Chris, the solution seems clear to me: the fewer emails the better. If I had 10 favorite authors I wanted to follow, I would like to have the ability to get all that information in a single message, not 10.

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Chris,

I would want only one email, BUT I’d want that email sorted either by category or by author.

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Christopher,

I know I would NOT want to get 100 emails from anyone, let alone from someone I like, even if it were my own fault for following 100 authors. LOL

Would you be able to do the same thing that Yahoo Groups does when it send out daily summaries? Could you cap the number of entries per email at, say, 25 or so? That way, they might get a handful of emails on a “good” day, instead of 100.

Make sense?

Not sure if you could automate this (unless you’ve got a crackerjack programmer), so I’m sure you don’t want to have to do it manually.

We should all have such a problem with projected growth. *grin*

Deb

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I personally would prefer to get just one email max per day, but as a previous commenter suggested, listings by category or author would be nice.

My personal preference would be sort by author, since I have certain writers whose style really appeals to me and I would read anything they wrote.

Thanks for asking our opinion!
Brennan

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Definitely one email.

Sorted by author would be best in my perfect world.

Kat

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This is a good idea, and on this email should be a link to “suggest an article” to this author as well.

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Chris,

GREAT idea!! I would definitely want only 1 email and as others suggested have it sorted by author. Thanks!

Marilynn

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So far, looks like ONE SINGLE email with a daily summary is what everyone thinks is best. We agree.

I also liked Lance’s suggestion… will think on how to integrate that as it’s currently an AJAX function that we’d have to create into a non-AJAX thing to make work; but possible.

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Finally, a new incentive for me to write more articles. Great idea!

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Hi Chris!

I agree with everyone. The readers wouldn’t open all the messages if they were too many.

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Yes Ed… that’s what we’re hoping for.

In fact, the real power of this tool will be felt in mid 2009 when a years worth of list building has helped our strongest authors to get a large personal following of fans who hinge on wanting to be emailed every time their fav author has a new article.

…and authors with smaller footprints (less than 100 articles) will still benefit from highly targeted readership that will be alerted upon each article submission accepted.

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Naturally just one email.

What is funny to me though is the idea that I might have ‘fans’. Too funny, I can’t help it.

I gotta confess though that on a couple of my articles? I don’t really want to know they are following me. I know that sounds goofy, but ohh, I just might want to be left in the dark on them, cause of the ‘why’. Lol.

Fans.. hummm, I like the sound of that!

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Option #1, please.

Thanks!

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I love the idea, but I too would only want to get one email alert.

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I’d want one email sorted by author. My preference would be an email that identified the authors I follow by topic.

I too like Lance’s idea. Interesting that he comes up with great ideas, he must have an idea cooker somewhere?

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maximize user choice for delivery:
1 email option
1 email per selected author
option to select author with certain keywords only (ie i want smith’s article on culture but nothing else)

should have a master criteria sheet where i can make all my selections on a single page for up to 10 auhors for free or more for a fee, which could be waived for prolific authors

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Definitely one email as a digest.

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Chris,
No I would not shoot out 100 emails daily but one email every 24 hours. Within these emails separate each author by say a red bar or something.
Bill

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Bill,

Until your blog comment, I was thinking of only sending them out in PLAIN ASCII TEXT.

Hadn’t even considered HTML, but will consider it.

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Hi Chris,
separated topic’s by a red bar. The reason i suggested that is your branding is of course red!
Bill

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Maybe a stupid question, but is there a provision for what people can do to stop receiving email notices about individual authors they no longer wish to follow? If a single email is used, can readers opt out of part or all the authors on their list, and authors find out when fans are no longer loyal followers?

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John,

For our new service that has not been released yet, of course you will be able to never receive notices of any individual author you don’t wish to follow.

For clarification, this new service has nothing to do with our current email alerts that are available for all 569 niche markets we serve.

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Great!

This sounds good to me!

1 email daily plz :)

Jim Furr >

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