IWSG: Writer Websites

Here we are at February and another post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Learn more about them at their website or Facebook page. 

Our hosts this month are Janet Alcorn, SE White, Victoria Marie Lees, and Cathrina Constantine.

Here's our question for the month: What turns you off when visiting an author's website/blog? Lack of information? A drone of negativity? Little mention of author's books? Constant mention of books?

My least favorite thing about visiting website isn't listed above or unique to author websites. It's a popup that appears as soon as I enter the website. I'm not going to sign up for a newsletter until I've had a chance to view the website and decide if I'm interested, so I'll always remove the popup. To be honest, I don't pay much attention to the newsletters I'm subscribed to. (I'm not good about sending out newsletters anyway; even when I do, they generate more unsubscribes than sales.) As a reader, I mainly want to know when the author's next book is coming out so I can preorder it if I'm interested.

Let's turn the question around: what motivates you to look at author websites in the first place? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

 

 

 

Maintaining Author Websites

Every time I publish a new work, I try to update my website. I maintain it myself. (I'm switching back and forth between this blog and my website as I write this post.) I'll feature my latest work with the cover, blurb, and buy link on the landing page and update any notes I've shared about work in progress. I'll also add the book or story to the appropriate page. If any of my links are broken, I fix them. Sometimes I also change the background or theme to freshen my website's appearance.

Authors, how often do you update your website, and what do you do to it? Readers, what are you looking for when you visit an author's website? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Websites and Marketing

Thanks to the long weekend, I was finally able to update my website, which is here. I haven't changed the theme or basic layout, but I did update the front page with the most current news, reorganize a few pages, and update buy links for my works. I might play with the theme or background during the next update.

One thing I noticed as I updated buy links is that some of my short stories are only on Amazon or one other retailer. As I discussed previously on my blog, I decided to switch my distributor from Smashwords to Draft2Digital. In fact, I just had my Smashwords account closed last week. Now I have to decide if I should enroll some of my short stories in Kindle Unlimited (KU) or distribute them widely. Although KU doesn't pay as well for short stories as it used to, it could still introduce new readers to my work, and I've always done better on Amazon than on Kobo, Apple, or any other e-book site. On the other hand, exclusivity can backfire. It's also easier to enroll in KU than pull stories down from other sites. I know at least one regular reader of this blog who prefers to buy from Apple; does anyone else here buy ebooks from other places than Amazon?

Lindsay Buroker, an indie author and blogger, once recommended puttting up samples of your stories on your website for readers to download. I tried it for a while with Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes, but I'm not sure it made a difference. Would you prefer to download a sample from an unknown website or from a trusted one? I get all my e-book samples from Amazon, as I learn about new books from all the e-mail newsletters I subscribe to. They link directly to Amazon, and once I finish a sample, it's easy to buy the entire book if I choose to. So it might be better to just direct customers to the appropiate store.

There's still so much I have to learn about maintaining my website and marketing with it. Someday it might be worth selling directly through my own website, but I don't want to deal with collecting taxes. If I ever do sell directly, it'll probably be in conjunction with something like Gumroad.

How often do you visit author websites? What do you expect them to have?

Website or Blog?

I was going to upload my panel notes from WisCon 34 to my website last night, but it's been so long since I've done anything to my website that I've forgotten how to embed internal page links. I'll have to try it again tonight. But that made me wonder this morning as I was driving to work what's more effective for authors: websites or blogs. To me, websites are places I go to for static information, such as if I want to check the author's list of works or learn more about him/her. Blogs are easier to update and are more interactive. I personally visit more blogs on a daily basis than I do author websites, which I only check out if I have a specific question. And while I'm not planning to ditch my website, I do like that Blogger now allows me to put up separate pages on my blog, which I use for my bio and list of sales. (At some point, I intend to move my links from the sidebar onto their own page.) I'm even thinking of reviving my LiveJournal blog, since it seems that a fair amount of people in the SF community use that instead of Blogger. Maybe if I can sync up my blogs I can actually maintain two at once. So I'd like to hear your opinions: are you more interested in an author's website or blog? Does it make a difference to you if the author is published or not? (I go to more published authors' websites but read more unpublished writers' blogs.) Do you maintain a website, blog, or both?

Updates to Website

I finally updated my website. I didn't add a lot of material, but I updated my biography and the information about Firestorm of Dragons. It took me a while to get this done. First I had to do the edits in FrontPage, but when I tried to save the files on my computer, I ran into problems with the FrontPage extensions. Although I couldn't figure out how to fix this, some Googling helped me realize that I could edit the webpages another way. I haven't uploaded my latest notes from WisCon yet; that'll come later. Right now I'm too tired.

Alex had a rough night, waking up around 3:30 and not going back to sleep until about 7:00. He literally nodded off in his highchair after breakfast. Luckily I was working from home today, and I was able to get my project started while I waited for him to wake up. Then I brought him to daycare while I finished the job (and, I have to admit, rested/relaxed while I was waiting between steps). He was very upset at daycare, refusing to play outside and tugging his ears, so I brought him to the urgent care clinic after picking him up. For once, he doesn't have an ear infection; he apparently is just having some trouble teething (molars are coming in). I hope he sleeps better tonight; all three of us need sleep desperately!