I have run into a wall when it comes to a part of the Author Platforms projects – the email lists section.

I write about author platforms because I am good at theory and great at writing about theory. I am not so great at actually getting on and doing these things. What I should be doing, if I want to achieve my aims of becoming a published author, is all the things I write about. Especially email lists.

The trouble is, I freaking HATE email. I want to geo back in time and stop the invention of email. If I had a choice between stopping the rise of an evil dictator and preventing the rise of email – email is getting the terminator sent after it.

Author Platforms is a research notebook

The reason so much of Author Platforms cites third-party research is that I am pretty good at going and finding information. There is a huge amount of useful information in that guide that I have dug up from hours and hours of web-based research.

There are some parts that I have years and years of background in. SEO, marketing, blogging, WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. I can teach you a lot about these things. Just not about email lists.

What about lists?

When it comes to list building: Not a clue.

I have known for well over ten, maybe fifteen years, that online success needs a list. And yet, for all that time I have never once built a list. Every time I try it feels fake, spammy and disingenuous.

The idea of squeeze pages and long-form advertising copy leaves me feeling grimey. These are the very kind of content that has me going “oh, hells no” and noping out of there as fast as possible. It might work but it NEVER works on me. So I never want to inflict that on anyone else.

What would I even put in a list email?

By the time I am done blogging, writing code, and creating treatments of short stories as radio plays, what have I got left to put in a list?

Nothing.

I can promise you that if you sign up for my list, all I can possibly email you is a list of links to the blog posts I wrote recently. And I have to ask myself – why on earth would you want that in your inbox when you can click through to the website in question and see it all on the front page?

To say that I do not get lists is an understatement. I don’t just not get them, I actively try to keep my email address out of other people’s lists. My prefered number of list subscriptions is zero.

That is why I cannot write the list section. I cannot advise on something I religiously stay the hell away from.

Are email lists a dinosaur?

Back in 2015, Lela Perez told us “Millennials Hate Email“. I get that so much.

I despise email. If you want to write to me and get a reply in, say, three months to ten years from now, send me an email. If you want to get my attention, message me on my prefered social platform. If I think you sound spammy I will block you forever.

By about 4 years, I am technically a member of Generation X but I get the hate of email so hard I might as well count as a very old Millennial. I hate email.

I am already overloaded with messages from here there and everywhere. Every site I ever joined send me updates. Services I have not used in two or three years still email me.

I get emails from that site I wanted that free template from that one time about stuff I couldn’t give a flying monkey’s left testicle about.

Google Gmail happily hides 90% of my email in tabs that I never look at. Custom filters hide even more email in tags that I ignore like they do not exist. If you email me, there is a 95% chance that your mail will go unread forever. There is an even better chance it will get auto-classified as spam.

No more email, please

The only reason I have an email account at all is that they are required to get access to every last thing.

• Forgot your password – get an email.
• Want a new account – now go open email and click the link.
• Need to use PayPal? What email address are your sending that from?
• Want a free download – email address please.
• Need to send someone a file – attach it to an email.
• Sending out your CV – better write an email.
• Make an order for some PC parts – I get an email telling me something I already know.

You ordered stuff.

Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed. Thanks for telling me.

Your stuff is going to arrive today because today is the day you picked.

Thanks for that, I’m not already sitting at the door waiting for the mailman.

Your appointment is in 10 minutes.

Aaah! Do I look like I sit there refreshing my mail client all day? God, no. I have a billion other things I could be doing some of which are actually productive.

I hate email conversations with other people’s automated systems

I do not “do” email.

Listen, email is not that great. I do not understand what the obsession is with it.

For us authors, what is the alternative to email lists?

Maybe, just maybe, it is something like Author Buzz UKs community feature – groups. A web feed of updates from stuff you can subscribe to and unsubscribe from at will.

The replacement for email is something. I have no idea what but it has to be something. Whatever it is, I will find it and I will use the living heck out of it.

Email can kiss my unmentionables.

Well, anyway that’s my big email problem.

Just in case it was not abundantly apparent – I hate email.

I feel dirty just thinking about spamming “my newsletter” to people as if they are too dumb to find my blog’s front page and see my stuff for themselves. My readers, whoever they are, are smart and sassy and can find a blog post on their own.

I cannot authentically promise you anything if you join my list because there is a good chance that I will never ever send you a single email. If I do it will just be the exact same effect as if you used an RSS reader and subscribed to my blog.

If you sign up to my email list – and you can – you are signing up for one reason – to let me advertise at you when I have something to sell. Why would you do that to yourself? I would not sign up to my email list and I run the thing.

If you have any ideas on how I can run a platform that is lead-free, spam-free, and email list free – please tell me now.

This rant against email has been edited to remove the content which was almost entirely me swearing about how much I hate email.