Mistaken identity

I'm not a famous author (last time I looked)

[Chuma]

My personal site contains a section about a series of books written by a popular teenage fiction author and has all that you would normally expect of such a site (I think anyway.)

For some reason people keep sending me email thinking I am the author of the books even when I clearly say that I am not (I don't even have his email address since he has stopped answering emails.)

Does anyone have a general statement that I could put on my site to let people know that I didn't write the books?

Thanks.

[vincevincevince]

how about using an email address which is your name - so they clearly can see that it's not the name of the author?

[bateman_ap]

oh that won't work. some users are simply too dumb to notice huge bold type at the top of the page stating you have no connection with whoever

[TheWhippinpost]

Maybe your site is too convincing and people don't believe you're not really the author!

I dunno, maybe there's a solution in that for you!

[msgraph]

I've had to ruin the design of some sites by literally placing statements in large red letters in order for them to finally read what I wanted them to know. Still some fail to read those statements and send mails asking about what they believe my site offers.

[pmkpmk]

Try to track down the author and make an agreement with him that you set up an email address and/or forum on your site for him. So email sent via your site reaches the correct person: it will be a benefit for the author, your you as it connects you closer to the author, and finally for the users.

If you don't want to ask for money in return, how about asking him (or her) for pre-releases of his/her new books?

[martinibuster]

I doubt there's a solution. I set up a form for a local repair company. The form is for a "free estimate." The site says in multiple places, including on the form itself, that this service is for Northern California only.

Wouldn't you know it, they still received forms from people in North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Michigan...

There's no pill for curing stupidity. The best we can do is find a way to take advantage of them. ;)

[griz_fan]

Another idea would be to set up an autoresponder for that particular email address with a message clearly stating that you are not the author.
Or, you could get a bit fancy and replace the email link with a contact form. In that form, you could have a drop-down box containing various subjects for the email. One of these subjects could be "contact the author". All other subjects would kick out an email to you, while the "contact the author" subject would redirect to a page explaining that you are not the author...

[dragonlady7]

>autoresponder

I was just going to suggest that.
"I'm not the author, you dumb***. It only said that fourteen times on the page."

Just kidding, but...
Sigh. I hate how dumb and oblivious people can be, but then I turn around and do something just as dumb and oblivious. So...

<edited>Whoops, forgot to include the quote I was referencing. Whee... I prove my own point!</edited>

[Chuma]

Regarding autoresponders & redirecting to "I'm not the author" pages - some people go to a lot of effort writing emails/contributions so it would be annoying for it to be rejected outright.

I have also managed to gain content for my site by having interested people sending it in.

Probably the strangest thing I have found regarding my site was the use of one document on the site in a school curriculum. This normally wouldn't out of the ordinary, except for the fact that I had run the document through a AI conversation simulator (MegaHAL) and it wasn't meant to be taken seriously.

Thanks.

[D_Blackwell]

I have a couple decent sized sites where the owners contact information is prominent at the top of every single page - while I am clearly identified as the designer but one single time at the bottom of only one page -- and it's not at all unusual to get product questions or even orders.

Stupid is at epidemic levels. It always makes my day a little brighter to see that I'm not the only one.