With General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR coming into effect this week, I’ve had to take my eyes off finishing the book to deal with my mailing lists. Turns out I have three lists to deal with, 2 for Liz and 1 for the secret pen. I’m so tempted just to delete all of them because, goodness, who has the freaking time to figure the regulations and then the process of confirming that I am in compliance with each of the mailing list providers? And then make sure that by sending them a reconfirmation email, I’m not allegedly admitting that I got their emails without their consent in the first place????
You guys may have time but honestly, I don’t.
With the two emails sent to my main list and some major culling on my end last night that had me removing subscribers who had received up to 28 emails from me in the last 2 years and either never opened a single email or clicked a single link, I’ve come to the realization that 80% of my main list—which came from list builder promotions and giveaways, the ones where the subscriber receives a free book in exchange for an email address—do NOT know who I am. Or care.
That’s 80%, maybe even 85% given that my 10K list has been whittled down to 1500, give or take.
That’s a lot of people who may have no idea who I am.
It’s humbling.
It’s discouraging.
But like most entrepreneurs, it’s onward or bust, even if most days, I just want to go bust and get a job at Starbucks making coffee for writers more successful than I am ten times over. And I am serious.
Don’t even get me started on naughty pen’s mailing list. One day she had 80 subscribers just from the back of her books alone mostly gleaned from ONE day that came out of nowhere and then she joined a list building promotion and got 1000 more in one more day. That was awesome, but those 1000 people are going to go. I don’t have the time to email them anything, much less write anything titillating just to ask them to stay on my list. All I wanted to do with this whole writing thing was to write, not go through so many regulations, cookie policies and privacy policies on each and every website I run.
And then there are the GDPR experts who contradict one another with their guides. Do this, no, don’t do that. It’s crazy. And I have a few more days to go. It’s faster just to delete everyone and start over.
That way I can go back to writing.
Liz Durano 
Write Liz write!! That’s what really matters!
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What he said! It’s what you love, not all this other crap that gets in the way.
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The GDPR is such an odd thing and from the seminars I’ve attended it still hasn’t been quite ironed out in terms of what the terms mean.
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ikr?
I’m getting so many emails right now from everyone it’s crazy. I’ve already cut my main list from 10K to 1.7k which kinda hurts because I may have removed some legit subscribers who entered from a form at the back of my books. I need to send another email from another list provider and for my naughty pen today, too, just to be safe.
Glad to hear I’m not the only one confused.
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