How to Create a Website as a Writer (Without it Costing You Both One Arm and One Leg)
By Guest | May 31, 2015 |
Please welcome guest Stuart Horwitz, founder and principal of Book Architecture, a firm of independent editors based in Providence. Book Architecture’s clients have reached the best-seller list in both fiction and non-fiction and have appeared on Oprah!, The Today Show, The Tonight Show, and in the most prestigious journals in their respective fields. Stuart’s first book Blueprint Your Bestseller: Organize and Revise Any Manuscript with the Book Architecture Method (Penguin/Perigee) was named one of 2013’s best books about writing by The Writer magazine. His second book, Book Architecture: How to Plot and Outline Without Using a Formula, was released earlier this month.
I believe that all of the effort and some of the expense that writers used to put into their collateral: brochures, business cards, even client-facing offices, should now go into websites instead because we live online. It’s that simple!
Connect with Stuart on Facebook and on Twitter.
How to Create a Website as a Writer (Without it Costing You Both One Arm and One Leg)
Your writer’s website is one of the most profound ways you can secure fans and attract soon-to-be fans. Readers can congregate to learn more about you: your related projects, your products, your influences and your personality, as well as connect with you directly. All the effort and some of the expense that writers put into their collateral for brochures, business cards, even client-facing offices, should now go into your website—because we live online. It’s that simple!
For this post, I’d like to invite in megawatt web designer, Andrew Boardman, of Manoverboard. Manoverboard is the most awesome web partner I could imagine, I just want to make sure to say that. Andrew’s looking over my shoulder as we write this, but if you take issue with a point below it’s likely my fault.
[pullquote]Don’t do your own design. Nobody told me to say this. I mean it. Maybe you don’t want to spend an arm and a leg but to get one of the best websites, one of the cool websites, you might have to spend an arm. I’m here to say I think it’s worth it.[/pullquote]
Make it scannable. We’re writers, you know? We like to write long sentences, and deploy our favorite punctuation that enables us to create dense paragraphs packed with meaning. Not on the web. On the web people read in a clockwise fashion, and they skip a lot, landing on the bolded or enlarged or italicized features to see what interests them. And they look at pictures – lots of pictures. Don’t let this alarm you: assured and competent writing is very welcome. You just need to learn a different form and play by the rules. I don’t know, maybe you can pretend you’re learning a villanelle in college or something?
SEO the crap out of it. Writing a good blog post for the web without going to Google AdWords to find out what keywords are actually being searched, is like writing a short story in Syriac (insert other favorite dead language here). If you can, see what keywords are useful to your audience. My site is currently full of carefully crafted articles about writing that no search engine can find. We’re having to change all of that right now, creating proper title tags and headings that are not hopelessly obscure.
Writing a book? That headline for example, “writing a book,” gets an average of 6,600 hits a month on Google searches, which is excellent, and better than if this bullet point was titled: “Go for the ask.” Speaking of which, if you’re writing a book, you gotta go for the ask. Put a buy button on every page. Capitalize “BUY.” Put aside any negative liberal feelings you have about sales. If you want to hear how I overcame my yucky obstacles to sales, check out this podcast.
You have to blog. I fought this one for a while; as a writer it’s weird to be told you have to write. But because you are a writer, readers are coming to your site to read. Don’t make your blog calendar (how often you put out new material) too aggressive – we originally started off at five days a week and crashed and burned. Now we’re returning to one day a week. Also, make your blogs good. If it’s something trivial you want to write about, put it on Facebook. Or even better, just think it.
Make it easy for people to connect with you. Right now the three big ones are still LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. You need to be on all three – and put the relevant links on your site – and that might be enough. If you’ve done good work on Tumblr, YouTube, or Pinterest, great. Loop us in. Keep your social media profiles up to date, also… And don’t worry about Vine.
Use video. One of our clients created a scrolling website with Manoverboard: A Stroke of Luck. It brilliantly incorporates video to help the material come to life. You might say that looks like it will cost me both an arm and a leg, and is contrary to our subtitle. Well, your videos can also be posted on YouTube and your site can simply have them embedded or linked out. Not hard.
Use links. Linking out, as to videos, is good. Give your readers links to stuff you love. Linking around your site so readers stay captivated inside your little world like a pinball hitting a bunch of bumpers is even better. And getting sites to link to you is the best, according to search engines…and by search engines I mean Google.
