Jun
12
Yes, I know I was going to blog about the numbers behind books today but alas, that will have to wait until next week. Today is all about Dear Author doing the romance community a favor (aka blogging about things that irritate Jane). Today’s post is brought to you by author doing the last thing on the list.
- If you are an author and you want to vent, you should do so privately or, at least, don’t include so many facts that people can “out” you. Part of me cries “hijinks” on the latest post at the Vent Club, but the other part of me says “lets try to guess the poster’s identity.” I’m thinking that one of the factors below is a lie, if this is not a hoax and #2 and #5 would be my guesses for a lie.
- Romance writer with one of the big publishers.
- Not a bestseller but paperbacks sell in the 200K range
- Won a few awards; have name recognition.
- Repped by a male agent.
- Historical.
- No matter how high of a rating your book gets from RT, you should not, as an author, go from blog to blog, making a comment about your newest book, your last book, because even if your book did receive 4 stars at RT or 10 stars at iloveyourbooks.com or 18 coffee mugs at readerslovecoffee.com, the seemingly non stop self promotion only serves to turn readers off. Blog comments aren’t a place to advertise your wares. The comments are a place to participate in conversation and if you add smart comments, readers will be interested. If not, you appear like a spammer. And spammers, well, they get deleted. Of course, on this blog, if you are BevBB or Sarah McCarty, the spam filter thinks you are spammers too. I haven’t figured that one out. Sorry guys.
- If you have a guest column on Romancing the Blog, please do not write about how to deal with negative reviews. It is as if authors have nothing else to say despite the fact that you weave stories for a living. There seems to be a panoply of topics such as why you dress your heroine in high heels if she is in an action book; why urban fantasy seems to encompass any first person female fantasy story regardless of whether the setting is urban or fantasy; or why jelly bellies are the world’s best source of inspiration. Complaints about negative reviews makes me want to poke my eyes out and my eyes are already sore from poking them during a book I read over the weekend.
- If you have a guest column at Romancing the Blog, please do not write about topics which make fun of readers, even your stupid, crazy ones, because it makes readers wonder if you are mocking them as well. (This post has since been deleted but was at this link and called “The Beast in the Machine.”). You probably are mocking alot of your readers and probably alot of readers deserve it, but don’t make it so evident.
- If you have a secret blog which no one else can be a part of, it doesn’t really make sense to blog about your secret blog and how no one else can be a part of it and how no one else should talk about it to avoid the flaunt factor under the guise of telling others how to set up a secret blog. Even if the secret blog could be super helpful, which I am sure it is. Doesn’t blogging about it kind of fly in the face of the don’t talk about it instruction? I mean, the first rule of Fight Club is “you do not talk about Fight Club.” (and also the second rule. And if you haven’t seen the penis song sung by Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, you haven’t seen troo magic.)
- Please do not sign your online posts and amazon blogs with references to animals or intimate physical contact. I.e., Hugs and Kitties or SWAK. I think it does something to your credibility, or your standing as an adult woman. It simply conjures up gum snapping and gel pens instead of serious emotional writing. (Note, I have nothing against gel pens or hugs or kitties. Well, okay, I admit to not being much of a hugger. More of one armed, pat you on the back sort of uncomfortable ha ha nice to see you again you sort of hugger.).
- Please don’t get excited if Brad Pitt or Josh Holloway “friend” you on Myspace because that is not the real Brad Pitt or Josh Holloway. It’s someone posing as a famous person or just an homage. I am sure that if Brad Pitt had read your books and had time to maintain a myspace page and friend a random erotic romance author, he totally would. But alas, I think in between fathering his many children and acting out his own erotic romance scenes with Angelina Jolie, he probably isn’t out on the internet friending people. I could be totally wrong about this.
- If you have a sucky cover, you should own it like Suzanne Brockmann rather than squeeing about it because then readers start wondering at your taste level and if the author thinks this is a really good cover, what cheesetastic offerings are inside?
