Imagine her surprise when this came back:
I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.
To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders who are already in my Address Book.
If you would like to be added to my Address Book,
please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I
approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You
do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time
inconvenience.
Well, let's see. You send in a contest entry. You think you might hear back?
What if this was something that MATTERED??
I've yapped about this before; if you send something to an agent, list the email you send to in your address book. You look like a nitwit if I get this. Save your nitwittery for people who are clueless--not YOU!!!
33 comments:
hmmmm....I got an email saying my submission would be post #69 (figures). I sure hope this wasn't meant for me, cause I don't use a spamminator. hmmmm....
I recently submitted a critique through Critters and received the same response. Nitwittery indeed. She went on my "never critique again" list.
Well foo, I'm bummed.
I'm apparently a different kind of nitwit.
Apparently Miss Snark never received my entry sent about 3:30 PST Sunday. Drat! I was using a new email account associated with my blogger I.D. and peeps have told me hotmail can be unreliable (messages arriving even days after they were sent) I just checked my hotmail account and there's no confirmation email from Miss Snark.
:-(
I have responded to every entry by now so if you sent something, and haven't heard from me, drop me a line and I'll check my email stash.
There are 110 entries, but 111 numbers cause #49 is well...Godot's number
YIKES.
Somehow hitting the delete button on the offending spam items seems a lot simpler than trying to keep track of all the important email addresses one should have in the elitist address book.
For what it’s worth, here is a strategy for email management that I recommend to others: use multiple email addresses.
- Reserve one for all the places that likely generate trash mail: e.g. online orders, list serves, and other online submissions.
-Save another for personal email.
-Have a third that is exclusively for business and other important communications.
-Use more if you are operating your own business, departmentalized as needed.
This might seem extreme to some who aren’t adept in the art of email management, but it really does help make things easier. After several months when your “trash mail” account starts to collect loads of spam, just delete it and start a new one. All your important contacts still have your primary email address(es), and you eliminate the need for nitwitery all together.
Well... there’s my unsolicited two cents... taken ‘em or leave ‘em.
What do you mean this doesn't matter?!
Isn't there a prize?
If you tell me it's a clue gun, I'm going to shoot myself until I stick to the chair.
thank you for the email, whatever madness fit prompted it. ;) *lets out a breath she didnt realize she'd been holding*
I've run into this problem with my ISP. There is a way to turn off the automatic message, but regardless, the person to whom you sent the message still probably received it in their "suspect spam" folder. Let's hope they think to look there.
You know, Miss Snark,
Despite all your bravado, it's the attention to little details such as these that really makes people desire to have you as an agent.
You didn't have to go through the trouble of emailing everyone, but you did. And gave the exact entry number to boot.
Makes me think that when you contact editors you truly have all your ducks in a row as much as humanly possible.
Bravo to you
jlb--
Some E-mail things are just so bad at blocking spam, it's tempting to put the work on people sending you stuff.
On Earthlink, when we had it, we would get over a hundred spam messages a day (while E-mails we'd been waiting for went straight to the 'suspect' folder). It was ridiculous.
Thank dog for gmail!!!
G-mail sounds so sinister, like G-men I suppose. I have to agree with harridan. I'm so tempted to query Miss Snark, but I don't know whether I should put my cover letter in the A drive or D drive, or whether a padded envelope will fit.
Being on the West Coast - when I saw the post on Monday morning the deadline had already passed, so I missed the contest. But as for how well G-mail works - it's great! 99.9% SPAM free.
Plus it saves 100% of the messages you wish to save on their server - forever and for free.
Now it's still a little beta so its not open other than by invivation which is pretty easy to get. If anyone out there in SnarkLand wants one - just e-mailme at:
bradywestwater@gmail.com
E-mailing all of us contestants was very considerate.
I appreciated it. And we didn't have to search for our great entry among all the dreck, 'cause we had the number.
Cheryl, I'd love a clue gun.
People are always telling me I don't have a clue.
I got a fan letter from some one about one of my books and when I tried to reply, it was one of those earthlink spam filter messages. I just don't have time to deal with that, so they never received their response from me, sorry to say.
I haven't checked my email today, but as of last night I hadn't received a confirmation. Oh, well -- if I'm not in the running, I can always post it as a blog entry at my place ;)
emjay, that was quite rude. The rest of us are perusing YOUR dreck without complaining. Much.
