Author website

Oct 30

Photo from Raider of Gin's photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/fairerdingo/

I read a great blog post today about author platform and when/how to focus on building one. In short, publisher Rachelle Gardner said to stop trying to build your brand.

As writers, it is sometimes easy to tell ourselves that we are being productive when we blog and tweet and facebook. But are we really being productive? Or are we just procrastinating?

According to Gardner in her post Novelists: Stop Trying to Brand Yourself, an unpublished/unrepresented author should be focusing more on the actual craft of writing. Sure, writing blog posts and tweets helps with this to a degree, but what good is it if you have nothing to show your audience? And then we come to who your blog/twitter/facebook audience is. Are you writing these things for your future readers, or are you focusing more on attracting other writers/professionals in the industry?

Gardner stresses the importance of focusing on who you are writing books for. Industry professionals play into this, but the most successful writer blogs I’ve seen are the ones that focus more on the reader. And if you are writing to your reader, then it’s not procrastination. You are honing in on your voice while also attracting an audience.

How can an unpublished writer take their blog from industry focused to reader focused? How have you made your blog more reader friendly?

Nov 30

Phew. The last day of November. I just uploaded my 50K+ words to NaNoWriMo and received my winner badge. And now I can get back to a regular blogging schedule.

Since I’ve been a bit awol as of late, I thought I’d give a little summary of the things you’ve missed during the writing marathon I just underwent. So here goes:

I decided on the new design for my website. It should be up and running by the end of the year. Can you guess which design I went with?
I saw the new Harry Potter Movie. Review to follow, but just as a teaser, I was pretty impressed and now I feel like I have to reread the book. More on that though.
My work started blogging. Ok, I started blogging for work, but I’m roping in some additional authors from around the archaeology lab. If you have ever wondered what a real life museum person/archaeologist does, you should check out the NMSC Archeology Blog. It will also give you some insight into what I do when I’m not writing.
I went home for the first time in 2 years and met my niece for the first time (she’s 2 in February). I also saw my almost 4 year old nephew. Not only are they super cute, but they reminded me about the little things kids find fascinating.
I’ve read a lot. Hard to believe with all the writing, I know, but this month I’ve read: Magic Bites, Ilona Andrews; The Summoning, Kelley Armstrong; The Awakening, Kelley Armstrong; & The Angel Experiment, James Patterson. I’m currently reading The Duff, Kody Keplinger and School’s Out-Forever, James Patterson. As of this afternoon I will also be adding Matched, Ally Condie to my reading list, which came out today. So I’ve been busy and am now way behind on book reviews, but before you know it, I’ll be all caught up, I promise.
And, my biggest achievement – I finished NaNoWriMo! My first draft is not finished, but I’ve made pretty good progress. And, now that NaNo is over, it means I can return to my other WIP. The away time has been good and I’m ready to dive back in and get that sucker ready to go.

It’s been a busy month and I won’t lie. I’m kind of happy to see it come to a close. How was your November? Any exciting things happen? Did you catch any good books or movies? Come up with a new idea for a book? Any big plans for December in preparation for the start of another new year?

Nov 07

One thing that has been bothering me while trying to redesign my site is audience. Who is my site intended for? Future fans? Other writers? Agents and Publishers?

The Elements of Web Design

In designing a site, there are two things you need to consider: function and audience. We covered function in the last post, but here’s a recap since it’s been a while. The point/function of the site is to create an online presence that should be professional while also showing my personality as a writer. Ideally it will be something I can build off of once I am a published writer.
So what about audience? Since the main feature of my site right now is my blog, that would suggest that my main audience is other writers and maybe (one can hope) agents and publishers. But I don’t want to design a site that will become obsolete once I have something ready to submit and then ready to publish. So I would like to create a site that is also accessible to agents, publishers, and future fans.

Mock-ups: The Building Block of a Successful Design

In thinking about the audience, I have come up with some mock-ups, or sample designs. To create these, I used Photoshop and made a sample web page. The purpose of a mock-up is to provide a sense of what the site would look like – how the colors and images and layout will all work together. Creating a mock-up saves time and gives you samples to run by other people. In this case, I decided to share my mock-ups with my current audience (yes, that would be you) and see what you think. Let me know which is your favorite or if you hate them all. If you do hate them all or if something bothers you about any of them, please let me know. I won’t be offended and you will reap the benefits by getting to visiting a site that is aesthetically pleasing.

Mock-up 1

This Mock-up uses the blog as the home page. The stars and font add a playful, whimsical element to the website.

Mock-up 2

The second Mock-up aims for a more professional, but still fun feel. The colors are a bit more serious and the graphics are a bit more mature.

Mock-up 3

The final mock-up uses a true Home page. I haven't decided if the boxes will contain text excerpts from the pages or graphics or a combination.

And here's an example of the blog. The other pages would incorporate the color from their home page blocks.

Oct 21

As some of you may know, I’m taking a web design class this semester. It’s something I’ve been interested in for a while and I figured, as an added bonus, it would help me to create a professional, user-friendly website.

This series will span over the next couple of months, with a post here and there. At the end of the series, I will have a brand spanking new site up and running and ready for your viewing pleasure. So let’s begin.

Creating an Author Website

As I start thinking about redesigning my site, I find that I have to start at the beginning. Specifically, the building blocks of a great author website. Lucky for me, there was a post on Inky Fresh Press yesterday about cleaning up your online presence. Not only did the author, Brigid, offer great suggestions, but she also included links to several helpful articles.

The main points I got from these sources were:

Keep your site professional – both in design and content.
Let people know who you are – include a head shot and a short bio
Keep the content clean and easy-to-read
Use a memorable url, preferably your name – an author website is like your online business card
Include a way for people to contact you
And, most importantly, be professional

Some additional points I picked up about content are to include:

Bio page
Blog
Writing Excerpts/publications
Contact Page

An Author Website for the Unpublished

I found Annette Fix’s article, What Every Website Needs, to be the extremely helpful when addressing this issue. Not only does she tell you the elements you must have, but she also gives some guidelines for what to include in each section.

The main difference between a published author’s website and an unpublished author’s is that the published author needs to include information about their books and should have a separate website devoted to each title/series. Unpublished authors, of course, do not need to do this since they are unpublished. Otherwise, the sites should be more or less the same.

My Layout

Before I can start designing my website, I need to figure out the layout, or the site architecture. I’ve decided to include the following pages:

Home
About
Blog
Projects
Contact

The Projects page can include writing samples but it is also versatile because I can use it in the future for published works, works that are with an agent/looking for an agent, sample chapters, etc. I already have a bio page on my current site, I’ve been maintaining a blog, so I can just move that content over, and a contact page is easy to create using widgets or some simple coding. All that leaves me to create content for are the writing projects page (which I sort of already have for my writing samples) and a home page. Because I am not yet published, I will either use my home page as a landing page or just have it redirect to the blog.

What this means is there will really be little content to create. The bulk of the work will revolve around creating a clean, professional, personable design.

Coming Up…

Stay tuned next week for Website Redesign Part 2 – Part 2 will look at some mock-ups for my redesigned site.

Building an Author Platform – Do you need one?

November Roundup

Website Redesign: Part 2 – Audience