After my book is sold I plan to have a web site built to promote it. It'll be a place for readers to catch up on the latest news, see my schedule, leave comments and contact me. Web sites have come so far even in the short couple of years it's been since my son (who was 12 at the time) built my professional web page for me. Now web sites have all kinds of bells and whistles that we only dreamed about even five years ago. Here are some of my faves:
My ultimate fave is the web site for The Riches, shown on F/X. It's visually stunning, isn't it? My son tells me this isn't particularly hard to build. Don't ask me. I depend on my fourteen-year-old to tell me these things. (After it loads scroll down to see the suburban neighborhood. And btw, it's a GREAT show too.)
I love web sites where you get an immediate feel of what the person or product is about. Okay Dave's site is a good example.
Doreen Orion's site gives us an immediate picture of her as a person without compromising her professionalism as a psychiatrist. It's intelligent, inviting, attractive and very interactive, just like her. I also like that it comes across as kind of unisex so that's it's appealing to both/all genders. Having her blog in-site ensures lots of traffic - very smart.
Toyota has this coolio site with little doohickeys you can click on. Isn't it fun? Here's a similar one for Adobe Creative Suite (click "enter" to explore.)
I love Augusten Burroughs new site, although I have to admit to being a little disappointed because he asked readers to send in pictures and I did, and there are none to be found. (That's probably because he was sent so many pictures of himself with his fans that his desktop crashed and burned and he had to buy a whole new computer. Maybe even a whole new house.) This site is very personalized and has a lot of fun places to explore, just like the man himself.
My son tells me that flash is a pain in the ass because it takes so long to load that many viewers give up on it before it reaches 100%, but I love it anyway. What this world needs is fewer flashers and more Flash. What do you think?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
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11 comments:
I'm impressed you created all those links! I can't figure out how to do that, yet. I shudder to think how amazing your book website is going to be. What will you wear to The Bloggies?
Thanks, friend. I'm wearing my fat uniform that I wear everywhere nice - black slacks with tasteful tops. If I lose 30 lbs by then I'm wearing whatever the hell I want.
I'm now trying to change the look of my blog because it seems so many Bloggers have the same template and it's getting on my nerves in a big way. The help page tells me I can change things like colors without losing back posts but because I'm so anal I'm afraid to try it. Have any of my fellow Bloggers had experience with this? I would love to lose the browns.
Not much help on the tech side. All I've ever done is add pics and whatnot on the side and one in the header. Blogger does the work for you. In my case that's best.
I'm looking forward to buying your book off a bookstore shelf near me.
Thanks Leah, I'm looking forward to you buying it too! :)
I might just take the plunge and try to change colors and see what happens. I'd hate to lose all my old posts though. It's surprising how many people click on even the very old ones.
Hi Polly
I designed Augusten's new site. The photo gallery is still to come. You may see your picture up there after all. And hey, your son is talented for his age (or what was his age). And btw, I like the brown!
Thanks for saying hi, Adubs. I see you're on a design team with the hilarious Drew (LOVE his blog, or blob as Aug would call it.) That is some kind of talented team. I love the way you incorporated the art work into Augusten's site. You really did an incredible job of making it personal and individual.
Maybe you can answer a question for me. I can't get my Google reader to accept Aug's blog. I try plugging the address in and it tells me it doesn't recognize it. So I tried removing the word "blob" from the end, thinking it only accepted the word "Blog" but it still wouldn't go there. Any tips? I'm sure other readers of his blog would like to add it to their Readers too.
Best wishes,
Polly
Thanks for mentioning the website for QUEEN OF THE ROAD, Polly! (OK, since you didn't mention the name of my book, I had to.) Great idea to get your website up after your book sells and not wait until close to the pub date. When booksellers look in your publisher's catalogue, some of them will also want to see your website and of course, these are the people you want to be buying your book.
Hey Doreen, good book plug. Thankfully I've met some experienced (and talented) writers like you to provide good examples of how to participate in book promotion as much as possible. You deserve all the success you've had because you've certainly worked for it.
Robin, you also provide good role modeling of enthusiastic book promotion.
Would you like me to help you figure out how to do links on your blog?
I love the way you put your brainstorming and research in your blog. It's good for you and good for your readers. This is a great resource that I'm putting on my blogroll - finally.
As for changing your colors, I can't imagine that this would have any effect on your old posts. These are two separate issues. Having said that, I don't blame you for going slow and getting reassurance for jumping in.
Jerry
Memory Writers Network
Thanks for adding me to your blogroll Jerry, I'll try to live up to the honor. I'm going to try to change some colors here since I haven't found any evidence, a priori or on Internet Google discussion boards, that doing so will damage anything. Some call this approach scientific. I call it OCD. :)
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