The Boulder Pledge

[julesjones]

I took the Boulder Pledge many years ago:

Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.

That means that if an author or publisher sends me unsolicited commercial email in an attempt to sell me a book, I will not buy that book, and I may well not buy any other books by that author. Yes, there is a reason I'm posting about this right now. Too many authors and publishers of erotic romance ebooks feel entitled to assume that anyone else involved in erotic romance will of course be only too delighted to be added to yet another promotional mailing list on the subject. No, I don't care if you think it's a wonderful book that everyone should know about, whether or not they asked to be on your mailing list. You're getting reported as the spammer you are.

I recommend that anyone else who feels that spamming should not be encouraged sign up for an account at http://spamcop.net -- the basic account is free, and generally not difficult to use.

Comments

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I won't even use Amazon, because they used to spam me.

[julesjones]

I'm willing to use them, because I personally was never spammed by them. But I know several people who are still not using them because of that stage they went through early on of spamming like mad until they realised it was costing them customers and bad PR.

[jthijsen.livejournal.com]

My ISP has such an excellent spam filter, I rarely get any spam at all. I can't even remember the last time any got through. So I don't think I have anything to contribute to spamcop.

I don't need a pledge not to buy from spammers, that's just plain common sense. So is the rest.

[julesjones]

I don't need a pledge, either. But the pledge is a public statement that I will not buy from spammers, both as a way of pointing out to other people that if they buy anything from spam, they encourage more spam -- and as a warning to the clueless people who want to advertise something and don't think of themselves as spammers, because they're targeting their advertising to people they're sure will be interested...

Every so often I get spam from people who assume that because I'm an author, I'll be interested in buying their book. And they are quite, quite convinced that this is an appropriate way to advertise.