Episode 66: What the F do I do with my website?

In this week’s episode, JP and Crys talk all about the dos and don’ts of author websites. They discuss website must-haves, goals of your author website, reaching your target audience, and different tools to help you get there.

Question of the week: have you set up your website yet? And if not, what’s keeping you from doing so?  Share your answer here!

Don’t miss our weekly check in on Patreon (it’s public!) where we talk about what we’re currently learning, any thoughts we missed in last week’s episode, and our plans for this week!

Show Notes

Your Book, Your Brand by Dana Kaye

Rachel Amphlett’s Website 

Support us on Patreon!

Transcript

JP: Hello friends. This is episode number 66 of the Write Away Podcast and it is the 21st of October as we are recording. I’m JP Rindfleisch with my cohost…

Crys: Crys Cain.

JP: Hello, Crys. How has your week been?

Crys: Absolute insanity. I am sitting in Vancy in a parking lot in New Orleans at the moment. Thankfully I’m actually staying in the hotel. But I went from event to event, and I’ve never done two events this close to each other and I don’t think I ever will again. The event hasn’t even started and I am in complete overwhelm.

JP: I can’t blame you. I’m still in overwhelm from the last event and I’m not joining you on the second one.

Crys: Yeah.

So last weekend, three days ago, four days ago, JP and I were at a workshop for Three-Story Method editors in Cleveland, Ohio. And it was delightful. It was oh, what’s the word? Something that gives you confidence. Like it gave me confidence, that’s something we’ve both talked about. We both have more confidence that, yeah, we know what we know. Emboldened, maybe was the word I was looking for, but even that doesn’t feel quite right.

And then I immediately hit the road and drove all the way down to New Orleans in three days. And I have not slept enough. And my to-do list is far too long and I’ve forgotten crucial things. They did not get done in the time in which they could get done, should get done.

I should really just go park by the river because that would make the picture complete. Like under a bridge, living in a van under a bridge, completely overwhelmed.

JP: I mean, you’re not wrong. But that does sound slightly wonderful to be parked under a bridge.

Crys: I was talking to our friend, Janet Kitto, who joins us for the book club. And we were having a good catch up because I’ve been so busy that I haven’t really been able to keep her up to date on what’s going on over here. And as I was reiterating everything, I was like, I really just need three days for a complete reset to get to feeling like decent fast.

And that’s literally impossible at this point. Like I need three days where I’m not mom, where I don’t have work, where my only responsibility is to sleep. And I don’t see that happening for several years.

JP: Yay. That sounds terrible. I’m sorry.

Crys: Yeah, it is what it is. But how about you?

JP: You’ve made me glad that I didn’t secretly join the second event because I’m also still very tired, or like recovering from the weekend. And we took our van, Hank the Tank, and we went to a campground for two days before the event. And then we went to a camp ground the day after. I think if I were to do it again, I would camp for a full week before and a full week after, because there’s so much movement and not enough time to really enjoy where we were. Not to say that we didn’t, but we were there for one day after the event and we felt a little rushed. So even that moment of slight serenity was a moment of, oh, we gotta get back home. But yeah, I think that would be my plan moving forward.

In terms of the workshop, that was so much fun because we stayed in a Airbnb with almost all of the other writers, not all of them, but almost all of them. And I don’t know, I’m going to highly recommend that as a means whenever people go to events and conferences because there is a collective feeling that I always get whenever I’m in a space with people after the presentations, after the talks, it’s the downtime afterwards, and being able to be in this like communal space and potentially with more bedrooms.

But that way people can sneak off into their own space if they need it. But realistically, there’s just so much brain stuff that was happening for hours after the event. And I love those things. I love where ideas come from those. So that’s my takeaway.

Crys: All I have to add to that is that I found a mansion in Kentucky that is available for about $600 a night in the winter. It’s double that in the summer. But it has 12 bedrooms and 33 beds, just saying.

JP: Just saying that sounds wonderful. I don’t even need a conference to go to that. I just need a collection of writers that just want to hang out.

Crys: Also, hot tub and indoor heated pool. And it had three areas that literally looked like cafes.

