Be careful when accepting someone's offer of free promotion. There's almost always a catch. Many are email address harvesters. They use your email address and pester you with promos for their own books.

Sadly, they treat this as a mailing list, and assume they can use your address in any way they please, sell it, use it to spam you, share it with others so they can spam you.

Today, I've asked one of those spammers to stop this sort of thing. I thought she might simply be ignorant about netiquette and not realise how obnoxious her behaviour is, so I asked her politely.

She got stroppy because (in her opinion) having promoted my book obliges me to put up with whatever she does with my email.

Hmm.

It seems that once these people have published a book, they forget all about courtesy, consideration and common sense.

Authors, be careful whom you give your email address. Remember that not all promotions are beneficial. Do you really want your book promoted one of those obnoxious pests? Your reputation may get tainted by association.

And please, authors, don't become one of those obnoxious pests yourself.

Rayne