I haven’t been active on line lately because my silver haired Daddy died. The last few weeks in hospital and the funeral took up a lot of time and mental energy. It wasn’t possible to focus on ray-guns and rocket ships.

Dad was 85 and had a rich full life. An active man, he was fed up the last few months sat in a chair watching old westerns, not able to do the stuff he liked. ‘I’d be better off dead’ he said, some consolation now that he is. Not much.

If anybody needs a cheerful Irish funeral song, here’s the one we played. Will not suit all tastes.

 

 

I received this from Instafreebie a few days ago. (apologies for the formatting)

Instafreebie and GDPR

 

As authors and marketers, issues of data and consent are critical to your business. That’s why we wanted to reach out and let you know what changes we’re making in advance of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation that will come into effect on May 25, 2018.

 

 

For a brief overview of GDPR and what it means for readers, please see this informational blog post written by our partners at MailerLite. We also recommend that you read the GDPR document in full and consult with your legal counsel for a more complete understanding of what this legislation entails.

 

 

GDPR expands the rights of individuals whose data you use for marketing purposes, as well as the definition of consent. As an email marketer, it’s important for you to remember that, under GDPR, consent must be freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous.

 

As a result of this expanded definition, beginning May 25th, we will no longer feature mandatory opt-in giveaways on our social media, blog, newsletter, or promote them through our recommendation engine. In addition, Group Giveaways that include mandatory opt-in giveaways will not be eligible for newsletter features after this date. And we highly encourage Instafreebie users of the site to change their giveaways to optional opt-in before May 25th!

 

Because the rights of an individual will be expanded, readers will have the right to ask you to delete all of their information, or request a copy of information that you have access to. If you receive any such requests, please contact our team at support@instafreebie.com. As always, our customer support team is ready and willing to work with readers on your behalf!

 

We’re prepared to serve as a partner to you as GDPR comes into effect. We’ve read the document ourselves, and our inbox is always open to any questions or concerns you may have regarding the legislation. We want to hear from you!

End of Instafreebie email.

I was always a bit dubious about the mandatory e-mail sign up and now it looks as if it’s going to have to stop completely. That’s bound to have an impact on those authors for whom it is a key marketing strategy and probably a knock-on effect for Mailerlite and Mailchimp too as some will surely give it up.

Not all, necessarily. It’s not that difficult at the moment for customers to unsubscribe when they get the unwanted Newsletter so if you have one they actually want, you should still be okay.

I could never really get into newsletters, partly because I couldn’t cope with Mailchimp and partly because I doubt I had that much of interest to convey. However, I’ve just got more active with Instafreebie again, putting a preview on a group giveaway. You can do this on the free plan but don’t collect any email addresses (see above). Group giveaways work quite well and doling out only previews might lure someone to buy a book.

My thanks to author Emerald Dodge for organizing the Giveaway.