JP: That basically sounds like, do you want to leave? You don’t have to.

Crys: Hey, we’re taking over this for the entire NaNoWriMo.

JP: Ooh, that would be really fun. We should consider that a few years from now.

Crys: Indeed. So one of the things that we’ve both been doing, at least mentally for me, I haven’t actively been working on it, is our websites lately.

And so one of the questions I threw at you for potential this week was: what the F do I do with my website? Which is a question I get a lot from other writers. What is your answer to that question, JP?

JP: Keep it simple.

Crys: 100%.

JP: Biggest thing for me, keep it simple. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you just need one page. That’s it. And if you only have a couple of books out, or one book out, one page. Make it very simple. For me, I have three pages, my title page, my books, and my about. And I’m about to add in author services as another. I’m trying to keep it as lean as possible because I want people to be directed appropriately.

Crys: Yeah. The most important thing on any author website is how to get readers to your books. Like yes, you do want an about page, you may even want to contact page. And that’s not actually for readers, that’s for foreign rights people to contact you.

And there’s some other elements that are in your page, you want a way for people to join your newsletter if you have one. Though, some people only put that in the back of their books, the page they generally direct to is a hidden one on their website and that’s valid too. Some people only want people who’ve read their books to be on their newsletter. I don’t feel that strongly, but I also use an extremely cheap newsletter service. So anyone joining my newsletter isn’t expensive for me. When you get to higher levels of MailChimp, or if you’re using something like Convert Kit, a lot of people only want the people who really want their emails. And I’m like, eh, anybody can have my email. It’s cheap. It costs me a fraction of a cent every email. It’s fine.

JP: What service do you use?

Crys: I use Sendy, and you actually install it on your server and then use Amazon’s cloud services to send your emails. So it requires a bit of setup. Our friend Steven Snyder is going to be putting together some how-tos and stuff on that. If you are looking for help on installing something like that, he’ll be the guy to go to.

So newsletter signup, your quick bio, and how to get your books, like those are the three necessities. Contact page is really nice. You can have your freebies, you can have a store, but those are all things that you can develop after the fact. You don’t need them when you’re starting out.

JP: Yeah. It’s so overwhelming to get your website up and going. And just one page, just do one page.

So I use Send Fox as my mail service and because of the serials it makes it easier for me to do a weekly thing because I get episodes every week. And Send Fox has a very clean way of getting emails out for me to write up. And that was my biggest issue with some of the other services I was using, is there’s a lot of clicks to get to where I need to go. And with Send Fox, it feels so clean and simple that I can do it without having to like panic about how many buttons I have to press.

Crys: Yeah. That’s absolutely fair. What else?

JP: For me, my homepage, because I have multiple pages. This was something I learned from one of the events we went to this year. I think it was from Dana, but I could be wrong.

Crys: By Dana, he means Dana Kaye, the author of Your Book, Your Brand, which we’re reading for our book club this month.

JP: And I believe it was her. She said that on the home page when you talk about yourself, to think about it in terms of someone presenting you or someone talking about you. What are the things that you want them to say within two to three sentences. I’m still working on it a little bit, but I think that really helped me hone in what that looks like on the homepage. As opposed to the about page where you can go crazy and write whatever backstory you want.

But realistically on your homepage, you don’t need people to know that you have a billion animals or those things about your life. Really, you’re trying to hone in on what is your brand, or what books do you write, what have you released recently. That’s the chunk of information that you want people to know so that when they present you, when podcasts reach out to you and they want to introduce you, that’s the info that they are going to grab.

Crys: Now, that version is going to be different whether you’re positioning yourself as an author versus a service provider. Like whether you’re positioning yourself to readers or whether you’re positioning yourself to other authors. Depending on which is your actual focus, for most of us I think for long-term it should be the readers. That will change what that little blurb is.

Like for readers, my little off the cuff elevator pitch for myself is: Crys Cain writes addictive, adventurous science fiction and fantasy that takes you away from your daily life, that lets you escape from your daily life. Whereas for services or for writing podcasts, it would be: Crys Cain is a best-selling author, has sold more than 200,000 copies, going from next to homeless, to six-figure author in two years. And it’d be something more along those lines of, here’s my credentials. Readers don’t care about your credentials. They want to know, what do you write?

