Your website

[David Steele]

I've heard it said that websites are like arseholes (Everyone has one but nobody wants to know about yours).

There's plenty of conflicting advice about what sort of web presence we "should" have as writers. One thing that is apparent is that most of us have some sort of site.

Why? What does it do for you? How much do you believe it's helping you? Is it worth the time you put into it?

Is your motivation to help you sell? To build up a 'following', or just because you have an overblown sense of your own significance?

Apparently, prospective agents always Google potential clients. Do you think your web presence helps or hinders you? Some people say a badly maintained or rarely updated site is worse than no site at all. What do you think?

Did you build it yourself? Why did you choose that platform?

 

[Marc Joan]

May I also pose an additional question: for those who, like myself, do not have a website, why don't you have one? In my case, it is because I don't feel ready to put a website out there without first getting a chunk of published stories under my belt. Also, I don't have the time. Also, I don't know how to go about it. But what is the right time to put a website together? Before you get anything published [in which case, what's the point?]; or after you start getting things published [in which case are you too late?]

This is all part of the larger issue of marketing strategy, which is something I am struggling with, hence my request for one of the Houses to be dedicated to this kind of question.

 

[Emurelda]

I have a site - wordpress - it's mainly for my amusement. A bloomsbury employee mentioned that the first 1 million words you write are pretty much crap and so I decided to get those out of the way by blogging stories and my journey into publishing...not quite there on either count

 

[Jennifer Stone]

I've used WIX for my website, it's easy to use and, in my opinion, gives a good end result without needing much technical know-how. I attach a link to it in my cover letter, primarily so potential companies can see me and my work. I don't think it shows up on a Google search atm, so I have a Facebook page so I can share bits and bobs related and so I can find and 'friend' publishers and agents. All I ask on my FB is that people share the link to my site, even if it's not what they're in to. Who knows.... a friend of a friend might know someone who might want to sign me up! I live for such a miracle.

 

[Marc Joan]

By the way the anatomical simile in the OP breaks down insofar as, with websites at least, you are aiming for maximum exposure...let's not explore this any further.....

 

[Brian Clegg]

As David said, the starting point has to be 'What's it for?' and go from there. When I started writing popular science books, it seemed pointless to start a Brian Clegg website, so instead I started a Popular Science book review site, www.popularscience.co.uk which now gets pretty steadily around 1,000 unique visitors a day (admittedly it took several years to build up to that).

Now that I am reasonably well established, it is also worth having my own site as somewhere for people to go to find out more, so it acts as a sort of switching house, pointing people to my books, blog, talks, email address etc.

The one thing I regret is that when I first thought of it I didn't snaffle my name.com or .co.uk, so I've had to go for www.brianclegg.net - so if you haven't already, and there's one still available, I strongly recommend picking up a good website name, even if you then park it for a few years...

 

[James Marinero]

As David said, the starting point has to be 'What's it for?' and go from there. When I started writing popular science books, it seemed pointless to start a Brian Clegg website, so instead I started a Popular Science book review site, www.popularscience.co.uk which now gets pretty steadily around 1,000 unique visitors a day (admittedly it took several years to build up to that).

Now that I am reasonably well established, it is also worth having my own site as somewhere for people to go to find out more, so it acts as a sort of switching house, pointing people to my books, blog, talks, email address etc.

The one thing I regret is that when I first thought of it I didn't snaffle my name.com or .co.uk, so I've had to go for www.brianclegg.net - so if you haven't already, and there's one still available, I strongly recommend picking up a good website name, even if you then park it for a few years...

Brian's advice about name is important. I set out to build a brand and chose a unique brand name. IMHO, you shouldn't get hung up on an exact match but being unique is important if Google is important to your marketing. Many ways to approach being unique - e.g. DavidSteeleNovels.xyz

.com is a good top level domain (tld), but .net is ok too - these days the tld is less important and there are many new ones available such as .uk .eu

The websites (I have one for me, plus a blog and for each of my books) are an integral part of my marketing. I started with XsitePro (now obsolete, but still works for me although looking dated) and Blogger, now I also use Wordpress. I started writing articles at the same time I started writing fiction and post the articles in my blog and on other sites. I saw it as a long haul - and it surely is - but it came about as part of a lifestyle choice I made.

