Episode 68: 5 Must Haves for a Great Author Website
K
Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of month you’d like to be welcome to the Writers Triangle, a podcast about publishing and all things books. And today we’re going to be talking about author pages and author websites. And you can find all of the author pages that I talked about as cinnabar moth.com. If you go to that website, and then click authors, there is a list of all of the authors photographs, and you can click on that photograph, and it will link to their author, author landing page, author page. And then I’m going to be putting links down in the description for all of the author websites that we discussed, I’m only going to be linking and naming websites that I’m talking positively about the websites, the author websites that we don’t care for. I’m going to be talking in general about things I don’t like on authors websites, but I don’t want to harsh anyone’s value or hurt anyone’s feelings. So I’m not going to name any authors. I have a website we don’t like, I’m only going to give three examples of author’s website and three links, because they each have something very specific that I think is really important. And I don’t want to have the descriptions be too cluttered or have this conversation be too cluttered, if that makes sense. So the first thing I want to talk about is why we do in author’s landing page on cinnabar moth. The reason that we have an author’s landing page is because we know that not every author can afford to have a website. And when I think about the cost of things I don’t think about just like what is the monetary cost, I also think about the time and attention past, a lot of our actors have full time jobs, almost all of our actors have full time jobs, they do something other than writing. And if you’re doing something other than writing, it can be really difficult to keep a website up and running. And I think a lot of people may not know the things that it takes to have a searchable website and all of the things and research that has to go into search engine optimization. So having a website, if you haven’t written a novel, can be a little bit challenging, and can be a little bit time consuming. So we offer all of our flash fiction authors and all of our short story authors, all of our award winners, and all of our novel authors space on our website. And we do that on our author landing page. And we also really like to promote authors and have authors we as successful as they can be, even beyond what they’re doing with us, because we have the mindset that a rising tide raises all boats, right. So if you have an author that you’re working with, who becomes really popular and really well known, then they’re going to look at the stuff that you’re doing with them too. And we encourage everybody who runs a press to promote your authors as well as their writing. Because as the authors go out and speak, we’ve experienced our authors, when they have speaking engagements, they’re naturally promoting their writing. And they’re naturally promoting the things that they’re doing with you as well as the other things that they have going on. And I don’t feel the need to keep the focus just that limited on what they’re doing with us that that’s not my energy. And I would just encourage other press owners to have the same kind of vibe or people that are looking at that. The other reason that we offer a landing page for authors is because agents will not sign people who don’t have a website, it’s really rare that an agent signs an author that doesn’t have a website or a landing page or an author page somewhere. Because agents want to know that you have an audience and want to know that you’re going to be able to promote the book, if they get you a deal. Because in the package that that agents send in the conversation, sometimes part of the conversation is what is the media for this? How are we going to promote this and what is the author going to do to promote their book, we don’t have the requirement that authors promote their books because we feel completely capable. We have a marketing team that is doing that. But sometimes the Big Five, don’t invest that in every book. So I think that’s a bummer. And I wish that wasn’t the case.
