Tag Archives: community

Seven Things An Author’s Website Must BE

26 March 2012 Jordan 8 Comments

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Marketing: Websites

This post originally ran on Romance University last year.

We all know we’re “supposed” to have a website if we’re pursuing a career in publishing—but we’re not all sure exactly what we’re supposed to do with it! Today, we’re adding seven more secrets of successful sites—what your website must be:

Findable
Bottom line: a website’s no good to you if no one can find it. Make sure your website doesn’t block search engines, or put up any barriers to them finding your site. Links to your site with your name as the anchor text (the text of the link) can help search engines to find and rank your site for your name.

If possible, YourName.com or YourPenName.com is the best address for your site. Lots of free hosting services (including Blogger) will let you redirect your site to YourName.com (some for a modest fee). If YourName.com is taken, try to get something as close to that as possible by using initials (especially if you’re using them in your credits) or an extra word such as “author,” “writer” or “books.” Note that hyphens, i.e. Your-Name.com, are used less often and can be harder to remember.

Useable
Visitors to your website should be able to navigate easily and find what they’re looking for. Use an easy-to-understand set up: generally, websites have navigation links horizontally below the header and/or on the right or left sidebar. Also, think carefully about what you call the various areas of your site. “About me” or “Biography” is a lot easier to find and understand than “Everything you ever needed to know” or “100 things.”

Shopable
Imagine you’ve just finished a book by a great new author and you head to her website to see if she has any others. Great, she has some listed—but how can you find them? She doesn’t say! Are they out of print? Do you have to order them through her? (How?) Should we resort to Amazon? Ooh . . . pretty books . . . what was that author’s name again? Ooh, sale!

Give your website visitors an easy way to get more of your books—give direct links to your books where they can buy them.

Shareable
If you want your visitors to tell their friends about your site, make it easy on them. Include links to email articles from your blog, or share them on Facebook and Twitter. But even more important than making it easy to share your site is making your site worth sharing. Give your visitors an experience they’ll want others to have, whether that’s laughing, loving or learning, and then give them a way to share that experience.

Professional (yeah, I ran out of ables)
This site is your business card, your TV commercial, your sales flyer and your public persona all rolled into one. Being professional doesn’t mean being stodgy, but it does mean putting your best foot forward in attitude and appearance. Match your design and your writing style on your site to your chosen genre. You can be funny (even irreverent!)—and you should be if you’re writing humorous books—and still be professional.

(The same rule goes for your interactions all over the Internet!)

Informative
One of my pet peeves is visiting “thin” sites: sites with almost no content or information. You don’t have to be the next Wikipedia, but you should have enough information to draw visitors into your site, let them know who you are, maybe even let them see what you’re working on. One of my friends had an editor approach her about her book from what the editor read on her website. If you have your first pages or chapter polished for a contest or querying, I think it’s a good idea to make them available on your site as well. And don’t forget your About page—let us get to know you!

Fun!
A fun site doesn’t necessarily mean you need to hire somebody to create a bunch of animated games tangentially related to your works. A “fun” author’s site should include bonuses. It could be games or contests, or it could be something as simple as deleted scenes from a published book. If you’re lucky enough to have a group of dedicated fans, help them to interact and build a community (and don’t forget to participate!).

Conclusion
Whether you’re preparing to query or publishing your pentology, your author website can work for you and for your visitors. By making sure your site is findable, useable, shopable, shareable, professional, informative and fun, you’ll create an experience your website visitors will want to repeat, whether they’re agents, editors or readers.

What do you think? What else do you look for in an author’s website, and what are you striving to do with yours?

Photo credits: frustrated—Sybren A. Stüvel; asleep at computer—Aaron Jacobs; loving your site—Chris Champion

Marketing

Five more things an author’s website must do

19 March 2012 Jordan 2 Comments

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Marketing: Websites

Continuing with some good advice from years past, part two of the post from last week!

Last week, we started to look at four things an aspiring author’s website must do. We looked at the “get ready” and “get set” phases—gearing up for submitting your work for publication. This week, we have a few things that all authors—aspiring or not—should be doing with their websites, as well as just a little advice for soon-to-be published authors. There are volumes more to say on what an author’s website should do and have and be, but we’ll stick to these few today.

