Authors Websites

[thaddeus6th]

My own efforts are rather ropey. I only managed to shorten the menu bar by going through the code and literally changing every numerical value that seemed it might be the one until I stumbled across the number that actually did what I wanted.

One immediate suggestion, though, is to put an apostrophe in Authors Homepage.

I like the flag counter touch.

On About the Author, I'd change "The Author lives..." to just "I live...". The stuff above is first person, so it seems a bit off-putting to switch to the third. (And if your car interest includes F1, do check out the F1 thread here).

I don't offer samples, but you might want to add mobi (the Amazon shindig) to your downloads.

The Buy Now page looks good, but you might want to put up the price in pounds, dollars and euros (which may be trickier than it sounds due to exchange rates).

The Author lives in Wales, in the UK.The Author lives in Wales, in the UK.The Author lives in Wales, in t

 

[DrMclony]

...you might want to put up the price in pounds, dollars and euros (which may be trickier than it sounds due to exchange rates).
he Author lives in Wales, in the UK.The Author lives in Wales, in the UK.The Author lives in Wales, in t

That's a great point, having multiple currencies or at the very least link to UK and other Amazon etc. I need to investigate this issue to get my store cart updated to include these currencies.

 

[billhafan]

My own efforts are rather ropey. I only managed to shorten the menu bar by going through the code and literally changing every numerical value that seemed it might be the one until I stumbled across the number that actually did what I wanted.

One immediate suggestion, though, is to put an apostrophe in Authors Homepage.

I like the flag counter touch.

On About the Author, I'd change "The Author lives..." to just "I live...". The stuff above is first person, so it seems a bit off-putting to switch to the third. (And if your car interest includes F1, do check out the F1 thread here).

I don't offer samples, but you might want to add mobi (the Amazon shindig) to your downloads.

The Buy Now page looks good, but you might want to put up the price in pounds, dollars and euros (which may be trickier than it sounds due to exchange rates).

The Author lives in Wales, in the UK.The Author lives in Wales, in the UK.The Author lives in Wales, in t

Thaddeus, thanks so much for taking the time to have a look, and for making such good constructive suggestions - I'll amend the site today to make those improvements. I know what you mean about the currencies, and once a reader purchases, the relevant currencies do come up - but certainly a tricky one to have it adjust - unless I just put a note such as "correct as of dd/mm/yyyy - with a rate of x.xx to £ ... will think on this one, and if I can find a better and more accurate way of doing it, I'll let everyone know.

I went with the samples as I know that Amazon (which I'm on, as well as Barnes and Noble, Gardners, Waterstones and Apple) give a healthy lump of every book they sell as a sampler.

Hopefully my work is good enough that readers will want to buy the full book but only time will tell - have had some excellent reviews on Amazon so far, so it's fingers crossed.

 

[billhafan]

Thaddeus, have now made most of the adjustments suggested by your good-self, and also made sure all of my links are working (to Amazon & Kobo etc.), and I have to say, it's a big improvement - so thanks again!

I've put a currency converter on the buy-now page - let me know what you think - and there's a link below it to the free download page for the converter code, on my site, if you or anyone else might find it useful for their site.

williamggee.com

ps have just downloaded Bane of Souls to my Kindle - looking forward to reading it.

 

[thaddeus6th]

You're welcome, billhafan, and thanks for the purchase. I hope you enjoy it

You missed the poatdrophe.... poatdrophe?! Normally I'd just correct a typo, but that's so monumental it deserves enshrining in electronic history.

Ahem. You missed the apostrophe in Author's Homepage which appears as the website's 'title' at the top of the browser.

Convertor looks cunning, and it's also smart to give a nudge to readers and mention the 50% discount for the next book. [I'm doing something similar with the next one I write].

 

[billhafan]

And isn't that the reason we spend hours and hours editing and proof-reading our work? Amazing the ones that still slip through!

Don't know if I was told, or read about (probably an urban myth) a publishing house that once set out to make the perfect (error-free) book. The book was commissioned and many months were spent typesetting etc. then the one perfect copy was printed out and presented to the Chairman. He took one look at it, and then shelved the project on the spot ... he realised that the Title was spelt wrong, so guessed that human error was sure to have made similar mistakes inside

Regarding the apostrophe - That may take a bit longer

I've a feeling that when I was setting up the site, it would only allow letters in the title? but I may be wrong, so I'll need to check. Also the submissions to Google/Bing etc. are all now without the apostrophe. Could also be that people rarely put them in when typing a search? Can't remember which is the reason, but will check into it. I agree it would look better.

 

[Tecdavid]

I have a blog, but I haven't touched it in a while. Maybe I should start afresh, or try building up a full-fledged website (Well... as full-fledged as a website about my stuff could be, at least).
A few different ways to go about it have been mentioned here, but of the websites that help you do it, are there any which are simply better than others? (My currently-inactive blog uses Blogger)


Oh, and something I'd really like to know: How do you earn traffic for your blog/website? Do you just keep it updated and hope people will come across it? Or are there places you can link to it from? I'd hate to think I'd spend time building and updating a webpage, only to have it ignored.

Glen, there are some decent map artists on http://deviantart.com. They even ran a feature on SFF cartography there, just recently.
Or maybe Ursa's idea, creating your own maps, would work well? Erm... Actually, How difficult is that to do, Ursa?

 

[thaddeus6th]

You might prefer to use blogger, but add pages.