- If you have a blog and a website and don’t keep the website updated, you will have readers cursing you. Some of you authors still have really bad websites with no future information (I know this because the bloggers inputting at Romantic Advances are having a hard time finding blurbs). Julie Garwood, I doubt you read here, but yours is virtually unusable. It’s like trying to navigate a circus fun house which is great if you are at the circus and don’t mind getting lost and seeing distorted images, but not so great if you are a reader trying to find out which books are interrelated. Or whether you even have books. I spent a good ten minutes clicking around the cover page trying to figure out where the “backlist” link might be.
- Do not, under any circumstances, pretend to be a reader and recommend your own books. We blog owners might be slow but we aren’t stupid. If you come onto my blog and do it again, I’ll out you. I can’t say anything even remotely funny about this because it isn’t funny and it is the cause of this whole PSA but I felt like it would be a very short article if I included just one item.
Should I be flattered your spam filter has developed a tendre for me? Does this warm fuzzy come with perks? And if so, am I going to have to fight BevBB to get them, seeing as it fell in love with her first? *G*
And now that I think about it, *frown* why did it fall in love with her first? *laughing while feigning a level of angst hopefully appropriate to a Spam filter&poster romantic dark moment* What’s she got that I don’t? Are her fonts more beautiful? Her vowels more rounded? Her consonants more statuesque? Does she “get” its needs better than I do?
Hrrmph! *folding arms across chest* If your spam filter is so shallow it falls for every fancy turn of phrase that crosses its search program, I’m going back to my friend’s fax machine. At least I can trust it to faithfully interrupt every phone convesation with loving persistence. And it doesn’t have a wandering sensor! *G*
I think I’m becoming a Jane fangirl - squeeeeeee. Great post.
hugs and kitties,
Jaynie
*snerk*
*breathes sigh of relief*
I may have done a few dumb-ass things, but I haven’t done those.
(I know you’re all hearing the unspoken “yet” but I promise it’s not there.)
Good points, and I especially like 2, 8 and 9. Why don’t people keep their website up to date? And black backgrounds hardly ever work well. Fortunately, I have a browser button called zap_colors so I can read sites with black backgrounds.
OK I admit it, I am Cassie Edwards and even I hate myself.
But on this topic, have you read my book Savage Rage?
Heh! *I am so going to hell*
You know I tried to find that missing blog post, right? Oh well… (I need me better Internet Sleuthing Skills. Can I buy them at a big-box store?)
And ooh, lookit the new comment format! Do we get our photos posted? Can I opt to look like Sandra Bullock?
I wanna be Eartha Kitt as Cat Woman.
Great List!
Regarding #1, option 2 sounds most bogus to me. Is is even possible to sell 200K and not be a bestseller? In an industry where it’s been said selling 100 extra books can be the difference between topping The List and not getting within spitting distance of it (Americans being the big readers that they are…) and in which print runs for midlisters lately are starting at 20K or less, you have to be pretty damn hot to get 200K in print, forget about sold. Sounds like somebody made up a bunch of numbers to make their “I wasted a year of my life writing a book no one wants” whinefest sound more unique and meaningful than it is.
:departs in terror to immediately update her website:
Great list!
Someone is lying through their teeth about selling 200k and not being a ‘best seller’. Most of the authors who hit the USA Today have much smaller print runs than that yet they achieve best-selling status.
This is why anon posts aren’t worth a second glance.
But you know some celebrity types really do friend people on MySpace etc.
*insert unbecoming excitement here*
I’ve encountered #10 on mailing lists. It is pathetically amusing.
I need to go conjure up false identities to go promo myself and see if I can’t track down a cached reference to that “Beast in the Machine” business.
SmoochKissHug
If I ever meet you, I’ll hug you.
I haven’t been friended by either Brad Pitt or Josh Holloway on Myspace.
Clearly I have not arrived.
*pout*
Review whiners (#3) drive me crazy. A pet peeve, that will ususally start me venting or mocking. So I guess that means if I want to vent or mock (#1 & #4) I can’t complain too much when an author does it :) But then I’m not trying to promote a writing career and that brings me to #2, self-promoting subtlty may be something that needs to be taught in one of the numerous writing seminars out there.
And honestly if you’ve got a website, keep it up-to-date. I’m shocked by the quality of some author sites and even more shocked when I realize an author doesn’t have a website. Unless you’re Linda Howard and have been stalked by a derranged fan, you need a good website that’s easy to find.
