McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
When to start an author website?
Wordmaker:
Worry less, write more ;)
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Shecky on March 05, 2013, 11:25:56 AM ---There's a huge gap between what the publisher does and the author's personal presence.
--- End quote ---
Indeed, but irritating the heck out of your publishers or potential publishers is not necessarily a net win. I can think of more than one fairly respected genre author who ended a career that way.
--- Quote ---Personal websites/blogs/social-media presence (or, more to the point, POSTING on them) go very far towards that and are not something a publisher's marketing department could do. Nor should they; it's not their job. Being yourself, putting yourself out there, that's yours.
--- End quote ---
I truly hope nobody ever asks me to make it mine.
Wordmaker:
In today's publishing industry, it's incumbent on the author to build and maintain their own online platform. Many publishers these days won't take you on unless you're at least willing to promote yourself online. Some won't take you on unless they can already look you up and see how you're presenting yourself.
It's extremely unlikely that you're irriate potential publishers. Not unless you do something foolish like talk trash about another author or go on a rant if you receive a rejection. Pro-tip: Never talk trash about any author, book, agent or publisher. It will come back to bite you.
Readers want to connect with authors, to know them as people, not just names on their book covers. And really, it doesn't take much work to maintain your platform using a blog and Twitter/Facebook. I manage it with a full-time job and a set of 3-month-old twins.
Shecky:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on March 05, 2013, 04:11:32 PM ---Indeed, but irritating the heck out of your publishers or potential publishers is not necessarily a net win. I can think of more than one fairly respected genre author who ended a career that way.
--- End quote ---
Maintaining a personal online presence is in no way equivalent to "irritating your publisher". Being irritating online by deliberately contravening requests they've made is.
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on March 05, 2013, 04:11:32 PM ---I truly hope nobody ever asks me to make it mine.
--- End quote ---
These days, it's a given. The writing/reading world has changed fundamentally in the course of our lifetimes. Today's citizen may not actually demand direct contact with the artist, but it's far, far closer to the norm than it used to be, and putting out some sort of contact is rapidly becoming a sine qua non of the profession. Look, for example, at how many current urban fantasy authors are not only on Twitter but active there. Readers are beginning to expect that sort of thing.
Galvatron:
As far as trending goes, speaking from the standpoint of someone that buys an absurd amount of books, I've never much cared about whats popular as far as picking what to take home from the book store. After all I have to like it, and it doesnt matter much to me what others like.
I do agree at lot with what Wordmaker said about say vampires -or any other over used product- because I tend to get annoyed by reading the same ole thing again and again.
A good example, the zombie genre, after World War Z and the Walking Dead took off, the selves where flooded with zombie books, but very few offered anything new, and the authors doing their take on World War Z, well I had already read that, and didnt need to read a knock of version.
I will say some authors manage to take concepts that are way overused and put their own spin on it and make it fresh. A good example would be David Wellignton, I think his vampire novels are nice and different, yes he uses vampires but they are the more 30 Days of Night style vamp, and no one sparkels, so im ok with it.
Also his Monster Island books have a different feel to them than other zombie type books.
Just my two cents, make your stuff have its own feel to it, make it good, and don't worry about whats popular or when it will be published. People are still buying the WOT, LotR, and Dune books after how many years?
Trends come and go, good books are always good books
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version