Category Archives: The Writing Life

A guest post by Alice Black.

Okay, all you writer-types out there, I want you to take a deep breath. We’re about to get into some heavy stuff: Websites. If you aren’t familiar with the Oatmeal’s commentary on web design I suggest you go look at that now. It’ll come in handy later.

This post will run you through the pros and cons of having a writer’s website for yourself and your work, as well as taking a look at how best to approach the strange beast that is a ‘successful website’, even if you’ve never written a line of code in your life.

Why should I have my own website?

A personal website lets you raise your hits by having a direct address to point people to, and also by increasing the number of references to you that a search engine will pick up on. It’s not just fans who will be looking for your website but editors, and agents too.

That sounds awesome! But…

What should I put on it?

Good question. Each writer is different and so are their needs. For example I’m just starting out with one story published, whereas GRRM is one of the most prominent writers there is right now. What our websites do, and what they have on it will be different.

My needs are: simple navigation, who I am, what I write, and status updates about important news.

George R.R. Martin‘s needs are: consistent branding with his novels, merchandising space and a blog for his fans to keep up with his thoughts and upcoming releases.

So take a moment and list the things you want to get from your website. If you’re not sure what you need, the list below covers the basics, and you can always add or remove things later.

Who you are
What you write
Where to find your work
Where else the user can find you

Now what?

Now we have our list of what we need on our site, it’s time to go and actually set up a site. There are two main options you can follow: Pay to have someone else do it, (like GRRM) or do it yourself.

I’ve made a table below to help figure out which option is best for you.

	Paid professional	DIY
Cost	$500 – $3000	free* – 100$
Custom look and feel	Unique to your brand, completely customizable. You get what you pay for in quality.	Some customization, unless coding the site from scratch.Reliable navigation with preset templates.
Scope	Limited only by what you are willing to pay.	Limited by the effort you are willing to put in.
I was a Romance writer but now I write Horror. I need to change my website!	That’ll be another couple hundred dollars.	Your site has time if you do! You can swap to a new template, or if you coded by hand… it’ll be a while.

So Building my own…

There’s a whole bunch of different options from Wix to Weebly, Blogger to WordPress. For today, let’s look at two of the most common website builders that offer free accounts: Weebly and WordPress.

Basically it breaks down to how you want to use your website. Are you comfortable with formatting in a text box (like word document) environment? Then use WordPress.

Or would you rather drag and drop items in and move them around until you’re happy? Then use Weebly. There are some further differences, so I made another table for you, comparing the two below. Keep in mind this is only the currently available information, and plans change year to year.

	Weebly	WordPress
Cost	Basic: FreeStarter: $48/yrPro: $96/yr	Basic: FreePro: $99/yr
Storage Space	Basic: < 500 MBStarter: 500MBPro: 2GB	Basic: 3 GBPro: 13 GB
Templates	100+ (unclear if they’re all free, or some are premium)	Basic: 144Pro: individually priced, $60-$80Third party: individually priced
Ease of use	Very Easy: drag and drop	Easy: Very similar to word processor
Customizability	High, Allows for HTML	High, Allows for HTML
Domain	alice.weebly.comalice.com for $	alice.wordpress.comalice.com for $18, able to be added to a basic account
Statistics	Basic: number of hitsStarter: referrers, which pages are seen and how often in last 30 days	Basic: Referrers, Number of users vs number of views hourly and then daily
Mobile app	Yes	Yes
Ads	No	Basic: MaybePro: No

Okay, I have an account on Weebly/Wordpress

Great! We’re getting there. But before us lies the path of Design which many an unwary author has fallen into. Remember that Oatmeal comic? Good. Now is when you sit down in front of your screen and take a good hard look at your design skills. Unless you are legitimately comfortable using photoshop and/or familiar with the tenets of good design, use a free template/theme. Most let you customize the headers and backgrounds.

Commandments of [Writer] Web Design

Comic Sans is the joke of the typography world; don’t use it.
Limit yourself to two fonts per page: 1 for headers, 1 for text. Using a third font for your Site title/logo is also OK.
You can use Serif or Sans Serif fonts for headers, but use sans-serif for bodies of text.
Dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background. Pick one that fits your genre.
For text over a textured background, be sure that the text is readable. Step back a couple feet and see if you can still see the letters clearly.
Don’t use images that you aren’t licensed to use. It’s the same as a website putting your story up without asking, and not linking or crediting you.
For the love of all that’s holy in the internet, please do not put music on your website. At least music that automatically starts when the page loads. Very little can make a user click ‘back’ as fast as the blare of music into our earbuds.
Test and Preview the design before going ‘live’ (which means the world can see it).
Links away from your page should ALWAYS open in a new window, otherwise you’re directing traffic away from your site instead of supplementing it.
Update, Update, Update! There is nothing more frustrating for users than an out of date website.

