Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Friendly Spam

I have friends, both personal and professional, and — don‘t get me wrong — I (generally speaking) like them, and (as many of them are in comics) they all have comicbook projects that they are trying to promote. As a comicbook creator myself, I too have comicbook projects that I want to promote. The problem I’m having these days is that a number of my comicbook friends are involved in a comicbook-related “American Idol”-style contest that involves voting and levels of “winning.”

Every day friends get to vote for their project to advance them onto the next round. The only problem is that many of these folks are competing against each other in this same contest, and all of them are sending out multiple emails to multiple email accounts, and connectivity links, resulting in what can only be described as an unrelenting torrent of “friendly” spam.

Now, as much as I want to help these folks out in their upcoming projects and dreams of glory, I really can’t be bothered to spend all of my time working on their stuff when I have my own stuff to do. The result is that while I certainly don’t mind advising them (if I can), and purchasing their books when they come out, I really can’t be spending all of my days reading their repeated solicitations to vote for them, nor am I interested in constantly trudging back to the site to vote.

In case you haven’t gotten the message yet. I’m really starting to find the constant emails and solicitations from the same folks irritating and I’m seriously considering blocking them. No offense, but it really is getting tiring. I’m sure that if were happening to you, you’d agree.

You folks know who you are (you might not even be reading this blog, but you know who you are). This is just a friendly warning.

2 comments:

Belkis said...

Bob,

I totally agree with you. We belong to the same circle of friends and I have been getting the same exact emails - this is after I post about this issue on my own blog.

Again, asking friends for favors is not intrusive but repeatedly asking for it again - it's like a sales person that doesn't go away.

Here's the truth - If no one else is bragging (or promoting/marketing) for you except you, then maybe there isn't much to brag about.

rjsodaro said...

Belkis, not only are you totally right, but you are hysterical in your analysis.

From my perspective if I am looking for mainstream marketing of my product, and you keep lining up funnybook website reviews, that is good and all, but the analysis I have is I want my song to play on MTV, and you come back wanting me to congratulate you for getting the High School marching band to play it at half time at Homecoming.

Nice, but not exactly what I was looking to get, eh?

My days under the Malibu Sun!

Way back in the early '90s I was writing for, well, virtually every comicbook magazine under the sun. As if that wasn't enough, I wa...