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Building a Writer's Website


Why Should a Writer Have a Website?

3-DWhys and Hows   3-DWebsite Myths  3-DDesign   3-DAfter it's Built

Last updated: 9/24/03
Comments? Questions? E-mail me.

Whys and Hows

The publishing market has changed a lot over the past decade or two. There are more books being published now than ever before, and commercial publishers' publicity budgets are both stretched and shrinking.

In this climate of increased competition and attention to the bottom line, it's usually only the Stephen Kings and Patricia Cornwells, or new authors the publisher specifically decides to target for success, who receive the perks of planned promotional campaigns: author tours, full-page ads in industry journals, arranged interviews and appearances, publisher-created websites, standalone displays at bookstores, etc.

This may seem counter-intuitive. After all, the Big Names practically sell themselves--wouldn't it make more sense for publishers to put most of their publicity money into unknowns? Unfortunately, that's not the way it works. Commercial publishers prefer to place the bulk of their promotion budgets behind hot prospects and sure things, and to allow new or less popular authors to find their own way (or not, as the case may be).

For writers who've selected a non-commercial publishing alternative--self-publication, e-publication, publication through a print-on-demand company--marketing issues are even more pressing. Even the newest or least profitable commercially-published author can rely on distribution and sales support, as well as some level of advertising (even if it's a single group ad in a genre magazine), mailings of advance reading copies to reviewers (prestigious industry review journals like Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, and Library Journal will review only in advance of publication), even co-op fees paid to booksellers to ensure advantageous placement of the publishers's books. But non-commercial publishers, which operate on shoestring budgets or else aren't really publishers in the traditional sense at all, typically don't offer even these basics to their authors. If you've chosen this publication route, you're pretty much entirely on your own.

All of the above translates into a need for authors to take a hand in their own promotion. Whether you've chosen a POD self-publishing service, or are awaiting commercial publication of your debut novel, or have been writing for a while and find yourself saddled with the dreaded "midlist" label, you must consider assuming at least partial responsibility for bringing your name before the public.

What or how much publicity you attempt is up to you. There's a variety of strategies you can choose, ranging from the relatively cost-free--setting up interviews with the media, contacting bookstores to arrange reading/signings--to the seriously expensive--paying for your own book tour, hiring a publicist. But at the very least, you should consider setting up your own website.

A website, if it's properly publicized, is 24-hour-a-day, nonstop billboard advertising for your writing. It launches you into a virtually unlimited public space, where huge numbers of people potentially have a chance to see you and your work. It can introduce your books to people who have never heard of you, place you in contact with readers who want to know more about you, and serve as a professional tool to which you can refer people who want to learn about your writing.

Whether to make the website yourself or have someone else do it is a decision that depends on your time and inclination. Many people don't want to follow the learning curve, or sacrifice the hours it will take, to build and maintain a website.

It's true that making a website is time-consuming, particularly if you aren't already tech-savvy--and, if it becomes very large, it can turn into a real time-sink. Hiring a designer or working with a knowledgeable friend will take care of that. But relying on someone else means you give up, at least to some degree, control of design and content, and may have difficulty ensuring timely updates. Plus, web design services can be costly.

The one thing that shouldn't influence you against doing it yourself is inexperience. There are hundreds of resources on the Web and in the bookstore to help you every step of the way. If you can use a computer, you can make a website. It's surprisingly easy--and a lot of fun.

When I set out to create this website (having determined to do it myself mainly in order to save money), all I knew about web design was that the H in HTML meant "hypertext." (For those of you who are similarly confused, HTML stands for for "hypertext markup language": a standardized, tag-based, text formatting language that tells Web browsers how to assemble text, graphics, and other elements of a webpage.)

The first thing I did was to go out and buy an instruction book. (There are dozens of these available, including books from the popular Dummies and Idiots lines; the one I chose--Build a Website in a Day, by Thomas Wrona and Elisabeth Parker, Ventana Publishing 1997--is no longer in print.) This introduced me to arcane terms like "server" and "GIF" and "ftp," and gave me a general idea of the design and publishing process.

Next, I spent some time visiting other authors' websites--an essential step, as it gave me a good idea of what sort of content to include in my own site, as well as some notions on layout and navigation. I also did some general surfing, hunting up things like free resources and design advice, and learning about Web publicity (you can find links to these and others on the following page).