The 1-2-3 phase: attract interest for your book

After your book has been accepted for publication, your website is an even more powerful tool. If you’re still solely on a blog on a free domain (i.e., ilurvewritin.blogspot.com), it’s time to buy your own domain, preferably YOURNAME.com. And along with a new domain, this is a good time to upgrade to a “real” website—keeping your blog, of course, but also hosting a stable website—or at least a blog with a full complement of pages. Ideally, the blog and the website design will be integrated seamless.

In this phase, it’s time to focus on that book to attract as much prelaunch interest as you can.

How can you do this? There are a few things you’ll want on your site before the book launches to help drum up interest:

An awesome, engaging description of the book
The cover (so people will recognize it in a bookstore)
An excerpt, preferably from that incredibly intriguing beginning (with permission from your publisher)
A link to your book on Amazon—hello, pre-order! (Also, you can use an affiliate link [how to sign up as an Amazon affiliate] to make a few extra pennies off any sales).
Your book trailer, if you’re doing one.
Anything else that will make people want to run to the bookstore on launch day!
Send author friends (especially ones with newsletters) a short paragraph about your book, with links.

You can also look at the terms people are advertising and searching on in search engines, to see if any of those people might be interested in your site—then use those terms (“keywords”) on your site, in page titles and content, in natural language. (You’re a writer, right? So write!)

The Go! phase: sell your book

As with the 1-2-3 phase, your website can be a major vehicle for selling your book (and your backlist, if you have one). Candace E. Salima gave a great presentation on this subject at a conference I attended in April.

How can I do this? Well, along with the above ideas, it’s also a good idea to spread the word on other websites through advertisements, reviews, releases, contests, and other publicity.

But that’s not on your website. On your website, always, always, ALWAYS have a purchase link. Have “bonus features” to your books on the website—recipes, play lists, deleted scenes—anything you think will interest your readers.

Also, make your website somewhere that people will want to come back to—do something for them, reach out to them (see building a community), be accessible. Even if they’ve already bought your book, they’re still your customers, your readers, your fans, and striving to build a relationship with them (individually and collectively) can help sustain you, both emotionally and financially.

Always: sell YOU

Your website is also a great way to sell you—and I don’t mean prostitution. I mean building a brand that will lead to agents, editors, fans, loyal readers, subscribers, fame* and glory* (*results not typical). If you have something to say, some kind of message, that’s part of your brand. If you write in a specific genre, that’s part of your brand.

How can I do this? Make your site professional and consistent—use the same layout, color scheme, graphics, etc. on each page. If you have a theme running in your published books (especially their covers or color schemes), go with it on your website.

On your site (perhaps the about page), talk about what draws you to your genre or your message. Encourage your visitors to share their stories of why they’re interested in the same topics.

Also, talk about or at least hint at future projects to keep your readers—your potential customers—interested. If it’s feasible, think about running a regular newsletter (monthly, bimonthly, quarterly). You can keep your most loyal, interested fans updated on your progress, offer special contests, and interact with them.

Have photographs of yourself (for visitors and high quality ones for media contacts). Feature other peoples’ interviews with you (or interview yourself). Allow people to get to know you (somewhat—we all need our privacy, and we don’t all need to know if you’re wearing clean underwear right now!). This goes hand in hand with the next point, something you should always strive for with your author website:

Always: build a community

A community based around a blog, forum or website means that people feel welcome. People can participate and interact with you. People come back.

How can I do this? Building a community around your blog or website can be as simple as encouraging discussion, responding to comments and writing on requested topics. Whatever you do with your website, interact with your visitors. Even if you don’t have a blog, you can interact with your website visitors—host a forum or weekly chats to connect personally with them. Use your email newsletter to appeal to them.

Always: build your platform

If you’re lucky enough to have a unique selling proposition just by virtue of who you are and/or what you do, bank on that. If you’re a computer engineer writing about high-tech computer hacking, tout those qualifications on your site. Once you’re published, you can also use that platform to launch yourself into public speaking opportunities on related topics—building your brand and your platform in the real world.