JP: That’s very true.

And in both cases though, it’s short, because anything that’s like pages and pages worth of content, especially on that homepage, not quite as appealing.

Crys: Now, one of the cool things that you can do, and trad-pub authors are much better at this and you can look at them for examples, is on your about page you can actually have like media packets. So that if you do intend on getting podcasts a lot, you can give them your super short version of your bio, your medium version of your bio, your long version of your bio, headshot, and if you have a particular topic that you like hone in on and that’s your thing you talk about. This is more for when you’re on writing podcasts, you can even put like, Hey, here are some basic questions that you can ask me to get the conversation started.

And you can also do that for reading stuff if you’re on readers podcasts, but it would be more of like kind of book club question-y things. But look to trad-pub authors for examples on that. So again, that’s like a phase two-step, that’s not beginning steps.

JP: Definitely. What is your books page look like?

Crys: I’m going to talk about my romance because clearly I don’t have anything under Crys Cain yet. So on that, I have my quick about, and then I have three books displayed prominently. And that is my most recently released, like my best seller that most people like enter into my fiction with, and then just whatever book I want to feature recently. So that’s like my home page. And then on my books page, I have all of my series listed out. I use a plugin that lets me put in my covers, a lot of information about my books. I go a little next level with it because I’ve been working with author websites for quite a while and so I’m very aware of what plugins I like to use because I like to use plugins. But you can literally just whatever is your “also by” in the back of your own books, you could absolutely just use that.

Currently I’m using a plugin called Novelist and I think I have a little bit of custom coding for this to display it the way I like. But Novelist, you put in your cover, you can set up what series it is in, you put in your synopsis, you can put in links to all your different retailers, and what number it is in the series. And then on my books page then it has all of my series in the order I want them displayed. And then little thumbnails of each of the books and then a quick blurb about what the series is. And then you can click into the individual books to read the full synopsis of the individual book. And at the bottom of each of those book pages, it also links all of the series books. It’s really slick, I really like it.

JP: Yeah. I’m looking at it now cause I’m a creeper. I like it in terms of the amount of series that you have. And you’re almost shopping on your page, which is pretty slick, I would say.

And I do the opposite.

Crys: You just do the giant list of all of your stuff?

JP: So, partly because I think I only have four things listed, so it’s really easy to see everything. But what I do, is I tried to keep it as minimalist as possible. So I have a section for serials, which just has my NRDS. It’s an image of the cover, and the image itself has a hyperlink that directs straight to the JT Blakely link tree, just so that they can then go to NRDS on Fictionate and Kindle Vella. And then, on the others I have, I believe it’s a Books2Read link on those images for anthologies. And then I also have the affiliate link for Amazon just so that I don’t get kicked out of their system.

Crys: Yeah. I go back and forth on whether I use Books2Read links with an affiliate link as my main and not because I have gotten a warning from Amazon once for using Books2Read, like that they were going to yank my affiliate account. And so I stopped using Books2Read, but then I recently, as I pulled everything wide, switched everything over to Books2Read again with my affiliate link. And if I get a fuss at from Amazon affiliates again, I’ll just take the Amazon affiliate link out of Books2Read. Cause Books2Read is just so damn useful when you are wide. It’s the easiest way to link to all your books everywhere.

JP: Yeah, definitely. And so for the Books2Read ones that I have, those are the anthologies with Zach and J. So I don’t have control over what Amazon link that is. So for my affiliate thing, I just have an Amazon word beneath each image, just so that people can click that for the affiliate link. But then the image itself has the Books2Read on it.

Crys: Now, if someone wanted to look at a golden crown of an amazing indie author website, or just an author website, period. And this is not a beginning author website. This is a nailed it, lots of custom work, spent lots of money, has her own shop, I highly recommend checking out Rachel Amphlett’s website as something you might work toward. She sells a lot of her books direct, she’s got a really slick custom design. Her branding is nailed throughout the entire website.