Then I jotted down a plan for my website: what I wanted the website to include, how I wanted to allocate the information between different pages, what general layout pattern I wanted to follow, and so on. I got permission from my publisher to use excerpts and cover art (very important--don't skip this step), and made a list of the non-text elements I needed (scans of my bookcovers, a personal photo, buttons and spacebars and other miscellaneous graphics). Then I assembled everything, and set to work.

I'd made the decision to go with graphical (a.k.a. WYSIWYG) web authoring software (which works more or less like a desktop publishing program, creating HTML tags automatically so you don't have to) because I was under the impression that HTML was difficult to learn, and I didn't want to take the time to study it. The software I chose is very easy to use: you can make a large, attractive, complex website without viewing a single line of code.

But as I worked, it began to bother me that I didn't understand why the software was doing what it was doing. And so I went back to the HTML tutorials that had originally caused my eyes to glaze over in confusion, and spent some time with them.

I was surprised by how easy basic HTML was to learn, once I set about it in a systematic way. I was also surprised, returning to my graphical software, how much more effectively I could use it now I understood how it worked. As an added benefit, knowing HTML later allowed me to do things I couldn't have done otherwise, such as adding webrings and forms and statistics tracking programs to my site.

The entire process of creating this website, from hopeless confusion to putting the site online, took about three months of very part-time work--perhaps 50 to 60 hours in all. Maintaining it--checking links, adding new content, and general tinkering--takes 1-2 hours a month, with a more intensive session every now and then to update pages like this one.

Website Myths

A website is an important and useful tool, but there are some things it will not do for you.

3-D Myth #1: a website will bring you to the attention of agents and editors. Unpublished and self-published writers often believe that publishing professionals surf the Internet in search of new talent. But publishing professionals are overwhelmed with unsolicited submissions, and have neither reason nor desire to go online to look for more. A website will not help you get discovered.

3-D Myth #2: agents and editors won't mind being referred to a writer's website. Many new writers, or nontraditionally published writers seeking to transition into the traditional publishing market, assume a website can serve as an alternative to paper submissions. Instead of snail- or e-mailing chapters/synopses to agents and editors, they can simply be directed to a website.

This is a mistake. Busy agents and editors are not going to bother to look for your work online. Sure, it's minimal effort to type in a URL--but if you're an agent with 100 submissions on your desk, 99 of which have chapters attached, are you really going to bother with the one that tells you to go to the Internet? In fact, many agents' guidelines specifically state that the agent will not visit a website.

3-D Myth #3: a website will help you sell a lot of books. This is a myth often sold to writers by shady print-on-demand-based publishers, whose nonstandard business practices keep their books out of bricks-and-mortar bookstores, and which therefore have a stake in persuading authors that "alternate" sales channels are just as effective.

If your book is not available through the normal channels of the book trade (i.e., bookstores), and if you mount an intense publicity campaign (make no mistake, this takes time and money to carry off effectively, and involves much more than just a few local signings and newspaper interviews), you may realize a good number of sales through your website--primarily because it's one of very few places where your book is available.

But a website doesn't automatically sell books--especially since if you don't properly publicize it, and are not well known enough that readers will search for you, no one will know it exists. Too, if a book is available offline, that's where readers will prefer to purchase it. Only about 10% of bookbuying is actually done on the Web.

I get a good bit of traffic at this website, but I've sold only a handful of books from the Amazon.com links I provide. The majority of my sales come from traditional channels: independent and chain bookstores.
Design

Here's some very basic advice on website design. I am not a technical maven, and don't pretend to be one; this is mostly commonsense stuff.

For some great demonstrations of design don'ts, check out the examples at Building Really Annoying Websites, created by author Michael Miller, who has written a book on the subject (this is also a good example of an author's website). It's geared to designers who actually know how to write code, but many of the annoying effects shown here are available as free scripts on the Internet, or as utilities from free webspace providers, so it's worth a look.

3-D Content is key. Whether people come to your website by intent or by accident, what will keep them there is interesting content.

An author's website should include, at a minimum, a bio, a full list of publications (with brief synopsis, cover art scans if applicable, and reviews if there are any), information on appearances or events, and writing samples. This last is important: one of the reasons people come to an author's website is to read his/her writing.

