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Ben Hourigan, author

Author of books about love and ideas

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No more email lists, please! Replace them with RSS!

I implore the maintainers of event- and opportunity-related email lists to use RSS instead. Get a free blog at “Blogger”:http://www.blogger.com or “WordPress.com”:http://www.wordpress.com, post your notices there, and let the interested subscribe to or unsubscribe from the feed as they like. Keep the email lists for the RSS-illiterate if you must, but let the tech-savvy turf the email-list cruft from their inboxes.

Every week during semester, I receive an email newsletter from the postgraduate association at my university. It’s called “UMPAnews,”:http://www.umpa.unimelb.edu.au/news/umpanews.html and while it’s seldom of interest to me, particularly because I live around 8000km from campus, I don’t want to unsubscribe because sometimes there is a point of interest, or notification of some genuinely important event.

My digital life is littered with such lists, and with people whose job it is to notify groups others of events and so on, by email. Every day, at least several such emails, only partially relevant, reach my inbox, along with all the personal and business communication that I really want and need to read.

Email lists are _not_ the most effective way to disseminate the kind of information that they tend to carry: event listings, calls for papers, and so on. Often the volume of messages from even a weekly list can be great enough that one ceases to care, and ceases to want to read them. One creates a filter, the messages get sent automatically to a folder, and they are never read again.

Do yourself and your content a favour, maintainers: switch to RSS for delivery!

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Author: Ben Hourigan

Ben Hourigan is a novelist from Melbourne, Australia. His books Kiss Me, Genius Boy and My Generation’s Lament are Amazon category bestsellers, and are available wherever good books are sold online. Ben also works as an editor, copywriter, and self-publishing consultant at his own firm, Hourigan & Co. For news and book release updates, sign up to his email newsletter. View all posts by Ben Hourigan

Author Ben HouriganPosted on 2006-01-242008-08-22Categories GeneralTags Business Communication, Cruft, Email List, Email Lists, Email Newsletter, Favour, Free Blog, Important Event, Inbox, Job, Opportunity, People, Personal, Point Of Interest, Postgraduate Association, Read Email, Turf, Unimelb

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Read the books

Kiss Me, Genius Boy cover Kiss Me, Genius Boy is Ben Hourigan’s debut novel, and the first of three volumes in the No More Dreams series. Available on the full range of e-book platforms for just $3.99 ($5.99 on Kindle), KMGB is an unforgettable tragi-comic tale of teen romance and obsession. Full details here. My Generation's Lament cover My Generation’s Lament (No More Dreams #2), released in January 2013, continues the story of the former prodigy Joshua Rivers and his nymphomaniac lover Lilian Lau, as well as portraying the ugly side of student radicalism and delving into the Rivers family’s secrets.

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Ben Hourigan is an indie novelist, the author of Kiss Me, Genius Boy (2011) and (2013). He is also the owner of editing, publishing, and communications consultancy Hourigan & Co., and of ebook label Nameless Books. He has lived in Melbourne, Osaka, Sydney, Chiang Mai, and Bangkok.

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    • Kiss Me (No More Dreams #1)
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