How can I do that? Feature your qualifications on your about page—maybe even write a “sub” page to your about page, just devoted to that. Include it in your FAQ (if you have one). Create an FAQ around that industry. List your speaking engagements on related topics, and make it clear you’re available for such gigs. (What would you speak on? Something related to your platform and your writing or research—if you’re writing fiction on high-tech computer hacking, you could speak about how to protect yourself from hackers, for example.)

Always remember: your website will be the major way you’ll interact with most of your readers and potential business associates. Use it wisely!

Next week, we’ll take a look at an easy way to set up a website!

What do you think? How else could you do these things on your website? What else should an author’s website do?

Photo credits: excited reader—Chris Johnson; bookseller—Herman Brinkman; bricklayer—Jovike

Marketing

Four things an aspiring author’s website must do

12 March 2012 Jordan 2 Comments

This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Marketing: Websites

Continuing with our series, a repeat of another post from three years ago, part 1 of 2!

We’ve covered the seven things an aspiring author’s website must have. But in addition to having convenient features and good appearance, an aspiring author’s website must do certain things to fulfill its purpose, depending on what phase your career is in.

(Side note: I have a blog where I talk a lot about blogging, I reference some posts on my other blog here.)

The get ready phase: networking with other writers

When you’re in the “get ready” phase, you’re actively writing and seeking out other writers, but at present you’re not ready to submit to agents or editors. Since your career is just starting out, your website may just be starting out, too, though it won’t hurt if you already have a fairly well-developed site.

Before you’re ready for publication, your website can help you find critique partners, talk with other writers about writing, explore your genre with other writers, and make the connections that help smooth the path for your career—or at least make a solitary profession a lot less lonely. This is your time to start building a community of writers.

How can I do this? The easiest way to make your website into a networking tool is to make sure there are plenty of ways other writers can connect with you—and often the easiest way to do that is through engaging blog content and comments.

The get ready phase: find your niche

While you’re preparing for publication, it’s also a good time to get your web presence ready—especially to find the niche where you’ll fit in the blogging and publishing (and publogging?) worlds.

How do I do this? To find your blog/site niche, ask yourself why you’re blogging and what you’ll be blogging about. It needs to be more than just blogging about your book and your career—and at some point, it will probably need to transition to be more than just appealing to other writers, too.

This is almost like a market analysis—using a search engine, look for other sites of authors with similar books/niches. See what they’re blogging about (if anything). See what angle you can add to the discussion, especially if it relates to your books. If you can use your website to show how you and your books will fit on a bookshelf, your site is ready for the next phase.

The get set phase: show you’re professional and marketable

In the “get set” phase, you’re in the process of searching for an agent or editor. (You may also fall in the “get set” phase if you have an agent who’s currently shopping your manuscript.) In this phase, one of your big goals will be to show your target audience (agents and editors) that you’re serious about your writing and your career.

How can I do this? Professional appearance—check out advice from professional website designer Kathleen MacIver of KatieDid Design in the free PDF guide to aspiring author websites.

Also important in professional appearance is the “demeanor” on your website. It’s fine to use casual, laid back text and images—but a website for your career might not be the best place to air out your dirty socks (or any of the rest of your dirty laundry!). Also, be sure to read over (and have others read over) your site for typos, misused words, broken links and images, or anything else that would detract from your appearance.

In this phase, you can still rely heavily on a blog, but it’s a good idea to at least set up a few pages (about, contact, works) with links in the sidebar or create a menu bar to help visitors learn more about you and your writing, and navigate your site.

The get set phase: show off your storytelling

Also in the “get set” phase, and more important in the long run, your website is a place to show off your storytelling abilities. In the end, that’s what’s going to get you an agent, get you sold to a publishing company, and get you sold on the bookshelves.

How can I do this? Showing off your storytelling doesn’t mean that every page and every blog post has to be written as if it were flash fiction. (Unless you want to . . . but that’d probably be weird.) It does mean making sure that you have at least an excerpt of your writing on your site—especially if you’re submitting to agents that don’t ask for or allow sample pages with their queries.

