Illustration by A G Duffy

Dear Agony Editor,

Recently, I began receiving regular email updates from an author who is an acquaintance. As a fellow author, I understand the need for self-promotion, but I’m annoyed whenever I get his emails. My hunch is that he’s simply emailing everyone in his contact list. I want to tell him to kindly stop emailing me, but I’m suffering from a writers-supporting-writers guilt complex. Should I just suck it up and continue to receive the emails?

Signed,

Spammy

Dear Spammy,

Oh, the joys of email. 

In the wake of social media, texting, and other forms of e-communication, I always assumed email would go the way of Myspace. But nope. For reasons that remain a mystery to me, email continues to thrive, leaving most of us with inboxes overloaded with offers from retailers, customer satisfaction surveys, and notifications telling us to click through and claim the millions we’ve just won. 

If your assumption is right, and this author is simply using his contact list to send out updates, it’s bad practice. On that principle alone, I’d tell him to stop emailing you. What’s the worst that can happen? He becomes upset with you for not wanting to receive something you never asked to receive in the first place? 

While I agree that self-promotion is important, especially in a crowded and competitive publishing landscape – and where long-term promotion often lands on an author’s shoulders – I also think authors need to be thoughtful about what they’re saying, how they’re saying it, how often they’re saying it, and to whom they’re saying it. 

Sure, send an email to your contact list when you have a new book coming out. But rather than a mass email, take two seconds and address the person by name. That kind of personalization can go a long way. And take a moment to really think about your content before hitting that “send” button. Why would your news be interesting to others? What’s your end goal? No one wants to feel like they’re simply an email address. 

Speaking of emails, if you’re uncomfortable replying to this person, you can simply mark his emails as spam, so you won’t see them. But what an unfortunate – and ironic – outcome for this author.