Kerry, from what I’ve been hearing (from Jane and others — there’s a great post here at DA from last week about the lists), getting the “bestseller” rank isn’t a question of cumulative sales but rather of velocity per week: if you sell 4,000 copies in one week, even if it’s only for that one week, you’re on the list. If you sell only 3,800 per week, even if you do this every week for six months, you wouldn’t be on the list. So yes, it’s possible to sell 200,000 copies and not be a bestseller.
I think the print run of 200,000 copies would be either a huge push from the author’s publisher, or because the author has an established readership (I think the author said on the Vent forum that s/he wrote seven books).
Jaci, I’d be happy to send you posters of Josh. Not that, cough, I have a poster of Josh over my desk or anything…
((Oh, Sawyer…))
Um. What were we discussing?
Since I am well over 30, and have a paranoid hubster, I don’t have to worry about the whole myspace/friending issue. However, item number 9 drives me complete batshit. Why, oh why do authors taunt readers with websites that are uninformative and/or unnavigable?
This is a total comment hijack, but I saw Ilona Andrews comment and I just had to say, Jane, that I read Magic Bites this weekend and you were right, it was excellent, I devoured it. You told me to read it when it first came out, so thank you! After I finished, I immediately recommended a few people I know buy it. I’m looking forward to next spring’s follow up.
I was friended by Dean Koontz! And by Nathan Fillion and he swears it’s really him! :nodding: *gg*
Great list.
What does SWAK stand for?
testing, testing
Sealed With a Kiss.
We used it in junior high, back in the mid ’80s.
Yes #2 makes me feel uncomfortable. I would rather find their book or website myself than feel like they’re using a popular blog/newslist/whatever a tad inappropriately to sell me something rather than to contribute to the discussion (unless the discussion is : did you write a book and what was it?). I think that authors who comment on blogs is fine. If they are funny, intelligent, thoughtful - THAT (without even mentioning their book) makes me more interested in their writing than them saying “I wrote XXYY and it got 9/10 stars somewhere”.
I don’t mind the review venters, but yeah.. I don’t think I’ve read enough of them yet to be sick of them. If there are generally a lot of them, it’s a good idea to use a different topic. But Gena Showalter’s one was funny..!
I also thought paperbackwriter’s post about the anonymous emailer was pretty funny! .. no?
I don’t care for sneaky promos either. I get a lot of promo emails from the loops I belong to, and I don’t read most of them unless I know the poster.
“the seemingly non stop self promotion only serves to turn readers off”
Thank you GOD for saying this. As an author we are told by agents, publishers, other authors that we must MAXIMIZE the internet. Spread the word far and wide. Show that we are publicity machines willing to do anything to cram our next title down readers’ throats.
And I just can’t do it. Talking about myself or my work endlessly…. who gives a crap. I think I write good stories. I think if you read them you’ll like them. That’s really all you need to know.
There is blog out there of a a new author I respected. I went to it all the time. Now it’s 24/7 “The Book”. I’m so turned off by it I now can’t imagine reading it -but I know that in the eyes of the “publishing” world that author has done the right thing.
Tell them readers! Please. Tell them they just need to say “Hey my book is out (insert date) - hope you like it.” and leave it at that!
Aaah, thanks Shannon. I was an ’80s girl, but I never used that one.
ROTFL! Can Sarah and I start a club? And call it the Unfairly Filtered by Dear Author something or other? :D Oh, and delete the testing post if you want, Jane. I was just wondering if maybe I wasn’t special anymore since Sarah seemed to post so quickly up at the top. Ahem. Hehehe.
Interesting post, though. I’ll have to come back when I have time and follow all the links. Or maybe not. ;p
So glad Patrice asked, because I kept thinking SWiss Army Knife and knew that wasn’t right–LOL.
LOL, Tara Marie. I took one for the crowd of *scratching heads and wondering* folks. *g*
I can’t do it either Steph. I just can’t talk about writing or my book incessantly. My blog is more than a little bit schizzy, I’m sure my pub wouldn’t approve, but I have to talk about what interests me. I have a little more going on in my life than just, The Book. Heaven help me if I didn’t.
