’ve lost contact with, your college, etc.).  Sometimes that’s kind of aggravating.

But!  It can all be worth it, when you get that one e-mail you want.

(If you’re sitting there and reading this on the First Second website and saying, ‘well, they don’t mean me‘ — just think!  If your dream is to draw a graphic novel for us, how will we get in touch with you?)