I voted 'no' in your poll, but curiosity got the better of me, and I went to check out Mr. Clegg's site... and promptly signed up. lol. It was the 'look' of his site that drew me in, also, I'm interested in finding good horror reads. :-P My kneejerk reaction was it was a bit pushy and presumptious of him to insist I join his mailing list. Still feel a twee bit resentful. *g* And when you enter the site, there are instructions to make sure his newsletter doesn't end up in the Junk Mail folder. But what if that was your intention, because you didn't want the bloody newsletter in the first place? ;-)

Nope, not me. Whenever I go to a site and have to sign up for something before entering, I always figure, "Beh, forget it." I get enough e-mails everyday without adding newsletters from an author I may not even like, whose site I visisted merely out of curiosity to decide whether I would go as far as buy one of their books. When confronted by these barriers to the site, I just move on. I may or may not ever give that author a second thought as a result. I like to be able to drop by a site at my leisure, read whatever I feel like reading, and exit just as anonymously.

Absolutely not. If the blog is interesting and has an RSS feed, I'll sign up, but no one gets my email address by being pushy about it. Besides, if I'm moved to post a comment, they'll get it for free. :)

Some links that might help you in your blog quest:
LiveJournal users list of writing & publishing types

Sarah Weinman’s sidebar

Sara --
Are you aware of "The White List"? It's a list of writers, editors and other publishing professionals that have LiveJournals or LiveJournal RSS feeds. Might help with your endeavour.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/archer904/24741.html
Regards

Look! You just got my email address (and if I weren't lazy, you could've had my journal URL, too), and you didn't even have to ask. Nifty.

Frankly, I'm not sure of what value there is in a newsletter if one has a blog that's updated regularly. I get the RSS. I can read it as I like, when I like, and it doesn't sit in my email box (nor do I have to filter it, or yegawdz, make sure it doesn't end up in junk, were it something I actually did want to read). I'd much rather go by a site, read a bit, and return if it's interesting. Demanding my email address if I don't plan on interacting is just a turn-off.

Hmph. I remember when I was in France and the signs on shops didn't translate as "open" but as "free"; I asked my host family, who told me that just meant you were allowed to go in the shop and look around, and it wasn't mandatory that you buy something. (The American boggles, of course.) I'm also thinking now of the time I went to cash a paycheck, before I had a local bank account. I went to the bank that had issued the check, provided my sixteen forms of ID, and then they demanded a thumb print from me. What for? Oh, so we can make sure it's you. WTF? I don't even have an account with you! Wasn't my sixteen forms of ID, work #, home #, and email address good enough for you people? Needless to say, I laughed myself silly when the teller promptly asked me if I'd be interested in opening an account with them. I really did: I stood in line and laughed, and what I said I won't reprint here, but it wasn't pleased if to-the-point.

We are too aware these days of the little diseases we can catch from unprotected URLS, between spyware, adware-bugs, and every bloomin' site demanding our email address. Sometimes we can enter a fake email address, like the one I just changed mine to, above; but that whole "wait for confirmation"...ooh, I dislike that, but I dislike more someone demanding the information when I'm not even sure I want to commit yet to having one more soul out there know my email. I see nothing to gain by strong-arming people into signing up for a newsletter. It's like demanding five bucks so someone can come in and stroll around your shop, when they're not even sure it's the shop they want for what they need.

No, I don't trust privacy policies, why do you ask?

*laugh*

I don't bother with blogs who insist on sign-up before you can read/comment. It seems to go against the whole notion of a blog. I also found that those who do want you to register tend to be less interesting (I have a small collection of UK MP blogs in my Bloglines and the only one who wanted registration never posts).

Oh, and don't leave out the mass of SF authors who blog: Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman and William Gibson spring to mind, as do the other blogging Doctor Who writers like myself.