So finally books are getting some love on the internet, Youtube style. There are several sites, like Scribd and Issuu that allow you to publish anything by uploading a pdf file. It displays like a page-flippable book or magazine and allows readers to share and embed. We like Issuu because it
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by Bud Parr on September 01, 2009 | permanent link
So finally books are getting some love on the internet, Youtube style. There are several sites, like Scribd and Issuu that allow you to publish anything by uploading a pdf file. It displays like a page-flippable book or magazine and allows readers to share and embed. We like Issuu because it has a great presentation, even if the audience there is smaller than at Scribd (as a friend put it, Scribd is like Youtube, Issuu is like Vimeo – one is nicer, the former gives you more eyeballs). So here’s an example of an embed that we created, along with Coffee House Press, for Laird Hunt’s new novel Ray of the Star.
Dallas Hudgens' Website
If you’re an author, you know that there are times for writing and there are times for getting out to promote your writing. Those times don’t always coincide. What happens when your readers go to find you on the Web when you’re working on the next book?
There’s nothing
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by Bud Parr on March 03, 2009 | permanent link
Dallas Hudgens' Website
If you’re an author, you know that there are times for writing and there are times for getting out to promote your writing. Those times don’t always coincide. What happens when your readers go to find you on the Web when you’re working on the next book?
There’s nothing worse than a Web page with nothing but whitespace; no one likes to waste their precious click only to find “No events here, check back later.” Bad.
Dealing with a lot of authors we’ve figured out some ways to manage this. First, we create events sections to automatically show future events only. You don’t have to go back in and clean up old events so you don’t have to worry about your Web page showing that you last gave a reading when the Berlin Wall was still standing.
For those with a lot of events we do display past events when there are none in the future, but these are shown as an orderly archive. That helps by showing activity and setting up expectations for something to come. For some we combine news and events so when events disappear there’s news on the page.
But what if you’re spending most of your time writing right now? Dallas Hudgens is a writer with two novels to his credit. He had a blog once but really wanted to spend his time writing fiction. We created a site for him to showcase his books and the great reviews they received and even though he’s not out doing events right now, we wanted the site prepared, so we created places for news, events and other writing.
Fine, but what to do with those sections when they’re not being used? We hid them!
We told the code to say “if there are no future events hide the events page and the menu item leading to it.” If you’re technically inclined you know that this could cause problems with search engines, but we managed that by telling the code to say “if there’s no content on this page then tell the search engines that this page doesn’t exist.”
When there are events or news, they show up (in Dallas’s case both in the menu and in the about section) and you don’t have to do anything.
Click on the image above to see a screenshot of the front page of Dallas’s site if he currently had events and then visit his site to see what it looks like now. This may not be the solution for everyone, but we feel it works here. For every author we consider their individual situation and build the site based on a strategy for them. We also work closely with publicists when appropriate to make sure that the site fits with their strategy too.
Got ideas for the perfect author Website? Share them because we’re continually working to build sites that help your audience find you and help you not to worry about your Website.
The word google has been used as a verb for a decade now and since it became an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006 it has been part of our daily lexicon. Anyone who lives their life online has googled (the company insists on the lowercase and that one when referring to the company
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by Bud Parr on November 24, 2008 | permanent link
The word google has been used as a verb for a decade now and since it became an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006 it has been part of our daily lexicon. Anyone who lives their life online has googled (the company insists on the lowercase and that one when referring to the company that we use the uppercase) themselves and for good reason: it’s part of the conversation.
Don’t imagine that it’s just the ultimate in narcissism, if you’re online – that is, you blog or take part in blog conversations – you want to know if someone is talking to you directly, that is, if someone is mentioning you or linking to you. Your referral stats are helpful, but they only work on a link to your site and specifically if someone clicks on the link.∗
A lot of people ask me how they can improve traffic to their site; well this is the most important thing you can do (besides hiring a great publicist). If you’re going to blog you are walking into a very busy café and you’ll never be a part of the conversation if you’re a wallflower. Pay attention to what others are blogging about in your field or subject of interest, comment on their sites and know if they mention you.
Here’s how. There’s only one catch: Google expects you to have a gmail address (if you don’t want to use gmail, that’s fine, think of this as a log-in instead of an email for daily use). They make it pretty easy to get a gmail address (a frankly, I think they’re great and use one for my personal email) and not too hard to set up forwarding to your regular address. Then just go to http://google.com/alerts. Put in your search term, such as “Bud Parr” or “Sonnet Media.” You can leave the “Type” box at comprehensive (this searches news, blogs, etc.). I’d recommend setting the “How Often” option to “As it Happens”.
That’s it, you’ll start getting emails whenever someone mentions you on the whole World Wide Web. If you need help with any of this, just “drop a line”: http://sonnetmedia.net/contact
∗I tell all my clients that if you link to someone, click on the link. You’ll know that you made the link right and you’ll essentially be letting the other person know that you’ve linked to them because you can probably count on them to be checking their referral stats.
