March 30th, 2008
I get this question every once in a while from unpublished writers inquiring about our services. It’s always been tough for me to answer it, since from my side of the table as the developer of websites, it’s hard to judge the real value of taking this plunge. The question behind the question is, of course: Can a website or a blog help an aspiring author make that first sale? I figured it was time to do some research on the topic by getting answers out of agents and of published authors who had a web presence before they sold.
Can a website or blog help you get an agent?
The short answer is: Yes. Agents (and to some extent, probably also editors) do visit your blogs and websites, and what they find there can impact their decision to request materials from you. All of the agents I surveyed said that if they find your query or partial interesting, then they’ll most likely visit any URL you’ve included in your query or cover letter. Agent Kristin Nelson said that in cases where she’s unsure about requesting more material, what she finds on a blog or website is more likely to sway her one way or another. While the agent’s decision to offer representation will depend on the manuscript itself, your web presence can help motivate the agent to take a closer look at it in the first place. For an even more encouraging example, agent Lori Perkins said, “I read about a book published by a small press, Googled the author, went to her blog, where I found an excerpt from the book. After reading it, I knew she could write, so I emailed her about representation.”
Can a website or blog hurt you in your search for an agent?
Definitely! When an agent visits your home on the web, she is looking for more info about your writing and info about you, the writer. The importance of professionalism can’t be stressed enough. Kristin Nelson points out that a site that’s obviously homegrown leaves a bad impression and can actually do more damage than good. Content that the agent finds off-putting can make her decide you’re not someone she’d like to work with or that you’re not serious about your career.
Keep in mind that your URL in a query or cover letter is not the only way an agent can find you on the web. They visit many of the same sites that you do and could follow any link you leave behind. They might be pointed to your website by an acquaintance. Or they might actually Google your name to see what they can find about you. Several agents admit to Googling writers they’re curious about, so consider that not only when you add content to your own site or blog but also when you post anything on other people’s blogs and message boards. If you come off as unprofessional or say something that rubs the agent the wrong way, you could get a “no thanks” instead of a request.
Do’s and Don’ts
So what are agents looking for on your blog or website, and what do they not want to see?
Samples of your writing are probably the most important. If your query or partial interests them, they might visit your site looking for more excerpts. Information about your other projects could be helpful, too. You could talk about your research and writing process. Mention anything positive as relates to your pursuit of a career as an author—conferences and workshops you’ve attended, contests you’ve won, and critique groups you’re a member of.
The number one thing to avoid is adding too much personal information. A “this is what I did today” blog generally won’t impress an agent, unless you write it in a way that shows off your voice and writing skills. Agent Marlene Stringer of the Barbara Bova Literary Agency said, “This is a great venue to show off your writing chops, and I can get a better feel for your writing style overall if you’re writing about other topics. This is especially useful if you’re writing in a genre that is hot at the moment, but might not be next year. Lets me see you can write other things.”
Marlene adds a warning that unpublished authors should be careful about dispensing advice on the publishing business when it’s clear they have very little actual experience to back it up. Agent Jessica Faust of BookEnds similarly cautions against talking about sensitive issues such as politics. It’d be very unfortunate if you got a rejection because the agent felt offended by your personal beliefs.
Finally, be careful about talking too much about your submissions. Agents prefer not to know that you’ve received X number of rejections for the manuscript they’re considering—they tend to find that discouraging.
Advice from published authors
January 30th, 2008
After a busy winter, we have finally updated the portfolio with seven (yes, seven!) new websites, one new blog design, and three new MySpace templates.
We’re also thrilled to announce that Vibeke has joined Romancing the Blog as a regular columnist. Her first two columns have been reposted below, and her third entry went up today, where she takes a closer look at book trailers. Click here to read it now! Check out the sidebar for upcoming blog dates and tentative topics.
January 30th, 2008
I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t like free stuff. The great thing about anything that’s free is that if it disappoints you, you’ve essentially lost nothing except the time it took you to check it out. Today I’m going one step further to save you that time and give you a list of online freebies that are not only really, really cool but also useful and definitely worth taking a closer look at.
Let me start with what has been one of the most helpful tools for me business wise and personally as well: www.MemoToMe.com If you’re like me and have a gazillion things that you need to remember to do, this site’s services will be a godsend. Schedule a reminder for yourself, and you’ll get an email at the time that you specify. If it’s a weekly or monthly event, you can schedule it as such, and you’ll only have to do it once. There’s even the equivalent of a snooze button—you can get emails about the same event, say, three days in a row, just in case you’re one of those, you know, procrastinators… You can also upgrade to their platinum membership, where you have more control over the way your reminders look, you can send to more than one email address, and you can even send reminders to your cell phone. This is not free, but—and this is a big “but”—you set your own annual price. That’s right. You decide how much you think the service is worth, and that’s how much you pay. It doesn’t get much cooler than that.