However, do not use your website as the only medium an agent can see your query or sample pages, especially not if they ask for any writing from you. An agent or editor will expect you to email them words (either in the body of the email or as an attachment)—not a link to their website. Never make an agent do more work for your writing when they’re interested. Odds are good that they won’t follow links.

(Side note: if you’re sitting there thinking, “But it’s just one click. Why can’t they do that?”, stop. It’s not just one click. It’s one click per person per item submitted. It’s dozens of clicks per day, minimum, if agents/editors are even interested enough to click on the link anyway. Also some email programs also strip out links.)

What do you think? What must an aspiring author’s website do? What does your website do—and what do you want it to do?

Photo credits: bookshelf by Josh; handshake by ThinkPanama; Click by Jordan McCollum

Marketing

The challenge of a pseudonym, LaBeletteRouge.blogspot.com

4 September 2009 Jordan 3 Comments

Today we have our final website review for La Belette Rouge: oh, the luxuries of going last. Have you been reading and making adjustments all along? Cheater 😉 .

(Remember, we’ll be doing more website reviews in a few months, so subscribe so you don’t miss the call for volunteers!)

belette1

Kathleen’s comments

Dear ‘Belette Rouge,’

I visited your site and I was . . . intrigued. It seems that you have a pretty wide circle of friends online, and that’s a good thing! The number of comments your posts bring shows that you’re doing something right. 🙂

But to be quite honest, I’m not sure what to review! I see from the series down on the left that you have blogged on writing . . . but that doesn’t seem to be the focus at present. Without reading the whole blog, I don’t know what you write, to know if it’s something I’m interested in. I’m not sure what the focus of the blog is, to know if it’s something I might like to subscribe to. I don’t know what “Belette” means, so that doesn’t give me any hints.

I’ll ask you the same thing I asked a few other blog owners . . . what is the purpose of your site? What is your goal? If yours is community (which you seem to be doing excellent at fostering), then I think your community would attract new participants more easily if your site clearly states what your community revolves around.

Give the site a clear blog description, and put something at the top of your sidebar, or above the posts that explains it a little more. [Also, a tag line displayed as part of the header can be a great help for quickly letting visitors know what your blog’s all about—Jordan.] You might find new readership builds much faster!

I’ll be offline for most of next week, but if you’ve got a specific question, go ahead and ask it in the comments and I’ll reply when I’m back online.

Happy blogging!

–Kathleen MacIver / KatieDid Design

Jordan’s comments

Pages

Your blog is another example of a “lifestyle” blog, where you blog about your daily experiences from the mundane to the therapeutic. You have a great voice and wonderful humor that comes through in every post.

However, while you have a series on life as a writer, you don’t highlight any WIPs or works prominently on your blog.

There may be a good reason for this. If you’re purposefully blogging under a pseudonym, and you want it keep it that way, you may want to keep potential publication info away from your site so you don’t get your real name associated with your site. (Then again, maybe you should be writing under a pseudonym, too.)

But if you don’t have that aversion, you might consider featuring your works more prominently.

I might also suggest a menu bar—a single line of text underneath the header that links to the permanent features of your site. This is where you can put links to your About page, a page about your WIPs and writing credits, and possibly pages on the various areas of your site—writing, infertility, Francophilia, etc.

Sidebars

The top two elements in your sidebar are encouraging visitors to subscribe—nicely done. I might add a little explanation (or a link to an explanatory post) in the first Subscribe widget (if possible), so people know what it means to subscribe—something you do well for the email subscription link.

Your contact information is fairly prominent on each page, as the third element in the sidebar. However, because your header image is so long, that contact information is below the fold. I’m torn over whether that’s enough. But it’s good that you offer several different ways to connect with you.

Also, your sidebar is quite long. I really like that you’ve been highly selective about what badges and honors to display. However, there are still a lot of links there. When visitors come across a long list of links, their eyes are likely to gloss over—they can’t focus on any single link, so they don’t bother looking at any of them. (A lot of links on a single page may also dilute the value you’re passing along to the sites you link to, in search engines’ eyes.)