K
So you do as an author kind of have to have a mindset of, okay, I’m going to promote myself and this is what I’m going to do. And if you’re not you need to find a press that is going to give you an author’s landing page so that you have some sort of way for lit magazines, agents, even people, the booking agents for TV interviews. Everyone who has can talk to an author and promote an author will want a landing page or an author’s website to have some basic biographical background. And I’m going to be focusing on one of our authors. And thank you, CW for allowing me to showcase your work and you and and talk about you. So when it’s our authors, I do reach out and say, Hey, is it cool if I talk about you, because I want to make sure that they’re feeling positive about the experience. If you go to cinnabar moth.com, and you click on CW Allen’s landing page, so happens to be our first author listed on our, on our website, if on our authors page, you’ll see there’s like a really great bio with some personal information, their books, and interviews, they’ve done article articles, they’ve written a link to their website, a link to their press kit. And that’s a really, really well rounded, well thought out, fully realized author landing page. Not every author has that fully realized of a landing page and has that much detail. CW is a very experienced, seasoned author. So CW has the interviews to post, CW has the press kit to post and all of those things. Not every author has that. And so looking at what does an author who doesn’t have all of that do and I think a really great example of that is my Arthur’s landing page. So I wrote a short story. And it was put in our winter anthology. And because I did that I need to have an author bio, my author bio is super plain, it is just me and just is just like a little blurb about me and a link to my personal Twitter and a photograph. And that’s it. Forgive me, I have to, as usual be clearing my throat throughout the podcast. I wish that my throat tickles would go away. Anyhow, back to what I was saying. And it to me, I think of it as it really just the bare minimum. And I think that that’s a good example of, of what you what you can choose to include or not to include, I think that that’s a good spectrum, I sort of looked at CW as the ideal and look to me as like, Okay, if you don’t have a lot of writing, and you’re just getting started, this is a great way to just get your name out there and just have a little bit about you so that if people want to interview they can and you have a link that you can put in something that I find really interesting is that when we’re putting together any of our promotion or pitches, there is always aligned for author website, even for something as as minimal as book sirens. I don’t feel like book sirens is heavy lifting, when it comes to marketing, but even book sirens wants a link to an author’s website. And if you if you don’t have a landing page and author page through a press, and you haven’t written a novel, I think a really great way. And I love the author of Bonnie reads and writes. So bony reads and writes is also you can also find them on our, our author website. And they have their theirs is very similar to mine, except they have the addition of a blog. And I think Bonnie DeMoss is a great example of what to do if you’re a fledgling writer. And you’re just starting to get your name out there. And you’re just starting to write. Because Bonnie has a lot of really great stuff on their website, Bonnie reads and writes. And I’ll have a link of that down in the description. It’s a really fun website really easy to navigate, and they do book reviews, and they have some of their own writing. And I think it’s just a really fun blog. And I think it’s a great blog to check out because I think blogging, or writing reviews is something really great to do if you know that you’re going to be launching yourself as an author. And if you do writing reviews, I think for me, I would say sign up for something like book sirens and sign up for good reads. And post all of your reviews on your website and on Goodreads. And I would say also repost it to Amazon and sign up for library things because you can get books at a discounted rate. And BookBub is another great one and Net Galley as well. Be aware that when you check out books on all of these review places that you really have to look at the time link that they give to read it so that your rating stays good. Another thing to do is look at the books that you’ve already read throughout your lifetime. And just write up a bunch of reviews for those. And that’s how our did I like this best seller on cinnabar moth literary collections got started, I was the first one to write on it. And I was like, Hey, I’ve read a best seller. And I just look back through what I’ve read throughout my lifetime, and pick something that was a best seller, and wrote it and I do the same things for authentically nd I didn’t ever write for the poetry. We’ve been really fortunate fortunate to have Joe right for that for us the entire time. But even having that blog, it gives you a gives you some privacy and also gives you some time to take like a running started it.
