The Sponsored Links Thing.
So, for two years now, I have been holding out an offer, a quid pro quo available to anyone who reads this page. Namely, if you link to my website, I will link to yours. Pornographers and fascists not excluded! All you have to do is: (1) somewhere relatively public on your site, somewhere that Google will take into account when it forms its opinions, provide a link to www.rudolphdelson.com as part of a sentence that mentions my name, for example ...
Rudolph Delson, whose friends call him Rudy and whose government calls him Benjamin, alternately maintains and neglects this website. We recommend it.
... and then (2) let me know about it by sending me an email with the link. Below, in reverse chronological order, are the people who have accepted this tempting offer:
It's January of 2009. And the noble boys at The Boneless Children Foundation have linked to me. In these troubled times, friends, trouble yourselves with a visit to their site.
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It's November of 2008. And I have just received an email from my U.K. publishers that reads as follows: "Hi there. ... We currently publish you and wondered if you could put a link on your website to your new page on Harper Collins's new website www.bookarmy.com. The link for this page is: http://www.bookarmy.com/ Authors/ Rudolph_Delson.aspx? AuthorId=e1e18015-6420-4631-9130-b6d5e7fec617. We look forward to seeing you on BookArmy!"
One is not supposed to publically question one's own publishers. And so, let me simply say this: When you think Rudolph Delson, think AuthorId= e1e18015 -6420 -4631 -9130 -b6d5e7fec617.
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It's June of 2008. Fabian Alvarado, see below, would like me to note that his homepage is no longer so secretive or bleak. Judge for yourselves. Also worth a fresh visit: H5L5N5.
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In April of 2008, the affable Sarah M. put down her glass of blue Tatooine milk long enough to put up a link to me on Paper Snacks, which is her website about books, eating, and other things that I won't tell you about. Should you visit it? Yes! It's a small crowd of people who have ever, or will ever, find this here "sponsored links" webpage; but Sarah M. was one of them; and now you, dear anonymous reader, are another; as if you wouldn't like each other, you and Sarah.
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You know you've got your hands on something good when you open a novel and the first sentence is: "Schreiend versuchte sie zu fliehen, doch der Mann mit dem Messer kam immer näher." Which is to say, it's the first day of spring, 2008, and Simon de Waal has linked to my website. He is a great soul; go read his books.
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I took a vow over the summer of 2007 never to google myself again. Which means that I'll never know whether this here sponsored links project is working. Still, it's a fun project to maintain, especially considering the two links that came in while I was on my American book tour. First, my friend Julie linked to me from www.julisima.com, where she displays her art and her design and her other, admirable Oaxacan undertakings; if you need help building a webpage, Julie comes with my very highest recommendation; for example, without her help the Maynard & Jennica website would not be what it is. Second, Ms. Deborah L. Diesen of Michigan wrote me an email saying, "I put a short review of your novel at my site. No one comes to my site, so you're not likely to be inundated with requests / sales etc. due to my posting. But in case you're interested in seeing it, the review is at ...." and she included this link. Well, thank you, Debbie! I'm not sure that anyone comes to my site, either; but if anyone does, I hope they'll head your way and read about The Pout-Pout Fish
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It's September 6th today, and I just got an email from writer, journalist and blogger Rachel Fershleiser. Rachel is one of the geniuses behind SMITH's Six-Word Memoir project. (My six-word memoir? "It was all too brief.") Totally charmingly, she admits that while in the end she "loveloveloved" Maynard & Jennica, at the outset she "fully expected to hate" it. This is my kind of reader! And you can read Rachel's bloggery, for example, here.
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Today is August 8th, 2007. In a disturbing development, my father has begun soliciting his friends to get themselves onto my sponsored links page. It's like having your mother find a prom date for you. Or like having your aunt, who works at the CDC, prepare a petri dish of smallpox for you to take in as your second grade science fair project. Or something. Anyway, I'm still grateful to the folks over at Clever Magazine for deciding that I qualify as a "celebrity."
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Early in August of 2007, Judy Tillinger dropped me a note. She's a photographer, and you can see her work at this friendly website. It's quite fun to click through the montages that she's put together; why not pay her a visit?
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Jason Wishnow, best known for his vegetable Oedipus, will be directing the book trailer for Maynard & Jennica. The folks over at Skyhorse Publishing, for whom Jason is also filming a book trailer, call Jason the Hype Williams of Book Trailers. I like to think of him more as the Leni Riefenstahl.
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Early in June of 2007, I got a sweet email from a woman named Helene. (There are diacritics over the first two Es in her name, the first of which is ascending, so that your eye can climb easily up the letter L, the second of which is descending, so your eye can have fun sliding down, but neither of which I am able to re-create with my meager HTML skills). Helene wrote, "I would gladly put a link to your site on my blog (http://h5l5n5-theaccidentalbookseller.blogspot.com/) but nobody ever goes on it apart from me and my ex-boyfriend." Well, maybe so, Helene. But what is the internet, after all, if not a vast swarm of heartlorn exes, each following what few links they can find, looking for something they've lost?
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My sister is apparently desperate to get publicity for her husband's band, because in May of 2007, in an effort to put Pottymouth back to the top of this sponsored links page, she revised the link she created three months ago (see below). I am now no longer Pottymouth's #1 fan, I guess.
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On Februry 11, 2007, I got a charming and unexpected email: "Your uncle's my pc guy and what a sweetie he is! I happened [] to look at his website. There I discovered YOUR website and thought I'd offer a reciprocal links thing. You see, I'm ridiculously googleable. Google LOVES me! And so I can put you on my links page when your uncle helps me re-install Frontpage." Thus, my esteemed readers, I introduce you to Alice Andrews, and her online journal Entelechy, which, the last time I visited it, was offering, inter alia, "Darwinian literary criticism." Darwinian literary criticism! People, what more could you ask for?
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My sister's husband is in a band called Pottymouth. And apparently my sister has control over Pottymouth's website because sometime over the weekend of February 10, 2007, she inserted into their homepage a link to rudolphdelson.com - a link that read (in four point font, purple against a background of black): "Our #1 fan." I sincerely hope that I am not Pottymouth's #1 fan, since I have only been to one of their shows. Nonetheless, I am proud to know that if anyone ever googles "Pottymouth #1 fan," my name will appear.
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Mr. Fabian Alvarado, Esq., maintains a secretive and bleak homepage for himself within the more bright and welcoming website of the Tsokomey Development Project, a nonprofit that, among other things, helps support an elementary school in Bortianor, Ghana. One great thing about sponsoring a child at the Shiloh School is how, once a semester, the principal emails you a copy of your schoolchild's report card. My kid gets As in both English and Morals. Anyway, in January of 2007 Fabian linked to me, and therefore, payola, I link to him.
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In November of 2006, my Dutch publisher, Oscar van Gelderen, who was then at Rothschild & Bach, decided to hold a sort of straw poll, in which a vast, virtual assembly of Dutch readers would vote on what photograph of me ought to appear on the dust jacket of Dutch editions of Maynard & Jennica. Me, I would have doubted the ultimate wisdom of putting that many pictures of me on any one website, but I trust that Oscar knows what he's doing. All of the photos in the straw poll were taken by Alex Freund, whose site you can visit here. Bless you both, Oscar & Alex.
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In a fine show of nepotism, briefly before noon, Eastern Time, on July 19, 2006, my uncle, Jonathan Delson, became the first person to accept the quid pro quo. He is the proprietor of Jonathan Delson Associates, Inc., d.b.a. The PC Maven, and he provides the finest door-to-door computer consulting in Ulster County, New York.