Yesterday John Scalzi had a small moan on Twitter about people who only got in touch with him to try to get him to RT things they were promoting. I can see why this might be very annoying, when you have a profile as high as John’s. I also know why they do it.

A week or so ago John blogged about this year’s Hugo controversies, and linked to a post by Cora Buhlert which provided a good link round-up. Bear in mind that only a fraction of John’s readers will have clicked through to Cora’s site, and only a fraction of those will click on any of the links she posted. And yet that still meant that Cora was sending enough people to my site to give me well over 1,000 visitors for the day, which is the best I have done since I last got NeilWebFailed.

In contrast, yesterday I did what I thought was a pretty good couple of interviews with a very fine new author, Emma Newman. I blogged about it. To date just 17 people have clicked on that post, and only one has clicked through the the Ujima Radio website to listen.

So while I absolutely sympathize with the links John and Neil, who must be overwhelmed with requests for help, I can also see why people think they have to be that pushy, because the potential benefits are so huge. Personally I try to treat my friends with respect. But I wish I could figure out a good way to promote interest in good books.