Authorial frustration

About a month ago I read a travel book, about twenty years old, and was pretty moved by it. I found the author's website on the Internet and emailed him to say I enjoyed his book and ask if he'd done any further traveling. Two weeks later, I received an email message from him responding to my questions and thanking me for reading his book.

 I was glad the author responded and answered my questions. But I wasn't prepared for how his email was written.

Capitalization seemed to be his enemy. It was nowhere to be found in the email except, inexplicably, a single acronym. He even spelled my name with a lowercase "p." Formatting was absent, and while I could tell where paragraphs should be there were no spaces between them. Periods sometimes ended sentences, and sometimes not. The whole text seemed to just jumble together, like a third grader wrote it.

 It's a little disillusioning to get a response like this. An author, of all people, should not respond to his or her readers with poor grammar and punctuation. You aren't sending a text message, you are engaging in correspondence with someone who liked your work. You want them to still respect you. I have to wonder what this gentleman's cover letters looked like, how his correspondence with publishers and book signing organizers went. His book was so engaging and polished, but that can't have all been the work of an editor. No publisher will even look at a manuscript without it at the very least having letters capitalized when they should be...right?

I've had bosses who send out emails with much of the same poor writing. Trust me, reading those did not solidify their authority. I still have a high opinion of this author's book, but I am disappointed in him. You should never press "send" if you'd be embarrassed having the result published in bookstores across the nation.