Kerry Allen left a most excellent comment in our discussion of promotional items:
Sometimes the thing you want people to see is buried away from the front page of the web site
If the thing you want people to see is buried away from the front page of the web site, you need to move it. Immediately.
Everything necessary to convince a reader she must have your most recent release should be on your home page. Cover, back cover copy, pub date, retail price, ISBN, review snippets, author blurbs, obvious READ THIS ENORMOUS EXCERPT link. Hell, make it easy to buy by providing links directly to its page at Amazon, B&N, Borders, and anyone else who sells the thing online in paper or e form. (Double hell, become affiliates with those sites and make an extra five cents or whatever off sales made through those links.)
Bury the “extras” away from the front page. Put the product front and center.
Amen, sister!
One topic I’ve been stalking from the perimeter is author web sites. In the age of WYSIWYG site building tools and templates galore, it’s relatively easy and therefore a requirement to have a web site. But what about the content and organization thereof?
Sadly, there are some sites that are just confusing, poorly organized, and are all bang with no buck. If I go to the site looking for something, I can’t find it, and either I’m navigating a pile of links that seem to have been added with no organizational thought, or I’m trying to figure out why the designer chose non sequitur images instead of words to represent topics for web content.
Now, before I get the hellfire of the internet brought down on my wee little head, let me state: I used to run a business designing websites for not-for-profits, some of which were in both Hebrew and English. So I know a small amount whereof I speak when it comes to making content easy to find and quick to access. Hell hath no fury like a parent of a camper who is told that the health form is not on file, and who can’t find it easily for download on the camp website. Trust me. You ain’t seen fury like camper parent fury.
So when I browse the wild wooly internet looking at author sites, I’m so befuddled: either the sites are an organizational hodgepodge of text on top of more text with graphics thrown in willy-nilly, or they’re overproduced monsters of Flashtastic presentation that kill a dialup connection in 2 seconds and leave those of us on high speed connections confused because we can’t find anything.
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A website that reviews romance novels from a couple of smart bitches who will always give it to you straight. No bullshit. No gushing--unless the author really deserves it.
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Man. I can’t wait to see it! I’d be going Friday night if I didn’t have a class. So, we are going on Saturday afternoon.
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Am I the only one who REMEMBERS “Murphy Brown?”
I loved that show, Silver, and my hair proves I was around to watch every new episode. Don’t let these youngsters get to you. :)
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I feel like I should be dabbing away a line of dribble from the side of his mouth in that first picture, bad artist! *newspaper smack* I read and loved all the books, but this movie makes me cringe baaaad. …
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