K
Because if you’ve read 12 books on your lifetime, which most authors have, right, because we all love writing and reading are passionate about that, I say sit down and write 12 of those and start with the monthly review. Because I feel like over the course of about two to three months and author can find time to write 12 reviews. And then just do monthly and write 12 blog posts. And then you’ve got a bi weekly post on your website that you can do. You know, you can do your blog and your reviews alternating in between the two. And if you’re looking for blog topics, I say just Google writing blogs and write the topics that they have. And I would say another great tip would be to check out goddess fish. Look at any of the tours that they have clicked on what the bloggers are doing. And right to those blog titles. I think goddess fish is a great lead for for blog titles, and blog topics rather. Because those are basically authors who are being asked because they’re doing a tour. So it’s you’re not taking away a bloggers original idea, you’re taking something that they send to people that they work with, just to help give some help with the creativity and you can look at things that are written, you can post recipes, there’s like just a variety of things that you can post, if you’re gonna do like a bony reason write style blog, I do think Bonnie’s blog is great to look at, if you’re going to take anything that’s stylized, or anything that’s similar to what Bonnie does be nice reach out and say, Hey, I really like what you’re doing. You know, it’s it’s just kind of nice to have had that personal contact. And I think with blogs, you do kind of have to realize that you’re entering a market that already exists, and you’re entering a space that other authors are already occupying, which is why I prefer just doing a straight author’s website, rather than doing a blog. If you have even one book. If you have one book, and it hasn’t been published yet, I think looking at at CW Allen’s website, and you can find that it’ll be down in the description and C and CW Allen books.com. And I’ll have a link in the description. If you have a book that hasn’t been out yet. I think a great example of how to do it is look at what CW is doing for tales of the Forgotten Bounders which is our summer 2023 release. And it it lets you know okay, how do I handle it? And what do I do? If I haven’t published yet, but I have a book and even if you’re querying, I think that format works. And looking at the way CW has their website laid out, I just think it’s beautiful. I love the color scheme. I love the way the books are presented. I love that it’s not an endless scroll. I love that it has the social media links down at the bottom and really nice graphics. And I think it’s just a really well done. website. There’s like every link that I click every page that I go to, I just think it’s completely gorgeous. And it can give you some ideas about what you want to do because in addition to CW novel writing, CW also writes short stories. And I really love that when you click on the bookshelf link, there’s, there’s several links up at the top and I’m going to be talking about a few of them. The bookshelf link gives all of the books all of the writing that has have been published, and things that that are coming up. And I think looking at the In Progress space that CW has gives a great example of how you can handle that as an author. I also think having something to include on your website reviews are a great thing to include. Awards are a great thing to include any talks that you’re giving any talks that you’d want to go to. All of those sorts of things give you out links, which you need for your website to be cataloged and Google the more outlinks you have, so linking to outlinks, looking to where you can get reviews, and all of that and putting that on and think about talking and the talks that you want to give and the presentations and such. And I think CW is really CW website was really a masterclass and what an author’s website should, website should look like. Because there’s even a press kit, which I think is absolutely beautifully done. And I say definitely check out what CW is done in in that because it really is very professional, very polished. And a lot of hard work has gone into it. And it’s resulted in CW being very successful as an author to get those speaking engagements and such.
K
I think another great example is Brooke’s website, and you can find Brooke’s author page with us. And I’m gonna put Brooke’s website down in the description as well. And they have a different layout than CW does. But I think that they also have a really great header, they have a lot of different things they have like you can meet the characters, they have a lot of interactive material, and a blog and things that draw readers and will drive readers to their website. And I love the presentation, they have more of more scroll, I think, and a very different, very different layout, very different creative take on it. And they have their bio, their contact and all of that. And it’s it’s a different fill and a different vibe than CW CW is. But I do think it’s also really professional and really polished. And just a really gorgeous, gorgeous website. And I enjoy looking at the website, I enjoy interacting with the website. And as the head of marketing, I do have the marketing team head go check out our authors websites, because part of what the marketing team does is they they look at our social media, and they decide what our social media posts do. And we do do author spotlights and authors on our social media. And authors that have a fully realized website are more likely to be featured in a spotlight for us, because we don’t just do spotlights for our novel authors. And we’re very fortunate to have some short stories by Brooke and when we do Brooks author spotlights coming up later in the year, we’re going to include links to the website and that is promoting Brooks novels, right? So looking at how can you be promoted? How can you create a positive feeling? How can you engage with your readers? How can you engage with your audience? How can you draw an audience to you? How can you get those speaking engagements? How can you get those book