How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical Guide STEP 11: YES, YOU REALLY DO NEED A WEBSITE
You should now, dear readers, be turning your attention to the creation of the dreaded website, or the serious revamping of one should it already feebly exist somewhere.
You may be asking yourselves at this point what you possibly need a website for, as you have absolutely nothing to put on it except perhaps a photo (hopefully a professional headshot) and maybe a sketchy bio, at best. Having myself been in your painful shoes in the not-so-distant past, I am all the more able to clearly hear what I’m sure are your additional protests: that you have no blog, no book (yet!), nor any news/events even dimly on the horizon.
Take heart, darlings. You have to start somewhere. It’s the proverbial chicken-and-the-egg thing. Granted you have nothing exciting to put up just yet, but you will in time, or at least that’s the plan. You must think of your website as your home base where everything that you create is going to live. Or a large department store where people can come in and browse around. A place to reroute (i.e. link) people to.
“But why?” you might ask, in a stubbornly persistent manner. “Why would I want to reroute (okay, link), people back to an embarrassingly empty site?!”
Darlings, calm down. If you really see yourself as a writer, you must embrace the modern publicness of this role. Forget pointing to the enviable, private writerly lives of the likes of Jane Austen or Emily Dickenson. Sadly, no such thing exists any longer. You will not be allowed to sit at your desk and quietly type away, finally stuffing your hard work into a manila envelope with a deep sigh of pleasure, licking the stamp and sending it to some far-away editor, meanwhile tending your garden and petting the cat while you await the publisher’s kind words of praise and hopefully royalty checks.
No, darlings! Destroy that image in your mind as quickly as possible because it only leads to disgruntlement and annoyance. Best look forward. Unfortunately, in our current society, part of putting your work out into the world means putting yourself out, too, however painful you fear that might be.
This crosses over into the whole social media conversation once again. It’s important to tweet or post things out there about yourself, even if you have to make them up! After perusing my FB posts in the beginning, my publicist advised that I’m not putting enough personal things out there. Photos of kids and pets are a no-no on your Author page, so what else could I possibly post that’s personal? Shots of my chrysanthemums?
“Something trendy!” was the reply. “Something like a post about you getting Starbuck’s new pumpkin latte.”
“But I don’t like lattes, much less pumpkin ones!” I was tempted to counter before it dawned on me that that hardly mattered, nor, apparently did the fact that it was such a blushingly trite bit of info. The sad truth is that no one cares! If you have nothing to sell just yet, sell air. Yes, I know, it does have the faint aroma of the Emperor’s New Clothes, but try your best to ignore it.
Back to the website. My advice is to get it professionally done. Don’t have your cousin do it, unless, of course, he happens to be a legitimate web designer by day. After all, this is your home base, your department store, as it were, and you need it to look professional in order for you to be taken seriously. You want to exude a Selfridges image, or at least a Macy’s , not a TJ Maxx.
In my case, having heard at a writer’s conference very early on in this journey that a website was essential for all writers, I went home and clumsily cobbled one together with WordPress. Having absolutely no technical know-how, this in and of itself was a small miracle. I was rather proud of it, however, with its photo of me set against a black and white (you know, like artsy) photo of a picturesque gate by a creek on my parents’ farm. “That says it all!” I thought proudly, hoping people would get the obvious symbolism.
You can probably guess that the publicist, when I eventually hired her, did not. Out the window it quickly went, and months of design started. Yes, months, because once the basic concept and framework were built and we had decided to go with vintage shots of Chicago as the sort of theme, I became extraordinarily picky about which photos to include, being the expert now, you see. Hundreds of photos went back and forth, until they just sent their whole file over and told me to get back to them. Happily I began digging through, and the result, if you’re reading this, is all around you.
Don’t worry, darlings; you have to start somewhere. And once your little house is built, you’ll feel rather proud of it and all the more motivated to begin filling it up! At least that’s the plan. You can do it!
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STEP 11: YES, YOU REALLY DO NEED A WEBSITE appeared first on Michelle Cox.
