Did You Just Sign Me Up To Your Newsletter Without My Permission?

I just realized this earlier today, and the more I think about it, the more irritated I become. We all know I love to read and some of you may know that I have a book review blog (see the tab above), and I'm all for supporting authors...that being said, I don't like people to just assume things or push things on me without my knowledge or consent.

Now, I have been pretty active these last two weeks; entering contests, adding new authors, following said authors, etc. and there is a very small chance that I did this myself - but I don't think so. Here's why:

I don't know this author. I've never read anything by them. I even looked at my browser history to see if her name popped up and nothing did. I am familiar with the author's name, and that's because my best friend, who is also one of my contributors to Book Verse, wrote a review for one of her books. I went over and checked the date of the review and then did a search in my inbox to see when the first newsletter came in, and it was dated 3 days after my friend posted her review.

So here is what I think happened: She got a ping on Google or something alerting her that someone had mentioned her name, and she went to my blog and read the nice review that my friend left, and then clicked on the contributor links where I have my email address and proceeded to sign me up to her newsletter.

Like I said, I don't have a problem supporting authors. In fact, I have gotten emails before from authors who asked if I could read and review one of their books, or to follow them on social media or sign up to their newsletter. I am more than happy to. But don't force it upon me. I will choose whether or not to follow you or your newsletter - do not take the choice away from me. And yes, I know I can (and definitely plan to) unsubscribe, but the lack of courtesy really bugs me. I have my email address up so if an author wants to contact me for whatever reason they can, not so you can abuse it and spam me. Yes I called it spam, because it was unsolicited.

For any writers/authors reading this: This isn't meant to discourage you from contacting me. I welcome it! A simple, "Hi, thanks for the nice review. Can I sign you up for my newsletter?" will go a long way with me.