Open Road - Info

This time around I'd like to showcase an excellent self-promotion mailing list from Alternative Comics. After this review, as an added bonus, I've thrown in a subscription/access directions for a couple of e-zines that I've recently subscribed to and found extremely interesting.

It's my feeling that Jeff Mason, publisher of Alternative Comics provides an excellent service to his press fans, as well as shamelessly promoting all things to do with Alternative Comics.

Review - Alternative Comics' Mailing List

Subscription Instructions:
Send a request to: Jeff Mason at jmason@gator.net

WWW location: http://www.indyworld.com/comics/

Contact Information:
e-mail: jmason@gator.net

Cost: Utterly Free

Review

Content - 5
Wide ranging but very focused. Jeff mainly provides news bits and press releases, but inside these are great tidbits like recent award nominees, new comics, artist information and convention locations and times. The info might be slanted, but it effectively gets the Jeff Mason and associated hype out there while providing tangible and useful info to subscribers.

Writing Quality/Style - 5
Very professional. Each mailer is generally written like a press release imitating a "newsie" style; looks and sounds objective, but is properly sprinkled with the news that Jeff wants to get out. (I guess you can see Jeff's lawyerly writing skill here).

Regularity - 5
No set schedule (as far as I can tell), but information is very timely.

Extras - 3
Not much for typical extras here. There are always excellent and appropriate links to further info on the Web, but the typical e-mail have to haves aren't there. No how-to un/subscribe info in each mailer. I believe that Jeff moderates this list himself, but really I can't tell.

Overall - 5
An excellent example of combining focused industry news with specific/company hype. Well written, timely, informative and free. Gotta like it! (well you don't have to but heck I think its snazzy).

Subscription Instructions:
Visit: http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cccmenu.html

Note: Given the volume of information provided via this list, and its personal list moderation please do not subscribe to this list lightly.

WWW location: http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cccmenu.html

Contact Information:
Visit: http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cccmenu.html

Cost: Free

E-zine Description: From the site: BotSpot's free monthly newsletter is emailed to you on the 15th of each month with previous month's NewBots samples, Best of the Bots summaries, previous month's happenings and events in the fields of [Internet/On-line] Bots, Intelligent Agents and Artificial Intelligence. Links back to BotSpot's valuable information at www.botspot.com are incorporated throughout this monthly newsletter available in HTML format.

Frequency of Publication: monthly

Subscription Instructions:
Visit: http://botspot.com/newsletter/index.html

WWW location: http://botspot.com/newsletter/index.html

Contact Information:
feedback: http://botspot.com/email/

Cost: Free!