If you want to do it yourself then applications such as wix and blogger are easy to use. Wordpress is a little more demanding but much powerful in my opinion.

 

[David Steele]

Great feedback on this question, everyone. I really appreciate the advice- especially about domain names, which I hadn't considered. I've been steeluloid for years on twitter / flickr etc, because it's a unique character string that always makes me searchable on Google. How relevant this will be to a reader of my novel is debatable though, so I need to address that question.

I've damaged something on my Style Sheets on Joomla, so my map page isn't displaying properly. I'm taking that as a cue to redesign and I'm considering Muse (I subscribe to Adobe and it's simple to use)

Yet again I'm back to spending my evenings on Youtube watching badly made tutorials and wishing I had more time to write!

 

[Karen Gray]

I'm a Wix user too As is @Alistair Roberts

 

[Meerkat]

Back in the day, I designed and coded my own websites and so on. I enjoyed it then, but don't find it terribly interesting now. I use WordPress these days.

Before my current website, the last domain I owned was in college, about four years ago. I didn't even want to get a new website for a while -- a writer I was editing kept pushing me to get one because he said it was the only way to gain exposure. I honestly don't think my website does much for me, but there you go.

 

[AliG]

I have a site - wordpress - it's mainly for my amusement. A bloomsbury employee mentioned that the first 1 million words you write are pretty much crap and so I decided to get those out of the way by blogging stories and my journey into publishing...not quite there on either count

Just did a rough count- up to about 375,000 words so far, so long trek ahead. Big bleh to picture books which only added about 400 between the 2 of them. Sigh.

 

[Kelly Michelle Baker]

Ipage. I'm okay with it. It's pretty user friendly, which I need (I'm computer stupid). My biggest complaint is you can only have 5 pages. I have to cram a lot under each link, and it isn't as clean as I'd like:

 

[Vivaldo]

I'd like to start my own blog and think I may do so soon, probably with wordpress or blogger. I am interested in this question of why people start their own websites though. I mean - I totally see why a published or self-published author would start a website for promotion purposes. But if you're not published (like me!) I'm not entirely why you would start one. Isn't there the danger that you would keep publishing posts about how you got rejected (again!) and how you nearly made it but not quite ... until anyone that actually read your website just figured you were never going to make it and your website was for rejected writers?

Maybe I'm just being overly negative...

 

[AliG]

Blogging is fun and can focus your mind. I use it to capture bits of life that I find funny, so is a bit like a diary for me. I only capture negative to laugh at it, thus it is not just a stream of failed again. I have been blogging for about 3 years and get moderate numbers checking it out. Very little book stuff on there; one post only, but it's a window to the world. Love wordpress- dead easy. http://alisongardiner1.com/
This author did a great run up to one of her books, The Lantern. She posted a series of beautiful photos pertaining to the area her book was set in. Was really well done and although not direct advertising probably drew a number of people to her and her book. I used to check it out periodically just because the images appealed to me. Photos cheer a blog up no end; I should use more on mine. Note to self...
http://www.deborah-lawrenson.blogspot.co.uk/

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I have a Tarot website, a FB tarot chat page and a tarot blog on wordpress. I have this stuff joined up. I have a scruffy sister blog with bits of writing in it, but might reconfigure this, so it's an extra page on my Tarot blog. This may be nothing to do directly with the finished novel or the new one under way, I write the blog for its own sake. But, writers write. Communicators communicate.

 

[Richard Sutton]

Once I started trying to get serious about marketing my books, I realized that many sites I "joined" wanted me to post articles or set up a blog on their site. Okay. I get it, but I don;t have enough time to post and repost everything on each of them, so I set my own site up with an RSS feed, which also posts my articles to several different reader sites at once.

 

[Carol Rose]

Blogger makes it easy and has everything I need to make my sites look professional and function well, which is why I use it. Wordpress does, too, but I find it a bit trickier to use. I bought a domain name for the Tara Rose site so "blogger" isn't in the address, but haven't done so (yet) for Ravenna. In my world, I don't think my readers give a care one way or the other, to be honest. I love being able to update the sites on my own and add what I want without waiting around for someone else to do it, or struggling to learn new software. I even figured out RSS feeds, which may seem like child's play to most, but was a VERY BIG DEAL for me.