Guest Writer Bio:

Alice Black has a degree in Interactive Multimedia Design and experience teaching multimedia to technology to adult students. She writes SFF and Horror and has a short story coming out soon with Wily Writers.

Sweating the Small Stuff

October 4, 2013

Gregory D. Little

Conventions Gregory D. Little Marketing The Writing Life No Comments

I was twenty-one when I read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. At the time, I thought it was embarrassingly obvious advice for such a supposedly renowned military mastermind. “Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”

“Oh please,” twenty-one year old me thought, rolling his all-knowing eyes. I was set to label Sun Tzu “Captain Obvious” and never look back. But I’m older now (just a teensy bit), and I’ve learned that when the pressure is on, we often forget the most obvious, self-evident courses of action entirely. So it goes with war and with things closer to home for the Fictorians, like networking.

When I was younger my dad gave me a piece of advice I’ve never forgotten. We’ve all heard the old axiom “you never get a second chance to make a first impression,” but my dad put it in more numerical terms. He told me about the three twelves. When meeting you for the first time, a person will be able to form an impression based on your first twelve inches (your face), the first twelve words out of your mouth, and the first twelve seconds of the exchange. Now my dad has spent his career in the business world, and his advice was meant primarily for job interviews. But in the writing world, when we are meeting agents and editors at conventions, what we are really doing is kicking off a sort of protracted job interview. And first impressions can make or break you.

Writing is like any other field of human interaction. It’s often not what you know, but who you know that’s important. Every time you smile, introduce yourself and shake a hand at some event that brings the people of our field together, you are hopefully sowing the seeds for a friendship, but you are also adding another potential link to your growing chain of contacts. It may sound clinical, but it’s important you keep both aspects of any relationship in mind in the early stages.

Now, my dad’s advice may need to be tweaked a little for our industry. In the business world, personal appearance is very important and deviating too far from the standard suit and tie is frowned upon. Writers are a little more relaxed in this regard, I think, owing to the more eccentric personalities that permeate the writing world. Mary wrote an excellent piece detailing branding earlier this very week, in fact, so check it out if you haven’t already. This advice applies more to those who have yet to establish themselves and who are simply trying to meet agents, editors and fellow writers. It’s important to dress as if you are a professional who is ready, if needed, to discuss professional matters. What that means in context is that if you are going to a convention that has a sizable fan contingent (say, Worldcon) and you want to indulge in some cosplay, you may want to set aside a day where you walk around in your Iron Man costume and another day where you dress, if not necessarily formally, at least nicely, looking like a professional, not a fan. If you are attending a convention that is almost exclusively business-oriented (World Fantasy Convention) then it’s best to leave the Spock ears at home entirely.

You’ve heard all the stuff I’m going to say before, believe me. Nothing I’m about to tell you is going to widen your eyes with sudden awe and understanding. But if you clam up like I do when trying to impress someone, it helps to remember the small things. Things like:

-Don’t dominating the conversation with talk of yourself.

-Avoid invading someone’s personal space.

-Take cues from the other person’s body language. If you go up to introduce yourself and catch them at an obviously bad time (this happened to me at last year’s World Fantasy Convention) politely extricate yourself as quickly as possible and be on your way.

-Practice basic hygiene.

There are many others, but they all lead to the same general result. What you want is to leave a positive impression of yourself on everyone you meet, something that says either “should the opportunity arise, that person would be pleasant to work with,” or in the case of a possible fan “wow, that person is really nice. I should check out their work/continue reading their work.” I hate to make it sound so clinical. It almost comes off as mercenary. But remember, this isn’t just a fun gathering of like minds you are attending, it’s a business trip.

And advice extends beyond the world of meeting people in person. When you submit stories or novels to agents or editors, be unfailingly polite. If they send you a rejection, do not respond at how only stupid people would fail to understand your genius, no matter how much your raging id may think so. The world of publishing is a small one, and the last thing you want to do is end up on someone’s black list.

There’s another quote I’d like to leave you with, one I’ve heard attributed to many successful coaches. “If you take care of the little things, the big things take care of themselves.” So devote a little time to sweating the small stuff. You might be surprised at what comes of it. That Sun Tzu guy may have known his stuff after all.