reviews? How can you get those interviews, it comes down to either have a really either having a really great afterwards landing page, or having a really great website. There are a lot of different hosting companies out there. And having a website cost anywhere between $4 a month to $20 a month to hundreds of dollars a month. If you’re doing you know, a supercharged website where you have a lot of interactive stuff, and you have videos and all of that and different capabilities. Finding the right host for your website is it starts with thinking about what do you want to include and how interactive Do you want it to be. And I feel like wiki and webs. Wiki and Wix and Bluehost are all really great entry level where you don’t need to know how to program and you don’t need to write a lot of code to have a really great website. And you don’t have to have powered by on it. So the price with the price variation on websites really deals with how professional Do you want it to be? How customized Do you want it to be? And what do you want to have on it? Do you want to have video capacity? Do you want to have hyperlinked capacity because some websites make sure you can do it for links. Believe it or not even in this day and age there are Some web hosting packages and web hosting templates that do not allow clicking through hyperlinks. And also think about whether or not you want the endless scroll. I do not like the endless scroll on a website’s landing page. I know, to me having some internal pages that do an in an endless scroll makes sense. If you have a long list of things, or a long list for people to shop for links, our author page is an endless scroll. And not it ends when we run out of authors right when you can see every author that we’ve published. So that kind of has a semi endless scroll thing I don’t like when it’s purely in the scroll, and you can never hit the bottom of the page. That is not a deal breaker for me. However, if an author has that, I’m just like, if I don’t like it, but okay, I’ll hold my nose and look at it that is specific to me. And I know that it’s specific to me, I know enough people that have it and not enough F enough actors that have it. And I really liked their websites. Other than that thing. The one thing that was a deal breaker for me with the website is when it just was not professional, when the information included, was a little bit too casual. And what would make it too casual casual is when your your author website is too conversational, where you’re having a conversation with the author. That for me was a deal breaker. Another thing for me that’s a deal breaker is if an author holds and y’all know this, I say it almost every time I’m on the mic. If their politics are different than my politics, I tend not to publish them, because I want to amplify underrepresented voices. And I also want to publish like minded authors, specifically when it comes to disability, inclusion, and representation and being an ally to the LGBTQ i plus community, those are all really important to me because of my identity. So I do look at do their politics match mine, for better or worse. And if it’s something that is worse, I’d say go politically neutral on the page and don’t have any of your views on there. Rather than posting what it is also, the names of short stories. When you’re naming stories. I’ll give an example of a hot button thing that we did review my answer abortion, if you’re going to have the name abortion and something you’ve written, it’s going to be challenging for most people to engage on that that’s a hot button thing. And does that need to be the title? If it does, then be aware that you’re going to limit your your audience in some way. And there have been authors who have had short stories on their their landing pages that when I was thinking about whether or not to publish them, I was talking to them about hey, this is this is only published on your website? Do you think that we can change the title a little bit? And do you think that you can tweak the language a little bit because sometimes what authors write, the way that they write it doesn’t land the way they intended it. And if you have a short story on your website, or a view on your website that has language that is challenging, and lands a particular way, it might land heavy on me specifically, I will reach out to you and say hey, is this the intention? Because if it’s the intention, then we can talk about whether or not that intention aligns with what I think is an intention I want to align myself with. And if it’s not, then we can talk about tweaking it, but I’m willing to have a conversation. What I think authors are unaware of is that agents are not. So if you have writing on your website, and the titles are provocative, and the writing is provocative, if your novel is not that provocative, or if your future writing is not going to be provocative, or transgressive, or whatever category you’re putting your writing and think about is that the best representation of who you are as a writer. And the other issue is are you going to write middle grade, we publish a lot of middle grade and why a and our social media is not safe for minors. It’s not social media that I would feel comfortable with my nine year old if I were the parent of a nine year old, I wouldn’t want them following cinnabar moth publishing on Twitter. I just wouldn’t we talk about politics we talk about mature content and we talk about things that I think that parents should be the first one, having those conversations. We do have reviewers who follow us that are that are younger, but they’re preteen. Or in the teen era, I don’t. We don’t share any sort of sexual content. That’s not it. But the political content, I think, for parents, you need to be monitoring your children’s social media. But as an author, you need to think about, are you safe. And I’m, I’m not picking on CW, I have CW permission to use them as the example. I think for a middle grade author, CW just does it all right. If you look at their website, and will link their their Twitter in the description, looking at their Twitter, their Twitter is safe, it does have some political views, it might be challenging for some in that they are an ally to the LGBTQ i plus community.