I’m sure most of you have at least heard of the blogging/publishing platform Wordpress, but I couldn’t very well do a post on great free stuff without mentioning it, especially since it’s safe to say that even RTB wouldn’t be what it is without Wordpress. Outside of sites such as Blogger and Livejournal, it seems to be the most popular choice of bloggers, and for good reasons. Set-up is a breeze, and it can be customized to your heart’s content. Everything is absolutely free, including the tons and tons of plugins and add-ons that make Wordpress so much fun to play with. And you don’t even need to have a web space of your own to enjoy many of the advantages of this blogging tool—for anyone who wants to use Wordpress without paying a single dime, there’s Wordpress.com where you can get your own WP blog even more quickly and easily. Oh, and if you do decide to go with your own website and set it all up yourself, check out the Wordpress Basic workshop on AccessRomance that was hosted by the fabulous Frauke of Croco Designs along with some other WP experts. The workshop is now open to the public for reading with no forum registration needed. Easy peasy!
On a related topic, if you have your own website, be it a Wordpress site or a regular ol’ site with HTML pages, you’re most likely using some sort of FTP program to upload and download your files. I’ve been using FTP programs for close to 10 years, and until recently, I hadn’t found one that made me 100% happy. With as much uploading of files as I do, I need a smart FTP program with all the bells and whistles that’s at the same time easy to use. When my tech guy Walt (incidentally also the tech wiz who handles any issues on RTB—let’s give him a round of applause for all his hard work!) mentioned the open source project FileZilla, I was skeptical. Could a freebie do everything I needed from an FTP program? Short answer: Yes. Slightly longer answer: Yes, and then some. This is a program that’s so powerful and yet so simple that it’ll work just as well for a beginner as it would a professional. I’m in love!
Moving on to another open source project, this one of particular use for authors: phplist. A while back we were struggling with finding the best way to manage our clients’ mailing lists. The software we were using was a behemoth, an old and outdated kind of program that incidentally was also a terrible resource hog. Oh, and did I mention that the professional version with all the advanced features was not free? We eventually moved on to phplist and haven’t looked back. Now, installing, setting up, and using this program is not for beginners, unless you’re an adventurous amateur. But if you have the savvy or have an unsuspecting relative or friend who does, consider phplist for managing your mailing list and sending out professional newsletters. One word of caution, though: Make sure you know your web host’s policy on newsletter mailings. Because of spam problems, there are often limitations on what ways you’re allowed to build a mailing list and what ways you’re allowed to send out newsletters. When it comes to respecting your host’s terms of service, better be safe than sorry!
And speaking of nuisances like spam… Did you know there are free ways to protect your computer and your privacy? I’ve never been a fan of the most common for-purchase virus/spam/spyware protection. They always seem to be big programs that, seeing as they need to run in the background at all times, take up resources and slow down your computer. The free stuff is generally so much simpler and equally effective. For a great, free virus protection program, try AVG Anti-Virus Free. 9 out of 10 geeks swear by it—or at least, that seems to be the case. To detect and destroy of spyware and other kinds of malware that could slow down or even crash your computer as well as endanger your privacy, you have options such as Ad-Aware, Spybot – Search & Destroy, and Spysweeper. It’s always a good idea to routinely clean up your computer with at least two different spyware protection programs, since one might find stuff the other program didn’t, and that way you’ll cover the most ground.
These are my personal recommendations. I also asked some friends with know-how if they had anything to add, so here are a few more.
Author Alison Kent recommends Open Office (free equivalent of Microsoft Office)
Author Lydia Joyce recommends:
-Zone Alarm (a firewall, for even more protection)
-Windows Defender (spyware protection)
-McAfee Site Advisor (even more protection!)
-IRFAN View (open source image/photo editor)
-Google Docs (free online word processor and spreadsheet)
-KompoZer (open source HTML editor)
And finally, Lydia also mentioned Ubuntu, the open source Linux based operating system. If you decide to install this, however, you’re braver than me!
Now, bring on the freebies. If you have anything to add, feel free (pun intended) to do so!
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This article first appeared on Romancing the Blog.
