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September 8, 2010

How Do You Use Your Author Website? [Discussion]

With a few posts related to author websites popping up on Twitter, we thought they’d be a great topic for disucssion this week. Whether you have a website professionally designed, stick to social media or maintain a blog, we all know that the more you can get your name and ideas out there, the better!

Discussion Questions

We want to hear from you! Let us know:

  • Do you have a website dedicated to yourself as an author? If so, how do you use it to promote yourself? What is its main goal? If you don’t have a dedicated website, why not?
  • What content is included on your website? Do you include an author bio, media kit, sample chapters or other downloadables?
  • Who designed your website? If you had it professionally designed, do you feel the investment was worth it? If you did it yourself, are you happy with the way it turned out?
  • Does your website have a blog? Why or why not?
  • Which medium has garnered the most new fans — social media (Twitter, Facebook, GoodReads, etc), your website or good ol’ offline networking?
  • If you’re a reader, what do you like to see on author websites? What piques your interest or keeps you coming back?

Please take a few moments to discuss the above with fellow indie authors and readers in the comments. If nothing else, share a link to your website! We’d love to check it out.

What do you think?

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  • Well my website IS my blog. I post almost daily talking about everything from my writing journey, my assorted works in progress, to the annoying crap at the Evil Day Job that’s keeping me from losing myself in my latest scene. I like the dynamic of changing content. Author website that list nothing but the current and upcoming releases with no real change in content feel kind of dull to me. I’m sure the bulk of my readers are other writers, which is fine. It’s enabled me to network with them, which was especially helpful when I was setting up my month long blog tour back in May. The design was a combined effort. My cover artist, the fabulous Robin Ludwig, created my header, and my BFF web designer Christine of CYH Associates adjusted the CSS of the wordpress.com blog to make it a bit more professional. As for content and the rest of the layout, that was all me. My blog itself is the primary content, with links to articles on craft, an enormous link library of resources, my bio, links to my current available works, and ultimately planned freebies. And while I’ve got a decent faithful following, I think I’ve garnered more fans via my interactions on Twitter.

  • I do believe in websites and have others I use extensively. I have two writing websites, one for my unpublished mysteries and the other for the niche novels written under a pen name. I must say only covers are on the pen name website plus an email address. The mystery site is meant to provide easy access to some excerpts. It contains 3 chapters from each of the two books plus contact info – email, twitter and shewrites addresses. I mention the site regularly on twitter and on facebook. Has it paid off? Well, I don’t have an agent yet.

  • I have a website dedicated to another business, and what that taught me was that driving traffic to a website is hard. So for my writing stuff, I have my domain name pasted to a WordPress.com blog. This allows me to avoid paying to host another site, and also to take advantage of the bit of traffic I might get other WordPress.com users (minimal for me because…). I’m a lousy blogger. I have some ideas for being better at it, but ultimately, I enjoy writing novels and don’t have the passion for blogging that a good blogger does. I still keep the blog because I do occasionally have something to say, and something about SEO, blah blah, huh?

    What I like about the setup I do have, though, is that it allows me to have a place to put things. I have a place to put static info about my book and series in case people want to find out more than what they get out of the blurbs at the retailers. I have handy links about where to purchase right out there in front–I find it incredibly frustrating when someone is tweeting about their work and I can’t figure out what it is or where to get it.

    The design is very basic, all WordPress, with custom background and header designed by Robin Ludwig (awesome cover artist, plug plug).

    Which medium has garnered me the most fans? I’d have to that it’s a tie between Goodreads and Twitter. Goodreads has been very good to me in the month my book has been out there. I’ve had a fabulous time chatting with readers, particularly book bloggers, who have been very sweet to me. (It’s worth saying: book bloggers rock.) For Twitter, well, it’s more @kaitnolan’s Twitter than me. She’s very good at the friendly, casual, busy social interaction that is Twitter, which completely overwhelms someone like me. She’s got a nice following of people she actually interacts with and does not spam. So when she decides to ask them to read my stuff, some of them do. How awesome is that?

    So far, there’s not a lot that keeps me coming back to an author website. I’ll usually go check one out for a specific reason: because someone pointed it out to see something cool, or because I need info like the order of a series. Other sites are blogs by authors I’m friendly with, or someone like JA Konrath who has something really interesting to say more often than not.

  • My sites, Shereese.blogspot.com and ShereeseMaynard.com are used for two purposes: personal writing and profession writing. I use WordPress for my fiction, and opinion pieces. I’m currently working on a self-publishing project of essays and when I have a post that is well-received by my followers and receives a lot of comments, I let followers know of its success by stating, “it’s going in the book! I’ve developed a loyal group of followers; small but loyal. I actually have a few followers who are Americans residing abroad. I love it!

    My professional writing is for health care providers and concerns children’s health primarily and administration secondary to policy writing. Most of my readers are either clients or persons already in the health policy field.