A couple of things I should note right at the top:

When I was a business editor back in Indiana, I wrote a lot of stories about businesses opening and closing and new development and whatever else. I also, for a year or two, wrote a business column called Second Thoughts. In that column, I’d follow up on a recent business story, adding information I’d received since its publication. So be aware that I always have a lot of second thoughts,

And I recognize the irony of writing about too many email newsletters in a post that will generate an email to a couple of hundred people who subscribe to these posts.

So on social media the other day, I noted that I’d unsubscribed from a newsletter from an author and self-described “author help” person, or some phrase like that. And as you know from a post a few weeks ago about how much I hate notifications, I guard my email inbox furiously. I mean, not enough to do more than an occasional, cursory cleaning of said inbox, but still.

I noted on socials that I’d unsubscribed to this “author help” newsletter after I’d received 14 email from them up to that point in the month of July.

I heard back from some people who agreed, yeah, 14 newsletters in less than a month is too many. I think other people – including people for whom sending out newsletters is a huge part of their business plan – probably thought I was being oversensitive. Maybe.

Anyway, I’m feeling right at this moment I’m unlikely to resubscribe to this newsletter. As I cut back on my corporate news media consumption in recent years and quit watching TV news and unsubscribed from the NYT, I’ve been subscribing to more newsletters, including those from Columbia Journalism Review, Oldster and a ton of writers’ newsletters. I’ve so far not regretted any of those. (And yes, I admit that due to my fixed income financial status, I’m a newsletter freeloader, receiving only the free version of most of these.)

I’m sure somebody whose newsletter I subscribe to – one of those that ostensibly isn’t supposed to be delivered every day, like some newspaper newsletters – will test my tolerance for newsletters in my inbox.

I’ll have my cursor on that “unsubscribe” button, believe me.