Self promotion doesn’t come naturally for many people, not just authors. Some people find it easy to talk about themselves, and share their strengths and accomplishments, but lots of folks don’t. It can be difficult for several reasons: Fear of Rejection: Many people fear being judged or rejected when promoting themselves. They worry about what others might think of them or their work, and this Read more...
As an author, of course you want to create engaging and informative content for your author website. But what does that mean? How do you best connect with potential fans? What keeps them coming back for more? How is writing content for your author website different than writing your book? As an author website designer who has worked with folks from best-selling authors and Read more...
As an author website designer, my knee-jerk reaction is, of course, an enthusiastic yes! But as someone who really likes to understand the why of things, I also regularly ask myself why that's true. Where is the value for the author? How can I make sure the work that I do is contributing to that value? When I think about it and distill it Read more...
I recently wrote an article about finding author website design services, where I covered the available options and how to evaluate designers in the hiring process. However, I didn't discuss the importance of "soft skills" that make someone a good fit. I dislike the term "soft skills" because it implies that interpersonal skills are less important than practical skills, which is simply not true. Nevertheless, Read more...
This article is designed to help you better understand what the options are when looking to hire an author website designer. There are lots of great choices out there now, so how do you best evaluate them to figure out who to hire? When you are looking for author website design services, it's important to understand that you might be looking for a handful Read more...
Like with many things in life, there's no straightforward answer to this question. It's a bit like asking, "why kind of car is best?" -- the answer depends on what you want out of a car. Happily there are really only three platforms to seriously consider for your author website in my opinion, Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress. In this article we'll talk about how Read more...
Next week I'll start work on an author website for a poet, so I've been reflecting on what sets a poet website design apart from other author website designs. I've been lucky enough to work with some great poets on their author websites, including Sophie Cabot Black and Lee Woodman. And as much as any author website's goal is to create an immersive and experiential Read more...
I've been an author website designer for over 15 years, and in that time I've learned many things about creating websites specifically for authors. In the beginning, I most often worked with the digital marketing departments of traditional publishers who were not in a position to be creating author websites themselves. They either didn't have the talent in-house, and/or weren't planning headcount for it because Read more...
WordPress, Squarespace, Wix — there are great choices out there for what you might select as the platform to build your author website. So, how do you choose? Each of these options has pros and cons, and the landscape of building websites changes constantly over time. It’s a critical decision to make, but please don’t lose sleep over it. If things change for you in Read more...
You're working on your author website, which is great, and you're thinking about the kind of content you might include. You see all these authors with Media pages and you're thinking you need one too, but what kind of content do you include on it? And if you're a new author, do you even need one at all? Let's start by defining what a Media Read more...
