Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

I get this question every once in a while from unpublished writers inquiring about our services.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

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I’ll be blunt: I don’t get book videos.

As a reader, they generally do nothing for me. And as a web designer involved with author promotion, I’ve been struggling to understand the value vs. the cost of them. So in an effort to educate myself and perhaps shed some light on the situation, I’d like to take a closer look at this promotional tool, from my perspectives as a reader and as an industry professional. (And I want to note that I don’t offer book videos as part of my services, never have and probably never will, so these are my unbiased observations.)

AS A READER

The reader in me agrees with author Brenda Coulter’s opinions on book videos, as written in her July 2006 blog entry Those boring book trailers:

Lately I’ve been seeing an awful lot of book trailers, which means I’ve seen a lot of awful book trailers. What’s a book trailer? Nothing more than a 30-second hyped-up slide show with a soundtrack.

[…]

Listen, I’m no marketing expert, but I am a bookbuyer, and one who uses the internet daily. That means book trailers are aimed at me. So when I say they aren’t impressing me, maybe some of the authors and publishers who are so excited about the things ought to pay some attention.

[…]

Frankly, the trailers just aren’t clever enough to induce anyone to link to them and make them go “viral.” As I mentioned earlier, they’re just slide shows. They suggest movement by jiggling the photos and spinning them and zooming in and out, but those of us with broadband are used to watching real video clips on the internet, so we’re a hard bunch to impress.

Most of the videos I’ve seen contain still photos, so the “slide show with a soundtrack” bit sums up pretty well why those don’t interest the reader in me. There’s nothing that grabs my attention about the zooming in and sliding back and forth on stock photos, set to what I’m assuming is a stock audio track, and text that amounts to just a slow, agonizing presentation of the cover blurb of the book.

The next tier of videos, those containing stock footage (i.e. video clips instead of still photos) aren’t much better. It’s basically just a slight upgrade, and their ability to hold my attention is just slightly higher. The final and most advanced kind of video is the one using live actors and original footage. One example of this is L.A. Banks’ trailer for her Vampire Huntress series. If I were into vampire books, this one might piqué my interest, but I have one major problem with it: it’s way too long.

Here’s the deal. I have a short attention span. And I don’t think I’m the only one. Authors are advised that they have to hook their readers’ attention with the first paragraphs of a book. If you apply that mentality to a book video, then it has to do some major attention grabbing in the first scene. And then with each second that passes, keeping the viewer’s attention just becomes exponentially more difficult. IMHO, a great book video is only 30 seconds long. If it goes on for more than 60 seconds, you’ve lost me. It takes me 30-60 seconds to read a cover blurb, so if a video drags on for longer than that and doesn’t offer me anything the blurb doesn’t, then it’s a waste of my time.

Besides length, my other beef is with the cover blurb aspect I just mentioned, the “slide show with a soundtrack.” In most videos, there’s just too much text. And the pace of the text is much slower than the pace at which I read, so half of the time I’m just watching the zooming and fading effects of the photos and said text while I’m waiting for something new to appear. What I liked the most about the Vampire Huntress trailer I linked to above was the narration by the protagonist. It gave a fresh perspective, and it wasn’t just an abbreviated version of the cover blurb. Another good example is Sandra Hill’s Pearl Jinx. This one is way too long as well, but the banter between the hero and heroine is fun and unique. It didn’t make me want to read the book, but it came very, very close. Bottom line is, I don’t want to read the blurb in the form of a slow book video. I’d be surprised if there are any readers who do.

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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!

“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 about 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!