Monday 9 February 2009

Websites for Writers

If you are wondering what sort of website to build it will depend very much on the type of information you want to present, how you want to interact with your readers, and how you intend to make use of the website. There are currently four different types of website:

Information only: this is simply an extension of your business card. It allows you to show off what skills you have and what you have produced to date.


A collaborative or social site: you invite people to join in and contribute, either to showcase their own work or produce a collective work. WritersInTouch.com is a good example of such a site.


A blog: offering news, reviews, and general gossip.


A marketing tool: this sort of site is used to directly market your book. To do so you need to offer more than just information about your book/work and a blog, you need to offer some quality content/articles that people want. This is the sort of site I have opted to develop. I have decided to offer articles on novel writing in Nick Travers Writing Tips and a blog under Nick Travers On Writing, as well as offering articles and background on my book, Helium3. All three offerings are tied together with the NickTravers.com website as a front door. Later, once I have built up an audience, I hope also to offer some sort of collaborative/social element to help coach young writers.


What sort of site you decide to build will depend on how you wish to use the site and the amount of day-by-day effort you intend to devote to running it. This is worth spending some time thinking about as it may well influence where you build your site, who hosts it, and how much you should pay for it.

Next to consider is whether you pay for a domain name e.g. YourName.com and build your own website or use one of the free blogging/social sites e.g. YourName.Blogger.com or YourName.Facebook.com.It depends of course whether YourName or YourPenName is still available as a domain name. If not and you really want your own domain name don’t despair. Try some other options e.g. YourNameOnline.com, .co.uk, .net. me.uk etc or YourNameOnWriting.com, YourNameAuthor/poet etc. A search engine will pick up YourName regardless of what else is in the domain name. There are far more important consideration in getting YourName onto the first page of the search engine, this holds true whether you have your own domain or use a blogging site. You’re a writer, be creative.


Using a blogging site is the cheaper option though you will probably have to use a standard template so it will limit your creativity. If you are just testing the waters I would recommend using a free site, like blogging, so you can experiment before committing any serious money. However, if YourName.com or YourPenName.com happens to be free, snap it up before someone else does, it’s not going to cost the earth and could help you find a main stream publisher.


I purchased NickTravers.com to use solely as a landing page (the cheapest hosting option as it only needs one or two pages) which automatically re-directs users to my blog where the rest of these pages are hosted for free. This may look like a sophisticated website, but in fact, it’s a series of twenty-odd separate blogs – I’ve just linked them all together with hyperlinks to make them look like a coherent website.

Whilst I would recommend using a free site to test the waters when you set out, I would not necessarily recommend one of the social sites for this purpose. While social sites are useful tools and an essential part of your arsenal, if you wish to promote your work (and yourself) on the internet, I believe they serve a distinctly different purpose, which can be summed up in one word: marketing.

Finally, you need to consider whether your website will promote you as a writer or just your work.The short answer is you should seek to promote both, but be aware that you are seeking to promote something different in each case. Your readers and your agent or potential agent will want you to promote yourself. Remember, your name or your pen name is a brand. If you use more than one pen name you will need a web presence for each pen name (brand).


If you have more than one book I would suggest you need a web presence for each book or series as well as for your name(s).


If you are an unpublished author then look upon your website as a tool to help you land an agent/publisher. Your website should concentrate on you as a writer and what you have to offer by way of promotional talents. I would recommend that your main web presence should be ‘YourName’ or ‘YourPenName’.However, you should also tie your main site into one of the free sites named after your book ‘MyBookTitle.FreeSiteName.com’. Why a free site? Because a publisher may well want to change the title of your book before publication so don’t waste your money on buying a domain name just yet. This site should concentrate on promoting your book. If you have more than one book/series you will need a separate web presence for each title.

If you are a published author, I would recommend you follow the same strategy, but invest some money in purchasing a domain name for each of you book/series titles as well as one in your own name/pen names(s).

The key is to link all the websites together, so that all entry points lead to the full content. This way you will maximise your chances of cross selling your products and brand(s).