I didn't know what subforum to put this in. There's a link in a post by Daniel to this agent, Janet Reid and there was a 100 word fiction contest on the page yesterday that I entered. But I posted the entry last night and it didn't show up. So I tried again. Nothing says the post didn't go through. It still hasn't shown up but more and more other stories keep being added. Just not mine. I sent her an email and there's been no reply. It's very frustrating.
Great, now it looks like I had to agree to comments being returned via my email. Last time I did that my spam went from a couple a day to hundreds a day and it's been that way ever since. I emailed the agent and she replied, sorry, can't help. Nothing said I had to check the send replies to box, I already signed in using my email address. But I went ahead and checked the extra box as a trial and error and now the comment says my post is pending moderation, which it hadn't said before. I don't know why I bothered, Now that the number of entries is >80, there's no way I expect to win. But if I start getting swamped with spam I can at least warn the people here about this agent's site. And if not, then I can let you know it was legit.
Sounds like a person can do something like that to collect emails and sell them to advertising groups.
And to add to the number of commenters on the site which I think is also valuable for selling ad space on the site. I suppose I should grow a thicker skin if I'm going to try to market my book via an agent and/or publisher.
Well here is a suggestion. You need multiple email accounts. One just for personal use, one for when you do enter contests like the one you are talking about and that you don't care if there is a million spam emails, and then one specific one just for when you submit things to an agent or publisher.
There are programs out there that can put all your email accounts in one. I used to use one that was from Mozilla called Thunderbird. It worked very well. http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird
How does that help the spam flood? I have a business account that only gets rare spam. My yahoo account is the one that gets hundreds a day, but I have to check them before deleting the spam because occasionally not spam gets in the spam folder. Then I have the gmail account I only recently started using though I've had it for years. Right now that account gets no spam. It's the one I used for the flash fiction contest so we'll see.
Most email programs have a spam filter and even when one occasionally gets through you can mark it as spam for the future ones. I don't know what to tell you then. I tried. It sounds like you are just venting and not looking for suggestions. Good luck.
So there are 97 entries. Since it is the very first flash fiction story I've ever written in my life, I'm fine with just having created a story. I don't expect an honorable mention but that would be exciting. Given the sample of past winners, winning is definitely out of my league.