If you want to make the links in your sidebar stand out more, you might consider having fewer of them. Don’t worry, I’m not saying you should just ditch links to your favorite blogs—but over 200 links on the main page is kind of a lot to handle. Instead, you could consider a single post, linked in your side bar or menu bar, for all your favorite links/blog roll. You can still use the same headings and divisions on the page, too.

Your own search engine presence, however, is fantastic. Your blog is #1 for [belette rouge] on Yahoo, Google and Bing (and also #2 on Yahoo and Google and #3 on Bing). The rest of the top ten results are all about you—your Facebook profile, your blog on various blog sites, friends’ mentions of your blog.

And obviously, with that many followers and that kind of discussion on each post, you have a fantastic community on your blog.

What do you think? Would you rather have a popular community on a lifestyle blog under a pseudonym where you wouldn’t want to promote your writing, or an author website with your real (or publishing) name?

Photo credits: question—Svilen Mushkatov; no pictures, please—StillSearc; glassy eye—Michelle Mangum

Marketing

Minisites: a shared author site, ScorchedSheets.com

3 September 2009 Jordan 5 Comments

Our review today is for Scorched Sheets. Elise Logan volunteered, but her site is actually a shared author site, with Emily Ryan-Davis. They also offer serial reads—very cool.

How does a shared author site work? Well, Elise and Emily have made it so they basically have two “minisites” (like we mentioned yesterday) on the same domain (except they’re using directories instead of subdomains), as well as a shared minisite.
elise1

Jordan’s comments

Pages

Woohoo! You know how I love dedicated contact pages. Yours looks like it’s designed really well for two authors sharing a website—you can contact one or both of you (I think—I assume the SS Admin link goes to both of you—if not, you might want to change that to webmaster, and see about adding an option to contact both of you). The only thing I would say here is that it doesn’t look like you have a link to the contact page on your own part of the site—that might be useful, if someone comes directly to your part of the site instead of the main page. (Kathleen has a great suggestion for this, too.)

On the blog, the subscribe links could be a little more prominent (right now they’re below the fold, and below the Twitter widget)—and a lot of people require an explanation of what it means to subscribe.

On your part of the site (/elise-logan/), I might recommend placing your book covers where they’re visibile “above the fold”—in the part of the page you can see when it first loads, without scrolling down any, like you have them on the blog. For you, that would probably be in the top right (where you have your publisher link—switching the two, really).

You could also do a little more to promote your books on your site—the reviews are a good start here. Let us know what the story is about and why we’ll want to read it—I’m sure you’ve mentioned it on your blog before, but put that info into one place (or at least link to it from the Books page) so we can find it easily.

Search engine presence

Because your main page is so heavily based on graphics, it might be a little hard for search engines to understand. One spider simulator showed this when I pointed it to your page:

scorched sheets import url http scorchedsheets com wp content themes erdelise style css png background image expression this runtimestyle filter progid dximagetransform microsoft alphaimageloader src this tagname ‘img’ this ‘src’ this currentstyle ‘backgroundimage’ split ‘ ‘ 1 this runtimestyle backgroundimage none this src http scorchedsheets com wp content plugins wp pngfix pixel gif this width this style width this clientwidth this height this style height this clientheight pngbg behavior url http scorchedsheets com wp content plugins wp pngfix iepngfix htc concealed display none block display block copyright 2009 all rights reserved scorched sheets and all contributing authors designed by get cesigned top sitemap chat log in chat plugin by bowob chat for wordpress this site uses a hackadelic plugin hackadelic sliding notes 1 6 2

Also, the simulator found only seven links to other pages on your site: two to the front page, two to your page, one to the sitemap, one to /bowob/ (which is broken) and one to the WordPress login page.

This can be a problem for both search engines and users who have their browsers read aloud the page’s text to them (i.e. blind users). To help with this, you can add the alt tag to the image map on your main page. For example, where your code now has:

<area shape=”rect” coords=”218,1,459,60″ href=”elise-logan”></area>

you could add the alt tag to make it more descriptive:

<area shape=”rect” coords=”218,1,459,60″ alt="Elise Logan, [tagline here]" href=”elise-logan”></area>

You could do the same thing with a title element, which changes what visitors see when they hover their mouse over a link. This might not make your homepage rank #1 for your names, but it will make it a little more understandable.

