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Pages Jane Suggests: Putting Up Some Placeholders

Jane Friedman, the wonderful publishing maven that she is, published a wonderful blog post in March 2015 that is veritable primer of building an author website. From using WordPress, the nitty gritties of URLs and choosing web hosting, to the pages that should be on your site, everything that Jane suggests is spot on.

Using Jane as a guideline and for the sake of putting some pages up on my site, here’s what I’m putting up:

  • About Page. A short bio about you, what you do, and why you do it. We’ll get into the particulars of what should be here later, but for now, information on your for your readers.
  • Book Page. A gallery of your books, descriptions for each book, any worthy quotes of reviews, and links to buy and read more. Consider, if you have series books, finding a way to group them by series.
  • Contact Page. A contact form where people can get in touch with you. Whether you want to use captcha is up to you.
  • Email Newsletter Page. This would be a form that people fill out (it could be as simple as an email address) to sign up for your newsletter. We will get more into newsletters and such later.

On each page, you will find no content right now (4/30/2015). Nothing. An an empty husk.

This is a snapshot of the empty husk that is my site on April 30th, 2015.
This is a snapshot of the empty husk that is my site on April 30th, 2015.

See?

However, I want to use these page suggestions as guidelines to build content for each one.

That, my friends, we will get into shortly.

For now, go to Jane’s wonderful Author Website Primer!

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Death to the ‘Blog!’: A Word About Content

Before we get into specificities about what pages you should have, what posts might work in certain places, and what stuff might not work at all, let’s talk about content as a whole.

For some odd reason, when it comes to content on an author website, it often gets separated. Below is an example from Maggie Stiefvater’s website.

A screen capture of author Maggie Stielvater's website showing the menu listing of Blog.
A screen capture of author Maggie Stielvater’s website showing the menu listing of Blog. This is a wonderful site and is being used only as an example.

The BLOG link takes you to this site:

A screen shot of Maggie Stiefvater's Blog Page illustrating the different style between blog and main site.
A screen shot of Maggie Stiefvater’s Blog Page illustrating the different style between blog and main site.

Now, first, let me say, I adore Maggie Stiefvater and I think her site is really, really nice. Literally, she is the first author site that I clicked on that had this example. (Hey Maggie! Congrats on being number 2 in the Google Search for “Author Site”)

If an author does have a blog (and kudos to Maggie for having one!), for some odd reason, web designers, publishers, and other head honchos feel the need to separate blog content from the rest of the site. Even calling it ‘BLOG’ says that it’s different.

Why?
Content is content.
A book is content.
A page is content.
A post is content.

Why should we differentiate between them?

They all have a common goal: to be read. They all are created to cause a reaction with the reader. To get the reader to do something.

We can glorify writing a book all we want but, at the end of the day, we write a book to tell a story that readers enjoy and will want them to read other stories you have written.

We want readers to read our books and buy more books.

We want them to read our pages and buy our books.

Yet, when it gets to the subject of blog posts, our intentions (and the advice of the ‘author website design experts’) gets murky:

“Sample chapters.” (YOURWRITERPLATFORM.COM)
“Book Reviews.” (Author Media)
“Behind-the-scenes text.” (Kate McMillan: Outbox Online Design Studio)
“Diary.” (Fiction Notes)

Whether this is good advice or not (and we’ll explore this more in detail), it seems that this content is without intention. That the blog section of an author site is without a real focus.

So let’s get rid of the ‘blog’ idea completely.

And let’s just create content.

Our content will be on pages and posts. It will include text, images, and (maybe) videos.

There will be no ‘blog.’

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A Housecleaning Memo

So tonight, I am going to take all the content down for My Author Site and reduce it to nothing more than the front page.  I have found a Theme that I’m going to put up (I’ll go into Themes, how to pick one, and where to find them in a few weeks) but mostly the page is going to be empty.

A clean slate.

Now, obviously, I have content that I can start with.  But, to be honest, I’m not really going to use most of it.  In many ways, I’m going to start from scratch because I don’t want to use the content that I have as a crutch and I want to learn the best way to do it.

If you want to see what an author site looks like at ground zero, get there fast.  Because over the next couple of weeks, I am going to start writing the content and filling the site out.

Here we go!

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State of Website

For the past year, I have been knocking the idea around of redoing my website.

Raymondmrose.com is about 4 years old now and it has been retooled, redesigned, and rebuilt a few times. Every time that I redesign / rebuild it, I’m happy for about a few weeks before I start to dislike it again. It’s never really working for me. I can never put my finger on it it, but, for whatever reason, I always feel like I need to change it.

It’s also old. The content is old. The posts are old. I have been so busy over 2014 that the website fell by the wayside. After a few months, the chasm that had grown since the last time I had updated it seemed so huge that I wasn’t sure how to cross it. The site didn’t look how I wanted it to look and the content was old.

It’s time to do something about this big hot mess.

This year, I decided to approach the website from a different direction: I want it to make money. Not only do I want to revive my publishing aspirations and I want my website to sell more.

The truth is, I haven’t put anything new out in a very long time, my book sales have dwindled, and my website doesn’t see many visitors. I need to rethink how I approach publishing and building an author site. I need to challenge the notions that I have and the common wisdom found online. I need to explore different ideas, models, programs, technology, and adapt what works for the site. There are a lot of Internet Marketing people talking about the strategies and tools they use that are successful. I plan to explore them, use them, and catalog their success.

For now, let’s state the Facts for 2014:

Website
Visits: 373
Unique views: 98
Average length of visits: 0s-30s
Last post: October 1, 2013

Book Sales
The Fire Inside: 35
Better Together: 1
The Franklin Incident: 1
Last product published: July 2012

I am writing this post the day before my 40th birthday. My 30s were a time to push in new directions and really explore what I could do and what discover what I do well.

My 40s are going to be about capitalizing on my skills and what I discovered I am good at.

I’m going to build a site that helps me create new content, sell books, convert visitors, and create lifelong readers.

I am going to build something new.

Are you with me?