How Not to Self-Promote Here: A Self-Pimping Thread

Posted on March 4, 2007    Posted by John Scalzi

So, there’s this guy out there named Robert Eggleton (not to be confused with Bob Eggleton, the Hugo-winning illustrator who has lent his talents to a number of my works) who has developed quite a reputation for being the sort of cluelessly obnoxious sort of guy who will spam just about any available public space devoted to writers and writing with little ads for himself and his work (he’s also developed a reputation among writers for persistently bugging them about providing blurbs and testimonials and then being affronted and offended when they tell him to go screw). This is a fellow who has been around long enough to know that there’s a right and wrong way to self-promote, but who continues to go about the wrong way of self-promoting, apparently because he’s under the impression that being a twit is the best way to pique the interest of would-be readers.

Some time ago this fellow wandered by this site and decided it would be a fine place to do his self-promotional thing. And if this fellow would have been content to keep his self-promotion to the self-promoting threads that I occasionally put up for the purpose of allowing people to self-promote, as he had been told to do by me, he would have been right about that; I like using my site to help people tell other people about their work. But this fellow decided instead to spam other threads with inappropriately self-promoting crap, and after seeing him do it long enough to know this fellow had no learning curve regarding this site nor any interest in acquiring one, and no desire to otherwise participate in the site, I’ve simply decided to ban the little shit from commenting further. Life is too short to tolerate inconsiderate dickheads who seem to enjoy being inconsiderate dickheads. They simply need to be tossed over the side.

To celebrate the banning of this inconsiderate dickhead, I hereby pronounce this a self-pimping thread, so all of you creative folks who know well enough not to spam this site can harvest the benefit of my 25,000 visitors a day, many of whom are looking for new and exciting things to read and see and enjoy. Thank you for treating this site and me with respect! I do appreciate it, and look forward to you promoting yourself and your work in many self-pimping threads to come.

(Note: Be aware that when/if you include a link to whatever you are self-promoting, that you may find yourself bumped into the moderation queue on a temporary basis. Don’t panic — I’ll release your comment as quickly as I can.)

As for Robert Eggleton, he’s already been added to the junk lists and any messages from him that do make it onto the site will be vaporized as soon as I find them. One hopes that this bit of public humiliation will encourage him in the future not to make such a goddamned nuisance of himself in public, but considering that I heard of his obnoxious behavior long before he ever arrived here, and also that he seems to be remarkably resistant to understanding that his activities make him look an ass, I don’t expect he will learn much of anything. What I suggest the rest of you who have blogs do, however, is add him to your junk filters as soon as possible. That’s pretty much where he belongs to be.

So: Everyone who is not Robert Eggleton: Promote yourself!