But don’t let that overwhelm you if you’re beginning. If you’re beginning it doesn’t really matter how ugly your site is. It’s really nice when it’s pretty, but as long as you have the content of, here’s who I am, here’s where to find my books, you’re solid.

JP: Yeah. I really liked this website. Yeah, what I do because I’m still in the keep it simple phase, on my homepage I have basically three sections and that’s it.

First section is my signup to a free, short story that gets you on my newsletter. Second section is who I am, really short. Third section is like an updated blog, but all I put on there is any new releases for any books that I write. And so then that way I basically have my new release right at the bottom.

That’s it. At the moment, I don’t want a ton of things on there because I just want to direct people to basically those three things. That’s it.

Crys: Now, I will add on the topic of a blog. Do you need one? No. Can it be really useful? Yes. That isn’t to say you absolutely should do it. We’ve mentioned our friend Alicia McCalla quite a bit in past episodes and she is very consistent with her content marketing.

That means she is writing blog posts, she’s writing a lot of blog posts. But one of the things she said she learned specifically from like Etsy creators, she was learning a lot from merchandising folks, is that it takes 12 to 18 months to see a return on the posts that you’re putting out.

So that’s very much a long-term gain game and you need to be weighing that for you personally, is it worth it to have a consistent blog or do you need to be writing your book?

JP: Yeah, I totally agree. Like for me with the day job, I have to really consider what time I can give to writing, and that more or less means writing comes first. And in terms of like blogs, I don’t have the time for them, not with the direction I’m going, especially with doing podcasts. And now ramping up the author services, like blogs are on the bottom of that list. And maybe one day, but by no means is that any time soon.

Crys: Yeah, for sure. KISS, keep it simple, stupid. Like the most important thing is just don’t stress out about it. I recommend using a self-hosted WordPress solution, which sounds very scary to a lot of people who haven’t dealt with tech before. And that simply means that you pay a company to host your website. I use Blue Host and most hosts will have a one-click solution that’s, Hey, install a WordPress website. And you’re like, yes, I want to do that. Click that, and then it’ll walk you through the steps of setting up a user log in and all that.

And then from then on, you don’t really have to interact with the host at all. You can just go to your website.com/login and get into your web. For some people that’s still too much techiness and I completely understand that WordPress offers basically infinite extensibility. And if that’s you and you don’t have a desire at some point of having a direct sales platform for e-books, Squarespace is a really good option. It’s very much what is what you get visual building. And I know that works for a lot of authors. I think actually I think it was started as a retail platform, but I am a control freak, and therefore it doesn’t match what I like to do. I like to have control over the nitty-gritty, which WordPress gives me.

JP: Definitely. Yeah, I use WordPress as well. And I’ve been working with Wix for the Serial Fiction Show, which is really simple in a good way, but it’s very different from WordPress. And I think that one of the things I liked the most about WordPress is if I don’t know something it’s so easy to Google search and find someone else who ran into the same problem and basically give me a step-by-step guide. I tried that with Wix with one thing I was doing and it failed miserably. And I was like, now I’m angry at Wix.

Crys: I don’t know if you saw like my eyes twitch at the mention of Wix. And I try not to do that because I know that it’s a lot better than it used to be, but it used to create horrible websites. I don’t think it does anymore. It used to. It would just load so many extra things that supported its whole infrastructure. But thankfully I think when Google did a lot of its updates of, Hey, your website needs to be this and this for it to rank high in our search records, Wix got their shit together and fixed things.

But I still have this like uncontrollable twitch at Wix.

JP: That’s fair. That’s totally fair. I can say that with Serial Fiction Show it doesn’t feel that way in which you described. But yeah, I’m a WordPress over Wix personally.

Crys: Yeah. I guess a question for our listeners would be: have you set up your website yet? And if not, what’s keeping you from doing so?

JP: Let us know.

Crys: All right, folks, don’t forget, we mentioned we are reading Your Book, Your Brand by Dana Kaye for our book club. You have a couple of weeks to read that before we do our recording. And if you would like to join us live for that recording, you can check us out on Patreon. Link in the show notes.

Thank you so much for joining us this week. And we look forward to talking to you next week.

JP: See you later.