One thing going for you is you have a sitemap. Generally, that’s a good way (albeit a last resort) to help users and especially search engines find the content on your site. However, when I clicked on the sitemap link, it was broken.

In both Google and Yahoo, your site is #1 and #2 for [scorched sheets]—with the blog as the #2 on Google and Emily’s page as the #2 for Yahoo.

For [Elise Logan], the main page is #1 and a blog post from Scorched Sheets is #2 on Google. Yahoo has your part of the site (/elise-logan/) as #1. The same blog post that ranks on Google is #4 for your name on Yahoo. Your Twitter profile is #3 on Google and on Bing.

For [Emily Ryan Davis], her part of the site is #1 on Google and Bing (now there‘s a surprise!). The same blog post as above is #2 on google (Excerpt Monday from last month, in case you’re wondering). Yahoo has EmilyRyanDavis.com (which she redirects to her part of the site) as #1 and #2.

It’s very interesting that Emily seems to have a better search engine presence than you do. What are you doing differently in terms of links? Is it because she’s been in the business longer?

Kathleen’s comments

Dear Emily and Elise,

Wow! Fantastic custom-designed site! And it’s great that you two teamed up. That means you split the costs of the site and the blog duties, but you SHARE readers! So anyone who finds one of you will most likely try the other as well. Great marketing!

Your intro/splash page does well at instantly portraying romance writing. I think the only struggle I had was knowing where to click. I instantly knew the site represented a romance author, but there were none of the normal “Books” links, which is where I usually click. Of course, those are on your individual portions of the site . . . but I didn’t know that at first. I did see your two names after a few moments, but you know what my first thought was? That one name was the author, and the other was a character.

I knew Emily Ryan-Davis was an author, since we’ve crossed paths over on the Romance Divas site, but if I hadn’t known that, I wonder if I’d have thought that both names were character names? Because of this, I think it might help to add some sort of a romantically-scrawled phrase across the right side of the home page that says something along the lines of “Two authors, five series/worlds, countless stories…” That would instantly make everything clear.

The main issue with the site is that, if someone googles your name(s), they’ll probably end up on one of the inside pages of the site. So when people find you that way (which is what most will do), they may not notice the little sidebar links to your blog, your serial, and your news feeds. There isn’t even a link to your root home page that you share. And that means that most of your promotion efforts are only about 25% as effective as they could be.

You want EVERYONE who googles your names and finds your site to know about the other (don’t count on them noticing or clicking on the other name at the bottom of the pages), know you have a blog (and hopefully sign up for updates), check out your serial, etc. You don’t want them to click around and leave without knowing they exist!

Sooo . . . you need to add a second link menu with the same links that are on your home page. I’d add it above your current menu in such a way that the “Emily” link is highlighted when you’re on Emily’s half of the site, and the “Elise” link is highlighted when you’re on Elise’s half. Maybe that “Two authors…” line should be small and run across the page just above it. This shouldn’t be too difficult to add to the site, and it shouldn’t affect your layout at all. It’ll just help you both get the most out of your promotional efforts.

I’ll take a moment here to point out that this is why, when you design a website, we cannot simply think of making the site beautiful. Beauty is important . . . but beauty is wasted if function is forgotten. Any time we are thinking about a website redesign, we have to put ourselves in the mind of our prospective visitors . . . try to imagine what they’ll see and think. And we must do this with EVERY page of our site.

It’s not enough to make sure that the site makes sense from the home page, because very, very few people enter a site by the front door. We can’t even count on people who find us through a business card or bookmark entering through the front door because an unbelievably large percentage of Internet users think that URLs are supposed to be entered into the search engine bar of their browser. They don’t even know that URL bar exists up there! [Aggravating, but true: Google searches for “amazon.com” and “google.com” are amazingly high, and 24% of Internet users can’t even navigate to Google.com!—Jordan] And Google will usually rank inner pages of a site higher than the front page. Why? Because that’s where the content is!

Other than that, your site is beautiful. It offers everything readers expect to see on a site, and the free reads and serials offer people free samples of your writing, which will hopefully draw them in and make them buy. Congratulations!

