1.Posted by Celle the Tuesday 16 April 2013 at 04:53
Hi Jane!I went for a hired design team right away, but I adrlaey had my first book out, so maybe I'm excused. At any rate, I liked the pro-look of some well-known writers' websites and had some ideas on how mine should look. The design people took those ideas and made them reality, adding lots of ideas themselves (e.g. the streaming quotes in my website's banner inform people as well as add class).The thing I feared most was the blog. Jeniffer Thompson, the CEO of Monkey C Media, encouraged me to write one, thinking of the continually changing content. What I never expected was that I would have lots of fun writing a free-wheeling op-ed column about many current events as well as my take on the business of writing, reviews, and short stories. Often the blog post is my only fix of the day that attends to my obsessive-compulsive desire to write (add to that the many times I respond to other blogs, of course). It keeps my muse constantly at my side.I reread your advice to fiction writers (I'm one of those fiction writers who complains a lot, I guess). I would add that an author website is an ideal place to post current events (next stops on a book tour, book signings, short story publications, etc works for nonfiction too, I suppose). I've neglected that aspect and hope to rectify my error on a future website update.Bottom line: there is a great deal of info for writers on the web. In WD this month, for example, one of the 100 websites is authortechtips.com, which has tips for stuff related to designing a website on your own. There's also the venerable WordPress guidelines which I also refer to since my website is based on WordPrss. With the new tips and tools now available, today I just might do it on my own!r/Steve