Email law for authors: what your newsletter must include

Author newsletters are covered by email sending laws. CAN-SPAM is the United States law for all promotional email.

Many authors assume email law is a big-company problem. It isn't. The rules apply from your first subscriber. The platforms that deliver your email enforce them on senders of every size.

Compliance comes down to three habits. This article covers what the law requires, what opting in changes, and which emails are exempt. It is a plain-English summary. It is not legal advice.

Does email law apply to someone my size?

Yes. The law covers any email whose main purpose is promotion. It makes no exception for small senders. The law applies the same way to fifty readers or a million. The message's purpose decides. List size is irrelevant.

Your email platform enforces these rules more strictly than any regulator. Delivery services protect their reputation with inbox providers. So they hold every sender to the legal baseline. An account that ignores it gets paused.

What must every marketing email include?

Three things: your postal address, a working unsubscribe link, and honest headers.

• A valid postal address. The address must appear in the message itself, usually in the footer. It tells readers a real sender stands behind the email.
• A working unsubscribe. The link must keep working for at least 30 days after sending. The request must be honoured within 10 business days. No login, no fee, no "reply and ask".
• Honest headers and subject lines. The from name, reply address and subject must be honest. None may mislead readers about who is writing or what the email contains.

Doesn't opting in change things?

No. Consent does not remove the postal address or the unsubscribe requirement. This is the most common misunderstanding of the law. Opting in changes exactly one duty. An email sent with prior consent does not need an advertisement label. The address and the unsubscribe link stay mandatory for every promotional send.

Double opt-in is still worth doing. It proves consent, keeps your list clean, and matters under European rules. But you still need the address and the unsubscribe link. Opting in only removes the advertising label — no amount of consent removes the address.

Which emails are exempt?

A transactional email completes or confirms something the reader just did. It is exempt from most of these rules. The email asking a new subscriber to confirm their signup is transactional. A receipt is transactional. So is a delivery link for a file the reader asked for. There is nothing to unsubscribe from yet, so no unsubscribe link is required.

Some emails are harder to classify. A welcome email that also promotes your books has a promotional purpose. Treat everything you send after the confirmation click as marketing. Give it the address and the unsubscribe link. Honest headers are required on every email, including transactional ones.

What happens if you get it wrong?

Deliverability suffers first. Fines are rare. The law carries penalties per email. Regulators mostly chase large-scale spammers, not individual authors. Readers who cannot find an unsubscribe link press "mark as spam" instead. Inbox providers count those complaints, and your emails start landing in spam folders for everyone. Enough complaints and your email platform suspends sending. The rules above are also the mechanics of staying out of the spam folder.

Do I have to publish my home address?

No. The law asks for a valid postal address. It doesn't have to be your home address. A P.O. box works. So does a street address from a commercial mail-receiving agency. Many self-published authors rent a box for exactly this reason. It costs little. It keeps your home private. The address then sits in every footer automatically.

What about readers outside the US?

Other countries have their own email rules. They ask for the same things. UK and European rules focus on consent and on identifying yourself honestly. Collect consent properly — double opt-in is the clean way to prove it. You cannot control where your subscribers live. So run one list that meets every rule: consent, a named sender, a postal address, and a working unsubscribe link. Meet that and you are aligned everywhere.

How Pubblish handles this

Pubblish appends a compliance footer to every campaign and sequence email at sending time. The footer carries your postal address and each reader's own unsubscribe link, so a marketing send cannot go out without them. Campaigns cannot be sent or scheduled until a postal address is saved in your newsletter settings. The settings page suggests a P.O. box if you publish from home. Signup confirmations are treated as transactional. They carry your address but no unsubscribe link, because there is nothing to unsubscribe from yet. See the newsletters guide for how sending works.