Capture people’s email addresses. Andrew and I go back and forth on the best way to do this. Ask for it? That has minimal effect in my opinion. Offer them a free gift, some “juicy opt-in” in the current lingo? (I have to confess that phrase makes me cringe, just a bit.) Or drop down that “hanging chad” as we call it, the sign-up form that blocks your view until you surrender your info or click the little “x” to get rid of it? I don’t know that there is a perfect solution. We’re working on a system whereby most of the content on bookarchitecture.com is free but you need to sign-up to unlock some of it. But since we haven’t done it yet, I’m going to stop there.
Don’t do your own design. Nobody told me to say this. I mean it. Maybe you don’t want to spend an arm and a leg but to get one of the best websites, one of the cool websites, you might have to spend an arm. I’m here to say I think it’s worth it. And you can be smart about it: on our Tour page I specifically asked to be able to update everything: the miniblog I write about my adventures on the road, the places where I am mentioned in the news, a list of my upcoming appearances – I don’t have to pay anyone to revise any of that, I can do it myself. And you’re hearing from a 46 year-old who learned BASIC in 7th grade…and that is the extent of my computer savvy.
Be hospitable. I think there’s a reason why they call it web “hosting,” and why the landing page of your site is called “home.” You are inviting people over. Make the design comfortable, with eye-pleasing typography and enough space to move around. And just like a house, you don’t need to build it all at once. If you are being cautious on your spending, you can start with three pages: Home/About the Author; Book/Tour/Media; and Blog/Feed – and add future pages as you go. And the Contact page, don’t forget about that, because even though there might be a way to connect with you on every page, people apparently still need a tab that says: CONTACT.
Your work. This one goes to eleven. If you call yourself a writer (because you are one), make sure to highlight your best work. Maybe you’ll showcase the top 7 most popular blog posts. Or feature your book on the homepage. Or let people know that you were a Rhodes Scholar. Don’t hide your writing behind fancy pictures and photos of your pets.
What do you think? Did we forget something crucial from this list above?
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
Love your advice! It’s practical, concise and I’m taking it to heart.
Thank you, keek! We definitely tried to only put forth advice that has worked…maybe next time we’ll do “How to Create a Website that No One Can Find and When They Do They Don’t Stay Long…” ’cause we definitely have enough material for that one too!
Hello Stuart.
Thanks for what I’m sure is excellent advice for writers faced with the need to have a website–and that would be all writers.
You are certainly right when you urge us to remember how reading is done on the Internet: you say readers “skip a lot, landing on the bolded or enlarged or italicized features….”
I did exactly that with your post: immediately after reading the words I’ve just quoted, I skipped down to “SEO the crap of it.”
Something’s wrong. I think you mean “SEO the crap out of it.” Are you responsible for the missing word? If not, then disregard what follows.
Is a missing word worth commenting on? Obviously I think it is, especially since it appears in bold type. And perhaps it’s fair to also think that the founder of “a firm of independent editors” should be held to a high standard.
Again, my apologies if this oversight isn’t yours. And make no mistake: I appreciate the valuable content in your post, and the good sense it makes to promote your new book by writing an article for WU. But I also think experts need to be accountable, and I hope you do, too.
Hello Barry!
Yes, that certainly is a typo and we will have it fixed immediately!
Thanks for bringing it to our attention — not sure where that breakdown occurred, but I appreciate your keen eye.
Off to email the correction now~~
S.
Hi Barry, Thanks for pointing out the missing word! I’ve corrected the typo; wish I’d caught it when I loaded the post, but I’m glad it’s set now. Hope you’re having a great weekend. Best, Julia
PATIENCE.
When I started blogging about three years ago, I received about 10,000 page views a month. Today that number is nearly 30,000 and growing.
EXCELLENT point, Christina. Just as we “build” a website, so we have to “build” an audience… those are the words we use, right? And building implies a plan, good materials, and a process of construction. It isn’t a magic trick after all…
I recently combined my website and my blog on WordPress, and am still noodling with it all to make it more professional looking. I can see from your article that I need to make some changes, especially to my home page. Look forward to your follow up on websites that nobody can find. Maybe that will help me rebuild my audience. My visits went down from several hundred a day to a number I’m embarrassed to even put here.
Hang in there, Maryann! Slow and steady wins the race. To a certain degree this is trial and error, and trial of course comes from trying… trying different things and seeing what works and what doesn’t (that’s the error part). But it doesn’t have to be a trial as in trial by fire!
Stuart, another main point is MOBILE FRIENDLY. This cannot be stressed enough, and though I’m sure you know it, most people don’t because they don’t visit their own sites on their phones and tablets.