What sort of samples? If you're a book author, a chapter or two of each of your published book-length works. Check first, though, to be sure your publishing contract allows this: some book publishers restrict what or how much you can place online. If you've published any articles or stories or poems or reviews that are no longer in distribution, you can also consider posting these; but again, check your contracts--the publisher may hold electronic rights, or have exclusive publication rights for a set period of time.

On this website, I post Chapter 1 of each of my published adult works, and shorter excerpts from my published young adult novels (I don't have these on disk, and have never found the time to type in entire chapters). I also post my science fiction/fantasy book reviews (but only after they've appeared in the magazines for which I write them) and those of my published articles whose rights have returned to me (and which I'm not considering re-selling).

I also post Chapter 1 of my novel-in-progress. In general, you should avoid posting previously unpublished work, unless you've written it especially for your website or it's something you're sure you don't want to sell. If you publicly display an unpublished piece in its entirety, many editors will consider you to have used your first rights, which may make it much more difficult to place. An excerpt from a long work like a novel or novella is probably OK, however (though if it's something you've already sold, be sure your publisher doesn't mind).

In addition to this basic content, try to come up with a hook--something extra that will distinguish your site from others, or will make your site useful as well as self-promotional. Some authors offer advice on writing technique or getting published; some include essays on various aspects of the writing life; some keep online journals; some provide in-depth info about one or more non-writing-related interests; some maintain big collections of links. I provide this "building a website" resource, which reflects my own experience and hopefully will be helpful to other writers.

Whatever you choose, it should be interesting, well-presented, and focused. Stay away from mishmashes of miscellaneous information, rhapsodies about your cat, scans of pictures drawn by your kids, slow-loading photos of you on your last vacation, and so on. You want your website to express your interests and personality, but you also want it to convey a professional impression.

3-D Design your site to the lowest common denominator. I don't mean make it boring or stupid. I mean that you want the widest possible variety of users to be able to view your site in comfort.

Web design has increased enormously in complexity since I put this site online in early 1998. There are any number of amazing things you can do now that you couldn't then; a purely HTML-based site, like this one, is even a little archaic.

But web-users don't necessarily keep pace with such changes. There are plenty of people who still use older browsers and low-speed modems and slower computers, and these people simply can't accomodate many of the new design gimmicks. If you want your website to reach the largest possible audience, you need to design for the least web-savvy, rather than for the most. (This makes it easier for you too, since you don't have to master the high-tech stuff.)

3-D Go easy on the extras. See above. Also, aside from their annoyance factor, things like Java applets, midi (sound) files, and plugins (Flash, Shockwave, etc.) frequently cause even up-to-date browsers to crash. And though tasteful graphics can enhance a website, too many of them can mean looooooong loading times.

Be careful also of the following: animated graphics, which will seriously increase your loading time; banner ads, which also lengthen loading time and are often hideously ugly; advertising buttons and pay-per-click services, which will make your site look like a commercial (and why do you want to encourage your visitors to leave your site?), and fancy cursor/text/background effects, which will make your visitors want to kill you. This is an aesthetic issue as well, since it detracts from a unified design impression, and can make your site seem amateurish and tacky.

Remember, more is not necessarily better.

3-D Plan for visitors who can't or don't want to see graphics. Plenty of people surf the Web with their browsers' graphics feature turned off; there are even those who still use Lynx, a dawn-of-the-Web non-graphical browser.

Always use the ALT tag to provide a title for your images, so these visitors will know what graphics are there and what their purpose is. This is especially important if you use graphics as links, or have graphic headings for your pages. And if you use a background graphic, specify a background color that's close to it, so your page will retain its color scheme even graphics-free.

3-D Strive for shorter, separate pages. Don't cram everything together on a single, long page. Use separate pages for separate content. This not only gives your site a greater feeling of organization, but takes account of the short attention span of Web users (see the next page for an article on this).

3-D Strive for a uniform look.Obviously your subject and layout will be different on each page, but your website should possess a unified aesthetic. Websites where every page looks different can produce a disjointed and confusing impression. Choose a color scheme, background, font style, and heading style, and stick to it throughout your site. Another way to produce a feeling of unity is to use the same graphic elements throughout.

3-D Give careful thought to navigation. If you do have a long page on your site (like this one and the one that follows), try to include periodic "Top of Page" links (and always include one at the bottom of the page). A page with a number of separate headings is improved by the inclusion of anchors, so that people can jump down to a specific topic.