I, too, humbly thank you for the fact that I no longer have to look at the blog twelve times a day and wonder, "Did she get it? Will it be posted next? Should I refresh the page? She hasn't deleted it because I shot off my big, fat mouth like an idiot last week, has she?"
Enjoying the other posts meanwhile, of course...
Yes, but...
I notice that when I send an email to a company's published e-dress, I often receive a reply from a staff member's personalized e-mail account. (i.e., an email sent to editorial@acme.com, might get a reply from bugsbunny@killdawabbit.acme.com.)
You don't always know which edress to add to the safe list.
Thank you VERRRRY much for sending out the e-mails Miss Snark. It was considerate. Anyone who thinks agents have no heart obviously hasn't met Miss Stark or doesn't recognize a heart when they see it.
I just want to say that I find Spam (the meat product) particularly objectionable.
I don't even use Earthlink anymore because of that crazy filter. It's so clunky.
Anonymous, (whoever you are)
I'm sorry.
I was trying to be funny.
It usually doesn't work for me and I should give it up at once.
I've thoroughly enjoyed all the other entries and certainly didn't consider them dreck.
Please forgive me (whoever you are)
Emjay,
You were funny. Was clear to me you were being facetious.
--A different anon.
The funny thing is... They're all dreck.
They're made up with a list of fun words - less than 500 words and geared towards making Miss Snark happy.
So - They're all Dreck...
Happy - fun - exciting - enthusiastic - promising - hopeful - enchanting - amusing - good writing - bad writing - dreck.
LMAO!
Even mine.
And there ain't nothing to be ashamed.
It's not a Pulitzer Prize - it's for fun.
Great fun!
So - everyone laugh and have a splendid time reading other entries from #1 - #10000000. (Lucky Miss Snark didn't get "that" many entries.)
Thanks for the contest.
I always find any type of challenge to be adventurous!
Lady M
febakg
Spam, the meat and the email version, is nothing more than pig toenails, horse eyeballs and Viagra ads. Spam filters don't work for a variety of reasons and if you think an email provider is 99% spam free, then they are probably snagging some of your legitimate email and doing dog-knows-what with it.
Re spam filters - my ISP changed programs some months agao, and I discovered after some days that their overzealous filters had snagged MANY wanted emails, including those from my agent. Yikes.
So I set the spam filters to let everything through. Even though I check 11 email addresses, most of which are published to the web (content at bksp.org; donations at bksp.org; admin at etc.), for the longest time, I was only getting a couple dozen spam emails a day.
That didn't last, of course, and now I get several hundred spam every day. But I'm using the "message rules" feature in Outlook express to send them straight to my delete folder. Whenever a new spam makes it through to my inbox, I just create another rule using a key word from the subject line, and that sends any others like it straight to my trash folder (since they seem to come in groups).
I like this method, because the deleted emails aren't sitting on the server where I might miss them for days and days (and where I'd have to physically check the spam folders one at a time for all eleven accounts). Instead, they're on my computer, where I can scan the list once a day or so at my convenience to make sure there's nothing there I want before I delete them all.
Don't know if anyone else is doing this, but I get 50 or so legitimate emails per day in connection with Backspace stuff, and this method of email management works for me.
Lady M,
You're so right. Maybe she's giving us a taste of our own elephant feces to wade through. And there are no diamonds. Ha!
I thought perhaps I'd keep my entry confirmation on my hard drive forever, as it's almost certainly the only time I'll have a personal communication from a New York agent...
Thanks for bothering, Miss Snark!
Alison S said...
I thought perhaps I'd keep my entry confirmation on my hard drive forever, as it's almost certainly the only time I'll have a personal communication from a New York agent...
Thanks for bothering, Miss Snark!
Rock on Alison! That was funny!
But - it's only a matter of perspective. Much luck and good writing to you!
Lady M
Oh Rats! I should have thought of that, Alison. Mine was woefully out of the wordcount, so I didn't send it. I'd have been "e-mailed personally" by a literary agent...at this point I would salivate over a real estate agent! (No offense, Miss Snark.) ;-)
As proof of Miss Snark's legion of fans - I just sent out my - 36th - G-mail inviation.
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