Dressed for Success: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Brand

October 3, 2013

mary

Conventions Marketing Mary Pletsch The Writing Life No Comments

I used to hate the word “branding.” It conjured up images of cattle lowing as a hot poker was pressed against their flanks; or corporate logos splashed all over slick, prepackaged boxes. I’m a creator. An individual personality. Not a brand, I thought. Not some bogus advertisement.

But branding your work – having a brand – is so important to promotion.

This story begins shortly after I’d made my first short story sale – “Blood Runs Thicker” to “When the Hero Comes Home 2” anthology by Dragon Moon Press – and I was invited by fellow DMP author Marie Bilodeau (Destiny’s Blood, Destiny’s Fall, the forthcoming Destiny’s War, and a short story in the previous “When the Hero Comes Home,” among others) to attend the Ad Astra convention in Toronto where I would have an opportunity to meet the editor who’d purchased my story.

My previous convention experiences had been one of two types: fan conventions, typically toy collecting or anime themed, where I arrived in a t-shirt proclaiming my love of the convention’s topic, or in costume; and academic conventions, where I brought out my best Subdued Suit (TM) and tried to look like a Serious Academic. I wasn’t certain a fiction editor wanted to meet my Serious Academic – it wasn’t my master’s thesis she’d purchased, after all. “What do I wear?” I asked Marie. “A suit?”

“A suit’s not necessary unless that’s the sort of image you want to present for your writing,” she said. “Think about what you want to be remembered as. Be yourself.”

Then she told me about wearing cute shoes to her first convention appearance and discovering that her footwear had become an unshakeable aspect of her public persona – to the point where wearing running shoes provoked questions about her footwear, potential foot injuries, etc. As someone who lives in Doc Martens, I was horrified.

“Just wear the usual,” she suggested.

“The usual” is ripped jeans or combat pants, a cartoon or heavy metal T-shirt, my signature army jacket, and boots. “I’ll look like I’m on my way to an Iron Maiden concert,” I protested.

I could clean up my jeans. I do own a few pairs that are hole (paint, stud, patch, funky-pattern) free. For shirts, though, I made Marie a deal: I’d provide dinner and she’d poke through my closet in search of something appropriate for me to wear.

Much to my relief, she bypassed my workwear closet entirely – that selection of puffy blouses and tailored pants that I despise and own only in the interests of keeping my day job – and dug around in my chest of drawers, producing a black shirt with a subtle Halo Helljumpers logo on it.

“That’s a gamer shirt,” I said.

“But it’s not bright or garish or obvious about it, and it’s got that military theme that runs through so much of your writing.”

Okay. I could deal with this. I had a couple more shirts that had actual military crests on them, and added those to the suitcase. “Maybe,” I joked, “I could even take my ratty army jacket.”

“Absolutely,” Marie said.

I couldn’t believe I’d heard that correctly. “What?”

“You write military science fiction. Put on that jacket and you look like someone who writes military science fiction.”

And that’s when I realized that branding wasn’t about pretending to be something I wasn’t or stuffing myself into a monkey suit and feeling miserable all day. It was about creating a recognizable, memorable statement that says this is what I do.

The public persona I was building wasn’t all fake. Those were my real clothes in that suitcase–clothes I felt good in. The brand, I realized, was an aspect of myself – an aspect that puts its best foot forward and hasn’t got holes in its jeans, but a genuine part of my personality nonetheless. At TFCon I’ve been recognized for years as “the one in the army jacket.” There was definitely something to this branding business. It was a visual shorthand for what could be expected of me.

Ad Astra was a great success, and ever since then I’ve stopped thinking of branding as covering myself with a slick veneer and started thinking of it as a way to celebrate who I am and what I do. I write military science fiction. I have a background that includes two pilots’ licenses, a degree from the Royal Military College of Canada and seven years of contracts to back it up.

And the brand image doesn’t limit me. My most recent story sale was a steampunk romance.

I’ve added a pin with an old-fashioned compass to the lapel of my army jacket.

A Smile and a Handshake

October 2, 2013

fictorians

Conventions Guest Posts Marketing Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life 1 Comment

A guest post by Sam Knight.

Once upon a time, that was how people did business. A smile and a handshake was good enough for nearly any transaction. Why? Because people knew each other. They knew about each other, they knew where/what/when/how about each other. If someone was a stranger, they often got the benefit of the doubt, because everyone knew that if you weren’t as good as your word, you weren’t any good at all. And all it took was one time to ruin that.

Someone going back on their word was fuel for the gossip mongers like no other. Speculation would run rampant about why, about how everyone could have misjudged before, and about what must have happened to change a person.