The first thing I ask my clients is, “Have you looked at your site on your smart phone?” The reaction is right up there with the one we often have when asked, “Have you stepped on your scale lately?”
Seriously, the most common reaction is horror. I’m not kidding. So, that’s why I mention it here. If our readers cannot instantly (meaning FAST load time) and easily (meaning mobile optimized) read our site on their phones, we’re toast. They click away and we lose them, maybe forever.
So on point, Mia!!!
I know that from my own experience: the likelihood I am going to visit a site while on my smartphone, either relaxing, or in transit, or having been linked there by Facebook or Twitter while relaxing or in transit, or sitting in the car waiting (while not moving of course) for a child is very high. In fact, the ratio is probably two to one re: the time I am on my mobile device as opposed to my laptop or mainframe computer.
By all means check this view out and take steps to rectify what you see there!
I jumped onto this page as recommended by a friend.
Sage advise and very well written and to the point.
Thank you very much enjoyed this immensely.
So glad to hear it Vanessa! And thank your friend for us too :))
Thanks for advice. They’re all really useful and practical.
If you want your site to be successful and to get traffic to it you should use SEO techiniques (but not Black hat ones). And of course, the main thing is content. Yes, content is the King.
Well put, Pimion! Black hat techniques, for those of you who may be interested in such things, involve, for example, putting an absolute ton of related keywords in a freeform jumble on your pages, rather than working them into your •content• where appropriate, as Pimion mentions. Fortunately, the search engines are getting smarter and smarter and some of these techniques are being dismissed — while the pages with the truly great content (and relevant keyword checking) are moving up in the rankings…
A great conversation everyone.
Just to follow up on a couple of points. Mia, you’re absolutely right about making sure your site is mobile-friendly. We’re well past the point that the word “responsive” should be new – except that it somehow still is! A few weeks ago, Google even went out of its way to put a premium on mobile-friendly sites in search results. Or, put another way, they are pushing sites that are not mobile-friendly further down the page.
Also, WordPress is the bomb. Maryann, you’re spot on. It makes writing for, editing, and managing your site easier than ever. I would just encourage you to make your homepage as unique, engaging, and audience-focused as possible. The homepage should be less about how awesome you are and more about how you can help or inform or educate your reader. Or a bit of both, because you are awesome.
I am just setting out on the journey of writing a local history book and wish to create a WordPress site in order to write teasers in blog form to promote it.
The book will be published in July next year, so I’m wondering when would be the optimum time to launch the site? I figured 6 months out. What do you think?
I think that sounds right, Carol — you want to make sure that the time you spend blogging isn’t taking away from the quality of the book you are writing, so it is a tricky balance… The best case scenario is to have the book put to bed before you begin blogging but that timing is a luxury for most of us. Short answer: the sooner you can begin building your platform, the better!
A lot of material about websites is wrong, particularly that a website has to look “professional.” Ten years ago some of the top Internet marketers in the world were saying that the ugly websites outsell the vast majority of professional looking websites. This is still being said today by certain people who have great insight. For example, Seth Godin is one of the top marketing gurus in the world (with a heck of lot more books sold than most of the book marketing experts out there).
Here is one of Seth’s latest blog posts in which he says:
“Pretty websites … are rarely websites that convert as well as unpretty ones.”
https://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/05/pretty-websites.html
Check out my author website. I agree that it is crappy. Yet I make a lot more money from my books (mainly self-published with over 875,000 copies sold) than over 95 percent of authors. Incidentally, I don’t blog and I work less than an hour a day. I also avoid Twitter and LinkedIn, sometimes using Facebook to post twisted jokes and the odd item celebrating a milestone for one of my books. Why do I do so well? Ultimately the best marketing for any book is to have a great book. A great book creates world-of-mouth advertising, which is the most powerful form of marketing.
As Michael Korda, former Executive with Simon & Schuster, stated,
“Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don’t want to read.”
Great post, Stuart. Practical, concise and fun! I’ve been working with others on their websites for years, but I have yet to create my own … maybe this will inspire me. :)
When is a website advisable if you are not published? Color me a total noob writer. After years of reading, I started typing instead and finally have a first draft. Another article mentioned agents look for web presence, but is it worth starting a blog or a website when you don’t have anything to sell yet? Thanks for the nice article!
Hi Melody!
Can I interest you in a book on revision instead?.. :)
I’m joking. Partly. In your case, I would say it is too soon, and I hardly •ever• say that. I’m saying that in your case because I really think you need to have the book dialed in before you worry about all the bells and whistles that come later. Maybe after the section draft? Good luck and keep going!!!