How Is It Going With Culling My Email List?

I'm proud of myself. I've managed to reduce my list of unread emails to one page! It was a struggle. I tend to proceed with caution and question whether to delete an email that "might be useful one day". (It never is.) 

I hesitate to unsubscribe from mailing lists sometimes, simply because I don't want to be rude. Really. In fact, the book blogger whose services I've utilized for a couple of books and who included my article in her magazine sends emails daily---every time she or her staff publishes a new book review. I'm not interested in reviews of books other than my own, but I don't want to offend her, so I mark her emails as "read" and then delete them. (Is there a way for the sender to know that? Oh, well.) 

I also mark FreeBooksy's and BookBub's daily newsletters as "read" before deleting, but that's because I received an accusatory message from FreeBooksy once, asking basically, "Do you want these emails or not??" Since there's a 1% chance I might want to use their services again sometime, I've chosen to err on the side of politeness.

On the other hand, there are newsletters that do nothing but annoy me. They're the ones that surreptitiously throw in plugs for their products or services, while purporting to offer marketing advice. Look, if I haven't purchased Publisher Rocket after four or five years, I'm never going to! 

I previously mentioned the guy whose site will review indie books...for a price, yet he nagged his followers for reviews of his junk book. 

Then there are the Substacks. I subscribed to a few, based on recommendations from other Substackers. Big mistake. While I actually enjoy reading the posts from a particular book publicist, even though her service isn't anything I'll ever have a need for, her recommendations have proven to be subpar. There's the guy who ghostwrites memoirs for people, which is just a silly enterprise, but hey, if he makes money doing it...But his posts offer nothing of value to me. So, other than one or two Substacks I find enjoyable, I've culled the rest...Oh, especially the one that consists almost entirely of new-age aphorisms. 

I still subscribe to Jessie Cunniffe's mailings, even though she sends an email every day. In fact, this is a practice she not only ascribes to, but teaches a course on. Initially, I wanted to learn some secrets about writing book blurbs (without investing $295.00 to have her write a blurb for me), and her tips were helpful. But now she's focusing on email marketing, and this is not something I will or would ever do. Jessie claims that if a person gets annoyed enough by daily emails to unsubscribe, that's a good thing, because they're not your target customer. Therefore, she won't be one bit bothered when I inevitably unsubscribe. 

On the other hand, I'll maintain my subscription to David Gaughran's emails. He'll send something out once a week at the most, usually once every two weeks. And he's a good guy. His heart's in the right place and he never tries to sell his followers anything.  

Book Award Pro will be the next to go. Completely useless, unless an author is into entering writing contests, which I am not. 

I still read The Fussy Librarian's and Voracious Readers Only's collections of articles about writing, editing, marketing, etc.  

I'll also read anything from Damon Freeman at Damonza, because his team of cover designers is awesome, and Damon is generous with not only timely advice, but examples. To a lesser degree, I enjoy Miblart's emails, even though they apparently hate the cover they designed for me, since they never use it as one of their examples. Design is something I'm interested in, so these types of emails are generally fascinating.

I like Jane Friedman's The Bottom Line, which is free. She has paid newsletters, too, but you know me...Jane discusses both indie and trade publishing, and she links to relevant articles (although most, sadly, are behind a pay wall). 

All book promo sites, other than the two I mentioned, had to go. I only ever subscribed to them in order to see my ad in their newsletters. I'm not buying any discounted books or even grabbing free ones, and by eliminating these, I receive fewer emails every day.

 

All in all, right now I'm sitting at 8 unread emails (in addition to the ones I sent to myself). Three involve reviews of Running From Herself, which I probably will never read. Two more are with regard to virtual book tours, a harebrained idea I had a while back, but don't intend to follow up on. One contains a $20-off coupon from Miblart, which likely will never get used, but just in case...

A couple include more in-depth articles that I want to read, just haven't yet. As for the emails I send to myself, they're generally technical details about something or other that I don't want to create a Word doc for, so I just pop the info in an email and shoot it off to myself. 

I fully intend to whittle my list further. I just need to become more ruthless. It is satisfying to finally regain some control over my out-of-control publishing life.