Why doesn’t it work anymore? Why can’t you take out a loan from the local bank that way? No one knows each other nowadays. No one takes the time to stop and meet someone. We still meet people, but it’s because we were forced to work in the cubicle next to them, or after we’ve seen them by the coffee machine for the tenth time. Very few people go out of their way to meet a stranger anymore. Why? Because strangers recoil from being approached. In this day and age, everyone knows that someone wearing a smile is trying to sell us something, and we avoid them.

Fundamentally, we all want to be liked, so we go out of our way to do things that make people like us, or we avoid doing things that people will hold against us. And never forget—first impressions are everything.

There is nothing like a face to face connection with someone to make them like or dislike you. But if you can make them like you, it will take work to turn that into dislike in the future.

What is my point?

This month’s theme on the Fictorians is Marketing and Promotion and a ‘smile and a handshake’ is one of the strongest forms there is.

Why else would politicians still bother with it in this day and age? Everyone knows they are full of ‘it’. Everyone knows the promises are hollow. No one likes a politician. So why do they do it?

Because a smile and a handshake works. Human contact works.

A form of marketing and promotion that is often overlooked, by those not in the know, is attending social functions. Whether it is a Comic Con or a local book signing by an author you’ve never met, every social function is a great opportunity to market yourself in a real and effective way. And that includes when you are at the grocery store or your kid’s soccer game.

Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta are quick to teach their students (at places like their Superstars Writing Seminars) that you should always wear your ‘professional’ face because you never know who the person you are about to meet is (or even the person across the aisle listening quietly). And there is a good reason for that. That random person you just shook hands with, or who saw your infinite patience with someone desperately asking to be punched in the throat, could be anyone. They could be an agent, and editor, a publisher, a movie producer, or just a rich benefactor looking for someone worthy of spending their money on.

I’m not kidding.

I wouldn’t expect to ever meet a movie producer that way at the grocery store, but if you are at a convention or something similar it can be done that way, and from my experience it usually is.

Take the time to meet the people around you at a convention. After you meet them, let them introduce you to the people they know. You will be surprised at how small the world suddenly becomes when you play ‘Seven Degrees of George R.R. Martin’. You will also be surprised at who will remember what a great person you are when they decided they need an artist/writer/editor/chauffer for William Shatner.

And—this is important—don’t forget your ‘professional’ face. You never know who that person standing off to the side listening to your conversation is. You need to make a good impression. At the very least, they may be your next fan. A real, honest-to-goodness, love you for who they think you are fan who will tell everyone they ever meet what a great person you are and that everyone should buy your book.

Warning! This is not the fast way to build up your marketing and publicity! This is the slow burn that needs to never be forgotten while you do all of the other things. This is the foundation you need to stand upon.

If you make one fan like the one mentioned above at each social event you attend, you will have a better career than most. Your fan base will be stronger, and less fickle, than any you could acquire in any other way. If you impress that one right person, a year later, when they see you again, your career could change forever.

I speak from experience on that one. Trust me. ‘Professional’ face. Meet people.

Get out from behind your desk, and meet people in person. Press the flesh, so to speak. Show people you are witty, intelligent, personable, and affable. Exude confidence in your attitude and demeanor (without being an overbearing jerk!) Go out and meet people and convince them that they need to know more about you, about what you write, about what makes you special.

I know this is hard. It is a stressful thought for those of us who like to live in the dark with only the glow of a monitor to keep us company, but fundamentally, we humans are social creatures, and the more you go out into the world and meet people, the more they will accept you. The more they accept you, the more you will accept yourself. And the more you will feel confident enough to market and promote yourself in person. It’s a wonderful circle of positive feedback—and opportunity.

Never doubt the power of a smile and a handshake.

P.S. This can be done wrong. It can be done horribly wrong! I do mean meet people, not ‘try to sell them your book.’ There is a difference, and they can be done at the same time, but honestly, when was the last time you wanted to get to know a car salesman or someone who seemed like they were stalking you? The point of this is to sell yourself. And if that means ‘know when to walk away’, that’s what it means. Staying in someone’s face when they don’t want you there is bad juju and that reputation will precede you! (See earlier comment on gossip!)

Guest Writer Bio:

Sam Knight refuses to be pinned down into a genre. If the idea grabs him, he writes it. Once upon a time, he was known to quote books the way some people quote movies, but now he claims having a family has made him forgetful, as a survival adaptation. He can be found at his website and contacted at sam@samknight.com.