Most important: make it possible for a visitor to go anywhere on your site at any time by including your table of contents links on each of your main pages. And every page of your site, no matter how insignificant, should include a link to the index (main) page. If you use META tags properly (see below), search engines may not deliver visitors to your index page. A lack of navigation options could make it impossible for the visitor who wants to know more to access the rest of your site.

3-D Be careful with color combinations.Science fiction and fantasy websites in particular often seem to be color challenged. Electric pink print on a lime green background may seem like a cool idea, but it's incredibly hard on the eyes. Likewise heads in five different colors and text in a sixth. Likewise text or link colors that don't contrast adequately with the background.

3-D Be careful with backgrounds. Choose a color that's easy on the eyes. It doesn't have to be pale, but it should be something that doesn't make you squint.

If you use background graphics, bear in mind that while swirly psychedelics or complicated lace designs look very cool on their own, they can make text extremely difficult to read. Additionally, very busy or elaborate backgrounds look unprofessional. (Note that while I do use a background graphic for most of the main pages on this site, I use a plain gray background for reviews and excerpts, where it's just text.)
3-D Be careful with size. Huge print that takes up lots of screenspace (and if it's big on a 17-inch high-resolution monitor, it will be really enormous on a 12-inch low-resolution monitor) is very annoying, as is teeny tiny print that looks like bird tracks.

3-D Remember that lots of people still use small-screen, low-resolution monitors. Browsers will generally adjust text and tables to fit on smaller, low-resolution screens. However, this can substantially change the look of your pages, especially if image placement is important. Be sure to test your site in small-screen format (there's a resource for doing this on the next page).

3-D Use META tags. META tags (in the <HEAD> portion of your HTML document, which is not shown in a browser) enable you to feed information about your site to the search engine web spiders that are constantly crawling around the Internet indexing things. META tags allow you to provide a description of your site's content, plus a list of key words that make it more likely that your site will appear when someone does a web search.

Of course, nothing is ever simple: many search engines use additional factors, such as how many times various keywords appear, to index websites. There's more information about this on the next page.

3-D Check your links. Before you upload your site, test all your links, internal and external, to be sure they work--and make it a point to periodically re-test them after you've put your site online. Visitors should never get the dreaded Page Not Found message.

3-D Test your browser-readiness. Different browsers can express colors, tables, and font faces differently. Sometimes the difference is subtle; sometimes it can be striking. Make sure you check your site with a variety of browsers before you upload it.

3-D Proofread! Typos, misspellings, and misplaced apostrophes will make you look unprofessional. You're a writer, after all! You're supposed to know these things.

3-D Validate! One browser may ignore a mistake in your HTML, but another may not. The only way to be certain your site will display the way you want it to is to be sure your code is as correct as you can make it. The best way to guarantee that is to use one of the many HTML validation tools. I promise it will turn up mistakes you didn't know were there.

After it's Built

Creating the website is only the beginning. It must be kept current, so it doesn't start to look neglected. Links must be regularly tested to be sure they haven't gone bad. And content should be frequently changed and updated, to create interest and give people a reason to come back (a good way to advertise this is to include a "What's New" page, where you discuss and provide links to recent additions).

Most important: a website must be publicized.

This is an area where writers often fail. I think many writers have a certain amount of resistance to thinking of their websites as commercial products. But as much as a website may be a way for you to express yourself, or reach out to readers and other writers, it's first and foremost an advertising tool. And advertising isn't effective if no one sees it.

I also think that many people fall prey to one of the more pervasive Internet misconceptions: if you put it online, they will come. After all, there are millions of Internet users, with more coming online every day--and every one of these folks is potentially part of your audience, right?

Not necessarily. This logic doesn't take into account the vastness of the Internet. Putting up a website is like placing a book in a gigantic library, where millions of other books are arranged in no particular order, and the only way to make sense of the chaos is to use one of a variety of different indexing systems, each of which has its own method of organization. Under those circumstances, what are the odds that anyone is ever going to find you--unless you make an effort to get yourself included in as many of these indexes as possible?

Publicizing a website is time-consuming, but it's not difficult, and there are a ton of free resources on the Web to help you. Please continue on to the next page for these and much more.


Comments? Questions? E-mail me.


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