January 30th, 2008
“Can I have a Flash movie on my home page? Can my design look like a big desk with clickable graphics? Can I have music?”
Those are just a handful of the questions I’ve been asked when brainstorming a website design with a new client. I could name tons of other examples where clients have seen some cool effects on other sites and are wondering if they could do the same. Some of it’s technically advanced, other stuff is simple, but what all of these features have in common is that they’re visually or functionally impressive.
Every time I’m asked about these things, I groan.
Don’t get me wrong. I love cool visual tricks as much as the next web geek. I’ll agree that Flash animations are pretty darned awesome, if only because they’re fairly easy to do with some fantastic results. I think it’s just wonderful that you no longer need the knowledge of a computer programmer to add these features to a website. All of that is great, and if the client insists, I’m more than happy to do it. Except for music. You have to draw the line somewhere.
What usually makes me caution clients against these things is when they’ve given more thought to those neat effects than to the actual content of their sites. A huge part of my job as a Web site designer is teaching and giving advice on more or less everything to do with my clients’ online presence–the technical stuff, the visual design, and yes, the content. I enjoy giving advice, and I don’t charge a dime for it, but there’s only so much I can do. When you visit a site I’ve created, what you’re seeing is my translation of the client’s vision. All too often, that vision didn’t include spending a lot of time and effort on the actual information to be included on the website.
I can’t emphasize enough what a crucial error this is. Most of my clients are authors, and I can pretty successfully advise them on the basic content that an author’s website should contain. Book information, of course. It’s all about the books! Or at least, it should be. Like me, you’ve probably visited some authors’ sites where you had to do an Easter egg hunt for even the tiniest hint of info about the author’s upcoming book. Looking for a complete, printable back list? You might have to click and click and click until finally you spot a microscopic link stuck in the least obvious spot.
How to create a quality website for an author is a continuing learning experience for me, and these days I’m thinking more and more that we need to get back to the basics. In the early days of the Internet, before all those cool special effects, the focus was on the content. There was text–sometimes well-organized, sometimes not, but usually lots of it. Information that made it worthwhile to visit that site.
I’d love it if more of my clients gave more thought to their content. Clients who know that when it comes to their books, there’s no such thing as too much information. You need the basics: the publishing details, the blurb, the reviews, and please don’t forget the excerpt! But why stop there? The possibilities are endless. Behind the scenes notes. Research notes (you know, the stuff that you learned but still couldn’t actually use in the book?). Images, but with awareness of copyright limitations. Original, unique content that can’t be found elsewhere on the Internet is key. The author’s website is often the only place readers can find info about a series of books, and it’s always the most convenient place to find it. This is still information that quite a few authors don’t include on their sites, much to their readers’ frustration.
It’s entirely possible to have a visually stunning website with tons of meaty content. The designer will take care of the visual part, but the content? That’s up to the author to provide. Writers are creatively minded people who should have no problem coming up with interesting and compelling content that will make visiting their websites a fun and informational experience.
To illustrate what I mean, I’d like to spotlight a handful of my clients that have some great, unique content on their sites:
Elizabeth Hoyt has lots of articles with tidbits she ran across during her research as well as some fun essays related to her books on her Extras page. She also has a special page for booksellers and librarians and one for book clubs.
Sydney Croft’s site has an entire area devoted to more information about the world in the ACRO series, including a page with profiles of the main characters in the series. This is all stuff that can only be found on Sydney’s website.
Dara Girard also has a special section on her website, this one focusing on her wealth of information for writers, including downloadable articles and lots of useful links.
Larissa Ione shares one of her non-writing related passions with her Bestiary section: information about animals and pets, including debunking some animal myths and tons of information abot feline diabetes.
And finally, perhaps some of the coolest and most uniqe content you can find on Julia Holden’s website in the Julia’s Paris section. Here you can get virtual tours of Paris with images and videos lined up next to the snippets from Julia’s books that those locations inspired.
Now, I’ve scratched only the surface of my opinions on the topic of content. But what about you? Is there information you feel is sorely missing from a lot of authors’ sites? And let’s give kudos where it’s due: tell me about authors’ sites that you think provide a lot of fabulous content. I’d love to hear what you think!
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This article first appeared on Romancing the Blog.
September 4th, 2007
Go to http://www.accessromance.com/classes/ to check out our upcoming classes. Talented author and powerful writer Lydia Joyce will be teaching a workshop called NARRATIVE CONTROL: MAKING ACTION EXCITING AND SEX SCENES HOT, and the generous and knowledgable Frauke of Croco Designs (and some guest speakers) will host two classes on the blogging/publishing platform WordPress. The first class, WordPress Basic, is FREE!
