We’ve recently launched one of our side projects: bookswrittenby.com, a gallery of writers and their websites.
The site is a showcase for author websites in all genres by any designer. Browse around and get an idea what authors are doing with their websites.
I’ve prepared a list of more than 1,000 authors with websites that I will be adding over the next few months. But if you have suggestions for author websites to be included, please let me know.
This is a post I’ve had in draft mode for a while but haven’t had the time to finish. This morning I saw a couple of articles that reminded me I needed to finish this post. The two articles that made me come back to this topic: How to Beat the Long Tail which links to Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans.
Joe Wikert posted an interview with Jeff Gomez, author of Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age that raises several good points including a future where the notion of what it means to be published is going to change. Gomez says, “The Internet is the best thing that has ever happened to the midlist author.”
Then I saw a comment to Joe’s interview where someone said, “who ever made money selling fiction on the web? (Nobody, that’s who)”.
What are some ways in which the fiction writer can leverage the Web in order to support a life of writing?
I’ve been thinking that a writer could earn a sustainable income by direct sales to loyal readers, either through books – digital downloads or POD – or even through a membership site.
Membership? Have a favorite writer? Not a lot of writers get very far in their blogging because – I suspect – they feel that blogging takes away from their real writing. But many writers craft essays, columns, and stories for publication. What if the author’s own membership site became an outlet for that creative content?
As an avid reader and follower of contemporary fiction I would gladly pay $50 a year (possibly more) for access to writings by my favorite writer. Make that writers. There’s certainly a limit on the number of writers I would support with an annual contribution but I spend a lot of money on books anyway.
How many loyal fans does it take for the writer to earn a sustainable income, either through selling direct or opting for some type of membership site? Do the math.
A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
It’s not a matter of if but when writers will break away from publishers and go independent.
It has not yet happened because most fiction writers are not net savvy or entrepreneurial.
Not just for loyal fans:
A writer also could use online products, either free digital downloads, or a membership site to attract new readers. For instance, I’ve recently developed an interest in Will Self. Since it’s not so easy for me to get his books down here in Buenos Aires, I would consider subscribing on a trial basis to get access to more of his writings, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. Then I might be converted into a loyal fan.
A team is needed:
Of course, most writers are not going to be able to handle the slightest technical aspects of implementing such an online campaign, though a few will do so. And writers always will need editors and designers (your online site has to look good if you’re asking people to give you money). But there are plenty of ways to contract with those professionals. In the future publishers will need to shift towards providing that type of team to writers and managing an author’s online presence. If publishers don’t, then others will step in and do so.
I have many more thoughts on this topic but for now you should go read 1,000 True Fans.
I’ve been hearing about the free e-books that Random House was offering for a limited time for some its authors, but haven’t had a chance to look at one yet.
When I saw today over at Slush Pile that Beautiful Children, the new novel by Charles Bock, was available through tomorrow February 29, I decided to grab the e-book even though I had absolutely no idea what the novel was about.
I also checked out the author’s stylish and intriguing Web site.
But I couldn’t really figure out what the book was about from the author’s Web site, so I went to Amazon to read the description.
On doing a bit of research for this post, I see that I must have fallen behind in my literary review sources and lit blogs since everyone is remarking that this book has been reviewed pretty much everywhere. Just goes to show that the word free must get my attention more than anything else! Or, maybe I’ve seen the review but just hadn’t paid any attention to it. I don’t know, which also goes to show that this free download helps to make a book memorable. But, what if there were hundreds of titles this week being offered for a limited free download by publishers all across the net? Is this an innovative twist to publishing or a publicity tactic? Either way, I think it’s a good move.
Question to self: Why have I not had The Millions in my Bloglines before today?
On doing a title search on “Beautiful Children”, Amazon returned a prominent display highlighting the free download:
E-book downloads, whether free or at a price, are particularly good for someone like me who lives at the edge of the world, as I’ve previously mentioned on this blog.
A recurring questions: how does someone become aware that a new title is available for download for a limited period? Diligently monitoring the media & lit blogs for announcements? And why does the Random House news announcement page still not have an RSS feed?
If publishing is about creating a narrative experience in print, then why are publishers so bad when it comes to doing the same online?
Everyone in publishing should review the 2008 Digital Outlook Report from Avenue A/Razorfish, a firm with extensive experience in interactive media. (Or, skip the registration and grab a copy from here).
A clean design makes shuffling through the 164 page document an ease. Relevance abounds but I want to focus on one issue, point 4 of the “4 questions that should keep creative people up at night“:
Narrative is the experience. As the Web becomes the preferred destination for brand exploration, digital experiences must become richer, deeper, and more able to tell compelling stories. If your brand experience depends entirely on pages and clicks, it’s time to wonder, “What is my story?”
Is there a story here? Are we designing a page or an experience? What is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the brand story we are creating? Does it move—and are people moved by it?
[Let's set aside the vested interest of Avenue A/Razorfish in encouraging their clients to invest in more complex and costly Web development.]
The stumbling block is often the revenue factor, trying to figure out how to monetize digital information. Of course, the most obvious way is to use the net as a platform for selling your product. Other industries don’t seem to have the problem in understanding that Web experiences fuel sales of physical products.
Tremendous potential exist in creating engaging author Web sites that pull potential readers into the book’s narrative, thereby promoting sales of the book.
That’s why I abhor those sites that provide a generic one-size-fits-all approach to every author.
There’s a good discussion in the comments over at the BookEnds literary agency blog on the Power of an Author Blog.
Most people are never very interested in blogs that are too personal. No one really cares about what you had for dinner last night or seeing photos of your cat. Blogs are not for writing about your interesting life.
Internet marketers do as much thinking about how to use the net as anyone and view a blog largely as an attraction strategy, a way of bringing attention to one’s products or services. Blogging tools are superb for optimizing a Web site in terms of search engines.
Author blogs and web sites are not so much for an author’s current readers but serve as a strategy for attracting new readers.
Blogs are ideally suited for the non-fiction writer who can write about a niche and gain readers that way. For example, Quid plura? by Jeff Sypeck is a non-fiction writer I came across while reading those comments to the BookEnds post. Sypeck just released a book about Charlemagne. While I don’t think much about medieval history these days, browsing through Sypeck’s site makes me interested in reading the book. Note, too, that Sypeck’s new book also has its own Web site: becomingcharlemagne.com
I have a theory that an author website/blog will one day be the primary distribution platform for an author’s writings. The details of that are for another post.
Meanwhile, here is a great quote from Sypeck’s blog:
I was reminded of the neatest thing about writing a book in the first place: the author’s obsession, developed over years and often nurtured in solitude, finally becomes a shared point of reference through which readers can look anew at some aspect of the world.