Pages are are not the same as a post, they get added (with my formatting anyway) to a top bar so that people can click on Lore (for example) and easily find stuff that way. It's very simple to do, and I've linked below to my site and to Michael J. Sullivan's (which does it rather better):

http://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.com/

http://www.riyria.blogspot.co.uk/

If you discover how to generate traffic, please do let us all know. I think Zeitgeist helps a lot. I had a traffic spike regarding posts I did about Skyrim in the month or so before release and then a week after.

I don't think updates need to be super often so long as they're fairly regular.

Oh, and (I don't know if this is annoying or not) I've started putting a pair of mini-ads I've designed myself, linking to my book, below each post. I don't monetise (ie make money through Google-approved ads) but I think it's fair enough to advertise my own book on my own blog.

 

[Ursa major]

Or maybe Ursa's idea, creating your own maps, would work well? Erm... Actually, How difficult is that to do, Ursa?

I find it easy**, but then I quite like editing diagrams in PowerPoint. (Bite the bullet and find out. )



** - Except for one thing: I like using PowerPoint's animation functions, but unlike my diagrams of ships, the maps can't really be animated (and should not be: one ought not to allow map elements to go wandering about a map***). Still, resisting the temptation is difficult.

*** - Unless the map is showing one of the cities that must move about to avoid, say, direct sunlight (because the planet is very close to its star), e.g. the city on Mercury in Charles Stross's Saturn's Children.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Out of curiosity, What is a good domain to build a website on?

I am publishing my first novel myself and would like to start making an author site. Any suggestions where to build it, sense some of you have one?

You can buy a domain directly at somewhere like http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ - cost is about £6 every two years for a .co.uk.

However, you would then need to buy webhosting - somewhere reliable like http://www.clook.co.uk/ - and then probably upload software files, such as Wordpress.

If you want to learn all that, it can be rewarding.

However, if you really want to avoid all the technicalities involved, then I'd recommend signing up to http://wordpress.com/ and getting a free blog there. You'll have all the same things at hand, and you can even buy a domain name to overlay on top of the Wordpress.com domain if you wish.

 

[Grinnel]

I am not a published author, so I may be talking through my hat here.

Whenever my wife and I watch a video disk, we love to spend time going over the special features.

For these people, you might consider putting in things like deleted scenes (assuming you liked them), and things that others have mentioned, such as some background notes and maps, amusing stories around the publication or promotion of your work, along with sneak peeks at similar works in progress.

Having said that, I dread having to do that kind of work myself if I ever do get published. I haven't even figured my way around facebook yet.

 

[billhafan]

Another excellent one in the UK is One.com - less than £1/month including hosting - and I'm sure there are similar ones in the US. Good live help desk and it supports Wordpress sites etc.

A good free, open source, web designer and editor package is Komposer. There are also lots of sample sites you can download and edit as your own.

The hardest thing I found - apart from designing the site! - was creating a secure way of delivering the ebooks. I use a paypal account, tied to a script generated by Linklok (excellent value - $29.99 - and well worth buying) which sends a single copy after payment is verified, and no additional hosting required. Takes about 30 mins max to set this up and there is excellent documentation with it, too. Hope this helps.

 

[Toby Frost]

I have a small website, which has extra background articles and some short stories set in the same world as the novels. I don't have a forum as I'm not popular enough! Besides, that sort of thing can be done on a Facebook group. I decided against blogging because it would take up writing time, and the posts wouldn't be relevant enough to be worthwhile or in-setting.

I do hope to expand, though. The recent responses to the excerpt I put up make me think that I'd like to make some chapters of the fantasy novel available. However, that would require a Toby Frost site, rather than one dedicated to Space Captain Smith and sequels, so quite a major overhaul would be required.

 

[thaddeus6th]

You could make two sites and have them linked rather than one big one.

I've downloaded the Christmas PDF stories from your site and quite like the background info.

 

[Glen]

Thanks to all for your thoughts and feedback, and sorry I haven't been around this week to reply (in transit).

In summary we have suggestions for: maps, family trees, histories, excerpts and tasters (inc. sneak peeks), interviews and reviews, articles (e.g. writing technique), art, links (e.g. to sales sites), author brand, publication of work.

I think I will have a crack at including a map, a few excerpts, and a blog on writing and marketing (which is what I do with the SFFC blog, but no-one can see that unless registered). The links go without saying, as do interviews etc...should they ever occur. I don't think the whole family tree/lore thing is for me though.

My site is up, though I think I will need to change my Wordpress theme. I like the one I'm using but it has a few flaws that make it too hard to use. Better suited for a gallery style blog I feel. Oh well, it will do for now. I've just added a bio of my book. Here it is:
http://glenthickett.com/

 

[Tecdavid]

Quick question: How customisable is Blogger? For example, if one were to have artwork done, would they be able to integrate it into their page's backdrop/design, or are they limited to the pre-made designs Blogger offers?

 

[Vanaheim]

I really liked looking at all your websites and I've bookmarked them to see how they grow.

I've got the domain name in .com and .co.uk for my author site, but as I've been concentrating on writing I've done nothing with them. I bought the domains because heaven forbid if someone else bought them and I needed it in the future it could cost a fortune. - Yes there are people out there who speculate and buy up .com addresses they think might be popular in the future.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Although I still haven't gotten around to it, I'm reasonably sure you can change the background on Blogger, and so to your own design rather than a preset one.

 

[Tecdavid]

That would be handy, seeing as Blogger is what I used for my own page. Still, seeing as I haven't touched that page in so very long, I'm considering starting afresh.

By the way, I had a look at your own blog, Thaddeus. I like it - I think the layout and design is well presented. Yours too, Glen. It's nice and simple, and so rather relaxing on the eyes.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Thanks

I keep meaning to change the background and fiddle with bits, but when it comes to that sort of maintenance I'm rather rubbish.