August 28th, 2007
We received this information from a former lawyer who looked into the sweepstakes issue for one of our authors. Again, this is not meant as a substitute for consulting a lawyer on your own if you have questions regarding your contests.
On December 13, 1999, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Deceptive Mail Prevention and Enforcement Act, an act that regulates sweepstakes advertised through the mail. The Act imposes a set of restrictions on all materials sent in the U.S. mail that include entry materials for a sweepstakes or any promotion purporting to be a sweepstakes. It exempts newspapers or magazines if the advertisement is either not aimed at an individual or does not ask for a payment or order in connection with the sweepstakes. The Act requires the following:
- The mailing, the rules, and any order or entry form must disclose in a manner more conspicuous than all other required statements:
- No purchase is necessary to enter the sweepstakes; and
- A purchase will not improve an individual’s chances of winning the sweepstakes.
- Elsewhere in the mailing, the materials must disclose:
- All terms and conditions of the promotion, including the Official Rules and entry procedures; and
- The sponsor or mailer of the material, and its principal place of business or contact address.
- The Official Rules must state:
- Estimated odds of winning;
- Quantity, estimated retail value and nature of each prize; and
- The schedule of any payments, if any, made over time.
- The materials may not make representations that:
- A person will be disqualified from future sweepstakes for refusing to make a purchase;
- Entry in the sweepstakes must be submitted with an order or a payment for previous order;
- Someone is a winner of a prize unless he or she has actually won a prize; or
- Contradict or qualify the Official Rules or any other mandatory disclosure.
- A business that mails sweepstakes materials must take steps to ensure that it removes the names and addresses of anyone who so requests from its mailing list.
- Requests may be written directly to the mailer, or written to the state Attorney General and forwarded to the mailer. The business must keep records of these contacts for 5 years.
- The business that mails the sweepstakes materials is required to disclose in all mailings a toll-free number or address where requests to be removed from a mailing list may be directed. Upon receipt of a request, the business has 60 days to remove the name from the list. Mailings may not resume to anyone requesting removal from the list through these channels until the business receives notification from the consumer.
The Act imposes similar restrictions on contests of skill. In addition to stating all terms and conditions of a skill contest and the name or address of the sponsor, any mailing announcing a skill contest must include the following:
- Number of rounds or levels of the contest and the cost to enter each round;
- That subsequent rounds or levels will be more difficult to solve;
- Maximum cost to enter all rounds or levels;
- Estimated number or percentage of entrants who may correctly solve the skill contest, or the number or percentage of entrants who correctly solved the previous three skill contests conducted by the sponsor;
- Identity or qualifications of any judges;
- Method used in any judging;
- Date winners will be determined and the date or process by which prizes will be awarded;
- Quantity, estimated retail value and nature of each prize; and
- The schedule of any payments made over time.
Finally, the Act requires that all facsimile checks must carry a statement that the check is not a negotiable instrument and has no cash value. Penalties for violation of the Act include a national injunction on mailings and fines up to $1 million. If a business continues to send mail to someone who has requested to be removed from a list, the mailer might additionally be subject to a civil suit.
August 10th, 2007
One of our clients recently was looking for a redesign, and because of a limited budget, she went to a different designer who could cheaply do a fresh design and set up a Wordpress website for her. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out between her and that designer, who couldn’t come up with a design she was happy with. But the worst part about this was that the designer required full payment upfront with no refunds, meaning this author lost nearly $500 and has no new website.
If you hire a designer that requires full payment upfront, this could happen to you, too. We recommend you avoid these businesses altogether, but if you decide their work is good enough to take such a risk, make sure that you will be entitled to at least a partial refund if things don’t work out. There should be an official agreement of this, and you should have it in writing.
At DreamForge, we don’t require any kind of deposits–our clients only pay us when they have a finished product that they’re happy with. This might be considered risky on our part, because we take the chance that we’ll do hours and hours of work that we might never get paid for. However, after being in business for four years and creating websites for more than 50 clients, this has only happened to us once. We think of the way we conduct our business as an act of faith, on our part and on the part of the client. We do everything we possibly can to make our clients happy, and our clients work with us until they have a product they think is worth paying us for.
So, before you hand over your money, be careful and know what you’re entitled to get in return. A designer that requires a partial non-refundable deposit might make you hesitate but could still be worth it. One that requires a full non-refundable payment upfront should make you run in the opposite direction.
