Most people who know me know I’m sort of a geek. I love technology, I “speak” computers, and if there’s a way to connect that’s new and different, I’m always willing to give it a go. I won’t always be any good at it (I cannot for the life of me understand how Tumblr works), but I will tinker happily for at least a couple of hours with just about anything.
So when I tell people they need to have a digital home base, their usual reaction is “Well, of course you would say that—you’re good at that stuff.” In fact, that’s not the case at all. The primary thing you need to create a digital home is a good design, and I am lousy at design.
I paid to have my website built a few years ago. And recently, when Google changed their rules and began dropping people off search results if their sites weren’t mobile-friendly, I paid to have it rebuilt. Since I’m pretty cheap, that should show you just how much I believe you have to have a digital home.
The most frequent things I hear when I tell people they need a website probably fall into two categories:
1. I have nothing to put there.
2. I have a Facebook page.
I hate to tell you this, but neither of these is a good answer. (You knew I was going to say that, right?)
If you’re reading this, chances are you are a writer. Now, maybe you don’t have anything to sell yet, but you will. So grab your domain name now. Right now. I’ll still be here when you’re done. If you can’t get one with just your name, which is optimal, try yournamebooks or yournamemysteries. The key, most important thing is that you must have your name in the domain name. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on why, but it’s for search engine optimization (SEO). It makes it easier for people—agents, editors, readers—to find you.
Now that you’ve got your domain name, what are you going to put there? Well, the further along your publishing path you are, the more obvious the answer is. But let’s say you don’t have any books to sell yet. Let’s say you haven’t even finished your first manuscript. Why should you bother? Why put in the money?
Well, you don’t need to invest big bucks. A domain name runs about $8/year. You can “point” your domain to a free blog site, like wordpress.com (choose a “responsive theme,” so Google finds it easily) in the beginning, before you need anything more complicated. As to what to put there:
▪Contact Information. Honestly, it boggles the mind how many authors do not have contact information on their sites! If you have an agent, you should have that on your site, too, along with her contact info.
▪Writing Samples. And no, I don’t mean the kind of thing you wrote for school. I mean a way for people to get to know you. I assume your mystery novel is about something. What are you researching for it? Write a few articles for your site. If you attend conferences or MWA meetings, or any kind of professional event, write about it.
▪A Bit about You. This is the stuff you don’t have time or space for in a query letter. Read some author biographies on a bunch of sites and see what strikes you as entertaining. Don’t make it too long or egotistical, but it should show off some of your expertise.
▪Social Networking Information. If you’re on Twitter, FB, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tsu, whatever else comes up, don’t be shy!
Now, as to why you need that stuff: The more people who know and like you when you do get ready to sell your book, the better. If you meet someone at a conference and want to tell them about your work and all the cool research you’ve done, etc., it’s much easier to just send them to your site than to watch their eyes glaze over as you try to explain in detail when they’ve already had three cocktails. Your site goes on your letterhead. It goes in the signature line of your emails. It goes on your business cards. It’s the single spot where you gather together everything you think people might want to know about you.
Which should help to explain, at least in part, why a FB page simply isn’t enough. You don’t control what it looks like. You don’t control where the information is. You could, theoretically, pin a post with all your contact info at the top of the page, but who would expect to find it there? Agents and editors aren’t used to that, so they simply won’t look. You can’t personalize it to any real degree, and if you want to write anything of significant length (like, say, this post), you can’t.
So do yourself a favor, grab a domain name and create a basic website. And remember, there’s no place like (your digital) home.