K
And they they also are, excuse me, are against the banning of books. Even that level of political discourse can be challenging for some presses that are in a specific niche or niche that we’re not in that we don’t occupy, we don’t occupy the picture book through through middle grade space, because we don’t do picture books. And because we don’t do picture books, we have a little bit more latitude. And because we published from middle grade through adult we have a little bit more latitude. So looking at what is it that you’re going to publish? How do you want to be represented, because your website or your author’s landing page is going to be how people decide whether or not they want to review you. I wish it was as simple as they’ll get your book, they’ll read your book, and then they’ll interview, we have had the case where Arthur’s had been interviewed, and it is apparent interviewer that the person interviewing them has not read their book. That’s a little bit disappointing. As an author, it’s a little bit disappointing for us as a press, I’ll admit, but that’s the reality. You know, people are busy and people who are doing interviews that that’s their their full job, they may have the intention to read your book, because we do send them the book for free if they they interview our authors. But sometimes they just have such a short window, on the interview side of things that they don’t actually have time to read the book. So looking at your author’s website, it’s about knowing your intention, what is your intention, I feel like our author’s intentions are very clear. When you look at their websites, they intend to promote themselves to their specific audience. And you see that across their social media across the author’s landing page, and across their author’s website, having that consistency, having that thru line, where if I follow you on social media, and then reach your author’s page, I’m going to feel like it’s the same person, and that those two things are connected. If that’s not the case, for your current social media, you need to start an author’s social media, or give me some sort of like pin tweet or something that gives me a through line to you as an author to connect you. The same with an author’s landing page, if the press that you’re working with or the magazines that you publish, and allow you to have a landing page for them. Make sure that the landing page makes sense for everywhere people find you, because people want consistency, and they want to feel like they can trust you. And everything that we put out in the world is a contract and set expectations that every time you come to, you know, the writers triangle, if it’s an episode that I’m doing, y’all are expecting me to be pro author, if I came on here, all of a sudden, just like hating authors, there would it would break trust and it would make you not want to listen. And that’s the same thing, trying to lower that bar of resistance and take away any excuse to stay now. There’s so much out there, there’s so much competition, there’s so many books, that the people who are doing this sort of have look at what’s out there and and looking at what the press is about. A big part of of what sells our books is who we are as a press and for better or worse. That’s That’s what impacts our authors and impacts our readers who we are as a press there’s a certain niche of of readers that look to that. There are many, many more readers that don’t. For me, I just want to take down barriers. I want to erase the now and I want to help authors learn how to erase now, especially if you’re looking for an Asian or looking for interviews or looking to get published. Kind of understanding okay. Yes know whether or not it’s worth it worth it to you to have an author website, what you get out of it for the amount of work that you put into it. It’s a lot of work and what you get out of it is A 10% improvement on the possibility of being having a yes from a process or Yes, from an agent. I know saying that 10%, I’ll take 10 to 15%. I know that that is so small. But when you’re looking at 1% of all the books that are published, all of the books are written, get published kind of thing. 10% advantage kind of feels like, it’s worth it to me. But that’s my 50 cents on it. And again, this is just one person’s opinion. And it is kind of informed by what agents are telling me when I when I talk to agents, I belong to a lot of groups that you can only belong to if you’re on a press. And so I’m able to talk to any jerks and I’m able to also talk to the people who are buying books at the Big Five and and other independent presses. And it really does feel like in this day and age, we are moving to a place where almost every author that wants to publish a novel needs a website. And I’m sorry for that it. It’s so time consuming. That’s why I’m apologizing is super time consuming, and it’s expensive. And that’s why we do after landing pages for author because we do want their other work to be picked up even if they only published one book but doesn’t they go on to publish further books with someone else? We want to make sure that they at least have a landing page until they have the time to spend a dedicated orange or they can choose not to. And so it’s worth talking to if you’re with the indie press, it’s worth talking to them. If they’re doing author pages are not. So that’s my 50 cents on author pages and author websites. I hope it was informative. And thank you to all of our beautiful cinnabar moth who listen every week and you don’t have to be a cinnabar moth you can be any kind of moth you’d like to be or even a butterfly, but I’m not Mariah Carey so I’m not trying to bite her rhyme by