Writing fan mail used to be a huge measure of dedication. You took out a chunk of your day to handwrite or type a letter on a sheet of paper, fold it, stick in an envelope, figure out the address of the artist you admire, stick on a postage stamp (or buy more stamps at the post office if you ran out), and send it. If the artist received it, they would have to take time out of
their day to write/type a response letter, and go through the same process to send it back to you.
Now that we have email, I don't know if we write more fan mail than we used to for its convenience factor. There is a lot more media coming at you all at once. Being bigger consumers of media, we don't think as much about the people who create the art in the mediums we enjoy. There simply isn't enough time.
So with every new podcast or artist I listen to, or book I read that I really enjoy, I try to pound out an email in 5 minutes about my appreciation for their craft. The hardest part is usually finding out what email address to send it to. (Tip: if all they have available is a booking email address, send it there anyway, they'll make sure it gets to the artist. And don't bother trying to contact them through facebook or twitter, since those websites take far less effort for people to send messages through, and the signal-to-noise ratio sucks. Writing an email takes more time, and is considered to be more "serious".)
I've sent out a handful of fan emails in the past month, and I've received a response for every one without exception. It's a lot of fun, both parties benefit from the good feelings being passed around, and it only takes a few minutes. Give it a shot.