Hey, William Shatner’s my friend! And before you go “blech blech blech” let me say that my Dad is SO William Shatner, which is why I’ve always liked him.
And I think it really is him because he has all these very self-serving bulletins and “personal” video interviews that his daughter conducts up on the site. Complete with snippets of awful singing performances.
Oh! Shatner did friend me. Maybe I have arrived after all
*g*
Nathan Fillion friended me. I think it’s him. And you can’t tell me otherwise.
oh, and apropos of nothing, I just finished reading “The Harlequin” by Laurell K. Hamilton.
How did I miss the romancing the blog post that got deleted? I want to know what it was about!
Thank you for putting #2 on there—that drives me completely crazy. Authors everywhere should listen to that and listen well.
HEY — Bam has a photo!
Jennie, the Romancing The Blog post (the author was an unpublished writer) was about contest sites and how sometimes readers go to these sites and give the answers to author contest questions so they can win free books. The post was taken down over a year later at the request of the post author because some people at one of the contest sites started sending her hate mail…and by then she’d stopped writing to focus on other pursuits. :)
And oops…got that one wrong. It was a Katie Macalister post that Jane talks about below!
Re 2: A new author in the throes of “look at my beautiful new baby” I can handle. But there’s burbling because you just can’t help yourself because Your First Book Is Out!, and then there’s deliberately blog-hopping in order to mention that by the way, you wrote a book that has some tenuous connection to the topic and this is where you can find it.
I can understand the temptation, but I try very hard to resist it — because some of my net hangouts are targets for that sort of spam, and thus I know exactly how counter-productive it is.
The RTB post that I was referencing was written by Katie MacAlister and it was about reader fan mail and she quoted three or four of them and mocked them. I commented how I thought that RTB maybe seemed more author friendly because of blog posts like that one - ie. why would readers want to come and read about other readers being mocked. My comment was deleted. And then, when I went to reference it last night, it appears the entirety of the blog post was also deleted.
FYI, the “Kates” at RTB never delete posts or comments or censor them. The hate mail incident Larissa mentioned above has been the exception.
Exactly, Alison…that’s the only post/comment we’ve EVER deleted, which is why I figured Jane was referring to that one. Interesting…
Thank you for this post, Jane.
No matter how high of a rating your book gets from RT, you should not, as an author, go from blog to blog, making a comment about your newest book,
Is Lucinda Betts part of the Romance Divas?
Hmm, Jane and Bam both have pictures! And yet they’re not telling HOW they got pictures.
Watch out Bev, I think they’re jealous of the spam filters clear preference for you and I and are trying to catch it’s attention with fancy pics. *G*
For pic: http://site.gravatar.com/signup
This is the MacAlister post.
I don’t know who deleted the comments, but someone did, because I know of several people who commented that it wasn’t the nicest post in the world (or say they did, and I have no reason to doubt them) and none of those comments stayed.
My most horrible promotional gaffe was with sig lines. I had no experience with sig lines and a long wait for reviews because of my genre. I was SOOOOO excited and so grateful when the first review came in, I gratefully attached it to my sig line. I felt so vaildated by that review because up to that point everyone else had noticed I hadn’t received any reviews and were commmenting on it. Pretty much, I flaunted that sucker, flashed it everywhere with pride. I had a review just like everyone else. When the next review came in, I attached it too. And the next and the next, thereby establishing a pattern.
As you can guess, this rapidly mushroomed out of control as more reviews came in. Inexperience had created a monster. Pretty quick, I had the most unwieldy sig line in history and no way to trim it because whenever I did, someone invariably noticed and asked why I had removed their review quote which made me feel horrible because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, I just needed a shorter sig line.
Finally, in desperation, I removed everything. After about a month going sig lineless, it occurred to me I could just sum up the awards, but for awhile there, I was the picture perfect example of what not to do!
I’ve now got a gravatar (thanks Jane) on my account but how do I make it show up?
Sarah, it might take a couple of hours for it to show up. Jane helped me do mine yesterday and by days end, it was there. ;)
Oh hell, I have to be patient?!?!!?!? *G*
Thanks, Jayne.