–Kathleen MacIver / KatieDid Design

What do you think? Would you want to share websites with another author? How do you find your friends’ and favorite authors’ sites?

Photo credits: puzzle piece—Andronicus Riyono; door—Vinicio Capossela

Marketing

Go! phase site review: HughHowey.com

1 September 2009 Jordan

First off, we need to start with a huge congratulations! Hugh Howey, our next volunteer, is from North Carolina! That’s so freakin’ awesome! (I’m North Carolina born and raised 😀 ). Oh, and he also has his first book coming out in just a few weeks. I guess that’s important too. Hopefully Kathleen and I will be able to help you get your website ready for the influx of fans and media!

hugh1

Jordan’s comments

It’s time to promote the heck out of your book. Why not add a prominent purchase link to your sidebar? (Note: if you want to free up a little space in the sidebar, you could probably put the links to your pages across the top of your blog, just above or below the header image.) You could also sign up for Amazon Affiliates (yay $0.41—hey, sometimes that’s double the royalties you’d see from that book!). I’d also recommend adding a little summary or the back cover copy to your Books page to help entice us to buy.

Connecting with site visitors and readers

maze Think about why your readers will be coming to your website. Will it be because they’re interested in your book and want to learn a little more before they buy? Will it be to learn more about the author? (You could probably help them out a little more there 😉 ). Will it be to learn more about your next book? Will it be because they’re reviewing your book for their blog or newspaper? What are they looking for? Help them to find it—and make their paths to their goals clear.

To make your blog posts a little more user friendly, you could make your posts more scannable. Few people sit and read online like they would read a book—but if we break up our text and highlight the main points, people can still “read” it and understand our points instead of glancing over the whole thing and reading nothing.

To do this, you can use bold, white space, headings, lists, block quotes, pictures (even stock images, such as from sxc.hu and Creative Commons–licensed ones from Flickr) and more. I see that you’ve done this in a few places, and that’s a great start. ProBlogger has a great post on making your content scannable that goes into more depth on the topic.

While you don’t have a dedicated contact page that I saw, having the contact info in the sidebar of each page might actually be enough. It’s high enough to be prominent—it displays on every page above the fold. I might suggest adding a link to subscribe to the blog there, too.

You have a newsletter! That’s excellent! I would recommend expanding the newsletter page so your potential subscribers know what they’re getting into—maybe archived issues?

Obviously you already have an active community around your site—you have forums, and they’re not just languishing in nothingness. Excellent. Now, how can you further involve these friends and neighbors? Can you make a badge for your book for them to carry on their blogs? Can you ask them to review your book? Get creative!

Search engine presence

For [Hugh Howey], your site ranks #1 and #2 on Google, and #1 and #3 on Yahoo. Awesome! Bing, as always, is evil. They have your Facebook profile first, followed by LinkedIn, Facebook again, Twitter, your publisher, two articles about another Hugh Howey, and your profile on Asimovs. So apparently they don’t just hate Blogger blogs.

For [Molly Fyde] (your character’s name, I take it?), however, only Google has your site in the top ten (and that’s at #10). MollyFyde.blogspot.com also appears in the top ten in Google (at #3)—I assume this is also your site. Is there a reason why you’re keeping both this blog and your blog at HughHowey.com? (I’m assuming you haven’t moved this content over to HughHowey.com, right?)

The rest of the top ten results are YouTube videos, posts on forums and social sites (which appear mostly to be yours; don’t worry, no one’s stealing your character), and pages from Amazon and your publisher. If you’re okay with those results, then it’s not a big deal. But if you want your site to place for those results, you might want to recruit more links to your site using the text [Molly Fyde]. See if those old forum and social network posts can link back to your website.

Since you’re on self-hosted WordPress, I have a few more specific guidelines to give, too. One thing to make your site a bit more attractive to search engines: use “pretty” permalinks. That way, instead of your About Me page being at http://www.hughhowey.com/?page_id=5/ , it would be at http://www.hughhowey.com/about-me/ (this can also be helpful to users if they’re looking at the URL).

