Shared author websites -- good idea or not?

[HareBrain]

(I wasn't certain if this was the right section for this, but it didn't seem to fit in publishing either.)



We all know (even those of us who've never done anything about it) that we need a website to help promote our work, but are there many sites shared by two or more aspiring authors? I can see the following pros and cons:

Pros:

1. Shared costs of website design
2 (probably most important). Someone following a link to any author means a visitor for the site as a whole. This visitor might well check out the site's other authors, possibly writers they wouldn't otherwise have heard of
3. The greater the amount and variety of site content, the more it might crop up in searches(?)
4. Much more regular blog updates if several writers are sharing a blog, and more comments generated if they comment on each other's posts
5. The group itself might acquire an identity and a reputation

Cons:

1. Danger of web-design-by-committee
2. Struggles for prominence if one author takes off (though if each had their own section, not sure this is really a concern).
3. Working out membership, both initially and ongoing

Any others? Does anyone know if it works in practice? If the Inklings were around today, before any of them became successful, would they each have their own website or a shared one?

 

[kuru]

I think it depends on the state of your career as a writer. If you are just starting out, then I think the pro's could outweigh the cons. If you have a little momentum already though, you might not want to give up the freedom of really personalizing your site. Plus, if you have a publisher, they might not like you sharing with a writer who they do not have under contract. That's just my two cents tho.

 

[jeff.s.p]

I think its a very interesting idea. You seemed to have covered many pros and cons.
I would agree that there's strength in numbers and can see this as something quite positive.


Perhaps instead of combining several authors to a single website, you could create a kind of "Buffer Zone" of sorts. A generic web page that links to your personal pages. You could still keep your personal identity, and promote the group.

Web hosting usually allow multiple sub-websites under a Domain page.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It sounds like a good idea to me. Even better, though, would be a shared blog, with all of you taking turns posting articles.

 

[DrMclony]

The shared blog sounds like the most useful part. The blog on my site gets very irregular attention. After all, I spend my writing time writing books more than writing a blog!

I have for some time been considering a support site for indie authors that includes proper blog facilities and linking back to their own pages for sales. Of course its biggest benefit would be having a private section where member authors can post drafts for peer review that is not public.

The trouble is, there are so many bodgy half assed sites out there , getting people on board would be hard because nobodies going to trust "yet another site" until they see it working for others. SO it may be truly not worth the hassle.

 

[The Judge]

I recall reading of an American group of writers who lived in more or less the same area** who did this, though I think the website arose as a result of them coming together in the first place, not as the initial step. They fostered the group identity thing, and because they were all writing for children they used to go into schools etc as the group -- I don't know if that meant that, say, they only needed 3 of them present at a time, and those 3 read extracts/talked about the books of all 6. (It could be they wrote for different ages, which might have made that part of it easier.)


** of course, that might actually means they lived hundreds of miles apart...


I think it would work best if the writers wrote in the same kind of genre eg a general banner of speculative fiction, rather than a historical novelist and a horror writer, and I think they would all need to be at the same level of writing in terms of quality, otherwise there might be tensions. And like most collaborative efforts there would need to be some personal rapport so as and when tensions did arise it was easier to smooth things over.

 

[HareBrain]

I have for some time been considering a support site for indie authors that includes proper blog facilities and linking back to their own pages for sales.

But with that setup, if someone went straight to the author's own site (via another link) and bypassed the support site, you wouldn't get the benefits of my pros 2 and 3 above.

The trouble is, there are so many bodgy half assed sites out there , getting people on board would be hard because nobodies going to trust "yet another site" until they see it working for others.

My thought (btw, this is all hypothetical) was of getting together a group of no more than five authors at the start, with perhaps a handful joining later by mutual agreement, not a general invitation. More like a house-share than a commune.


Edit: good points, TJ (and everyone, come to that). It would be most beneficial if the work of all authors was fairly likely to appeal to readers of any one of them. And that example sounds like the kind of thing I had in mind.

 

[Hex]

I wonder if it would work best if you could identify a "flavour" as well as a common genre. I haven't thought this through completely, so forgive me if it's incoherent.

If you were an author of hard science fiction you'd probably want one sort of design (with wire and shiny things) and if you wrote heroic fantasy you'd maybe want swords (and halberds?) and possibly a dragon. Combining those might be a bit of a stretch for most designers (although I'm sure some could do a good job) and combining them to make sense to a casual viewer would be even harder. From a website design perspective it would be wonderful if your themes were similar enough for a coherent front page/ area for everyone and then distinctive but related individual author areas.

It would also be more likely to attract readers to investigate everyone's work if there was a common flavour.

A joint blog would be a great idea. I wonder if a sort of game might be a good idea as well (although maybe too time consuming) so the authors might -- for example -- have a common world or story to play with and connect them as well as their own individual worlds.

(disclaim disclaim: this is the first time I have thought about any of this stuff)

 

[DrMclony]

Actually, I agree - five or six authors already with a rapport could go in together and make something of it.

Using it as a group branding exercise could be vary advantageous. I mean REALLY making the group name into a brand. Kind of like a pseudo publishing label. A publishing co-operative if you like. This has happened in other creative fields to great success. We did it for anthologies and stuff with the writers centre I (and some friends) founded in the 90's to great effect (even garnered some big corporate support for that writers group at the time). Sadly it's not the same as it was though - I set that place up in the nineties with a fairly full on computer lab for members to use, we had an author in residence, workshops, all sorts going on then we all left. A bunch of other people are still running it though it doesn't seem to be anything like it was sadly. It had a paid up membership in the thousands back then. That was without a real net presence. The net has changed things a lot, and the current group hasn't kept up. I'd go back, but I live a thousand miles from there!

 

[DrMclony]

LOL Hex you making me think I should get back into making my MMORPG? lol haven't touched it in recent months, though it did have an alpha server test (the server hardware was horribly slow lol)

hehe I suppose I could turn it into a multi-world hybrid game so each author could run into what ever world they wanted to check out! hahahahaha so you go and fly a shuttle in my world and I hit a portal and go oh i dont know, fight a dragon or whatever in your world...

Sounds like too much work to me. forget I opened my trap!

 

[Hex]

Yipes. I meant, maybe, more of a shared story that the authors treat as a game but an exercise in collaboration too -- not something that's hard work!

 

[DrMclony]

yeah like a forum RPG they can be great fun - you know, each participant has a character and they write accordingly. then the story progresses. providing everyone stays in character, it can be awesome!

 

[kuru]

There is one blog that came to mind made up of a group of authors from the Word Serve Literary group. http://www.rachellegardner.com/2011/08/terrific-new-blog-for-writers/ I haven't read much of them, just remembered coming across it and thought you might like to take a peek. They seem to be managing it pretty well with so many participating authors.