BUT before you go changing anything, first you’ll need a plugin so you don’t break every link you’ve ever made. (That doesn’t always happen, but it can—and it would be less than fun.) I use Redirection by Urban Giraffe. Just install it and activate it, and then you can change the permalink structure in WordPress (it’s under Settings>Permalinks). You can set the exact structure that you like, but I suggest something with the post name ( %postname% ) in it.

Kathleen’s comments

Dear Hugh,

Nice nebula picture at the top! That, combined with the fact that I knew you were an author, instantly made me think sci-fi, so good! I’d also like to say that your writing voice is loud and strong on your blog posts. That’s fantastic.

I’m wondering, however, if a visitor who didn’t already know that you were an author would be able to figure that out. Your header text . . . “Chronicling the life of Molly Fyde” hints at that, but I’m wondering if you can make it a little stronger? Maybe add “in the science fiction world of ______” or something like that.

As it is right now, your website is dominated by a humorous story/sales pitch for a backpack. It’s well written, but it doesn’t tell us anything about your upcoming release. And when we click your “About Me” link, the text is slightly confusing. I mean, it says you want to be a science fiction writer, but it gives the impression that Molly Fyde is a real person. Is she? (I hope I’m not making an awful blunder by even asking. I’m not a sci-fi aficionada.) Your Books link doesn’t even portray that you’re an author, because many review sites and/d subject-matter sites have links called “Books.” Maybe change it to “My Books”?

globe Finally, what else can you do to bring your visitors into your world? Make your website a window into the world of your books. Draw them in, so they just can’t help wanting to know about the characters in your world. This might mean re-designing a new home page that focuses on your characters and your world, instead of your blog…that way, when you post reviews on other products and books, your visitor’s first impression is still on YOUR book, instead of someone else’s. Feature your book covers on your home page…maybe overlap that nebula image with a small photo of each of your books tilted on edge, so there’s an instant sales pitch in one glance. If not there, get those covers somewhere on the home page!

And what about your characters? Your blog description says it’s about “the life of Molly Fyde.” What is special about Molly Fyde’s life? How can you quickly and simply portray that, so your visitors are itching to get their hands on your book so they can read Molly’s story? Give us a chance to meet the most fascinating side of Molly, so she comes to life on our screens, and follow it up with a link to buy your books.

Have fun!

–Kathleen MacIver / KatieDid Design

What do you think? How would you promote your published books? How would you invite your website visitors into your characters’ world?

Photo credit: globe—Sanja Gjenero

Marketing

Five more things an author’s website must do

17 August 2009 Jordan 2 Comments

This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Aspiring author websites

Last week, we started to look at four things an aspiring author’s website must do, kind of a corollary to my guest post on Nathan Bransford’s blog, seven things an aspiring author’s website must have. We looked at the “get ready” and “get set” phases—gearing up for submitting your work for publication.

This week, we have a few things that all authors—aspiring or not—should be doing with their websites, as well as just a little advice for soon-to-be published authors (like my ‘twin,’ Kiersten White, who was just signed to a three-book deal in a pre-empt! Congrats!). There are volumes more to say on what an author’s website should do and have and be, but we’ll stick to these few today.

The 1-2-3 phase: attract interest for your book

After your book has been accepted for publication, your website is an even more powerful tool. If you’re still solely on a blog on a free domain (i.e., ilurvewritin.blogspot.com), it’s time to buy your own domain, preferably YOURNAME.com. And along with a new domain, this is a good time to upgrade to a “real” website—keeping your blog, of course, but also hosting a stable website. Ideally, the blog and the website design will be integrated seamlessly.

In this phase, it’s time to focus on that book to attract as much prelaunch interest as you can.

How can you do this? There are a few things you’ll want on your site before the book launches to help drum up interest:

An awesome, engaging description of the book
The cover (so people will recognize it in a bookstore)
An excerpt, preferably from that incredibly intriguing beginning (with permission from your publisher)
A link to your book on Amazon—hello, pre-order! (Also, you can use an affiliate linkhow to sign up as an Amazon affiliate] to make a few extra pennies off any sales).
Your book trailer, if you’re doing one.
Anything else that will make people want to run to the bookstore on launch day!
Send author friends (especially ones with newsletters) a short paragraph about your book, with links.