Re # 9, the same can be said of message boards/lists and website. JR Ward is guilty of this. As much as I enjoy her books, I don’t think it’s fair to sort of coerce me to join the mbs if only to get some fresh info. I signed up but now I wonder why she still has a site at all.
She recently updated the site but it’s been months since this has been done. The only page that is regularly updated is the books page. The rest, more than, what, a year after the launch of the site, still has either the original text or is under construction!!!
A website is there to advertize the author and her writing. If I want more, I’ll join the mbs or lists or whatever. This goes for all authors.
Sarah, Bam sent me off to Gravatar so my comments would look cool on her site, and it took about two hours I’d say for it to show up. There’s nothing you can do to accelerate it, as far as I know. You also need to clear your cache for avatars to show up. Bam sent me an email and was, “It worked!” and I had to tinker with my browser first to see my pic.
While on a Google hunt, I found nothing in the Wayback Machine, but I found this:
I’m not sure I’d agree that’s funny. Obviously I can’t read the post in question, but I did look at the one December linked. Even if you remove the name, it’s still a violation of privacy to share someone’s emails. Anything that arrives to my inbox I treat as confidential. I know other people don’t do the same, as evidenced by the recent brouhaha, but I try to abide by this credo:
“I have never been hurt by what I have not said.”
–Calvin Coolidge
“I can understand the temptation, but I try very hard to resist it — because some of my net hangouts are targets for that sort of spam, and thus I know exactly how counter-productive it is.”
Now see I would feel self conscious going on about my own work.
NOW “other peoples” books is a totally different matter because I am like such the fan boy, like totally.
I just saw Jules Jones new book Black Leather Rose this morning and I had to like buy it because well it was like totally Jules Jones ya know.
heh
December, the author of the post can delete comments, though doing so is discouraged, and generally, if columnists have issues with commenters, they take it to the Kates rather than deleting the comments. Thanks for finding the post!
All I wanted to say is, “me too” about most of Jane’s list. This is why I love lists everything in one tidy place.
[glares at Teddy] It’s not my day for posting on reader blogs, is it? I’ll just go back to my own blog…
Thanks for the clarification, Larissa! Good to know.
This is the MacAlister post.
Actually, no, this is the post. It was later in the year.
I’m sorry to hear that SWAK is annoying. My greatgrandmother told me that’s how soldiers signed their letters home during WWI, and she always signed hers that way. I use it in a lot of my signoffs, liking the old fashioned feel to it. I’ve had peolpe ask me what it meant but never complain about it. Sigh. Now I’ll feel silly using it.
And Karen, you asked if I was a member of Romance Divas–I’m not.
Another ‘do not’ must be arranging a flash mob to pushing any negtaive amazon reviews off the front page. One star amazon reviews are nothing, but the inability to cope with them is not a good look…
p.s. what is SWAK?
“[glares at Teddy] It’s not my day for posting on reader blogs, is it? I’ll just go back to my own blog…”
Oops sorry, but it is good and I am a fan you know.
Teddy: It’s just slightly embarrassing to have my first reader reaction to the book in *this* thread. :-)
Emily: yes-and-no on the flashmobbing of Amazon reviews. I know people who’ve organised flashmobs not because of the rating, but because the review either gave a completely false impression of actual facts about the book (e.g. making it seem as if a very minor sub-plot was the main focus of the book) or had massive spoilers — or in the case of one Klausner 5 star review, both at the same time. And yes, I’ve seen it on 4 and 5 star reviews as well as on 1 stars.
I think in such cases organising a flash mob isn’t unreasonable, but I also think anyone contemplating it had better be very certain that’s their real motive. You can end up looking very silly otherwise.
I’ve never even heard of SWAK. Of course, I’ve tried to block most of my junior high memories, so that could explain it.
On #10 - you’re nice to give a warning but, honestly, I’m thinking it’s time to “out” these folks. Talk about junior high antics. Good grief! The whole using fake names or “anonymous” to hype a book or knock one on Amazon or elsewhere is one of the most immature things ever. Makes me want to scream.
SWAK = Sealed With A Kiss
There was also SWALK (sealed with a loving kiss).
Hell of a list, Jane! :-) Gonna think hard on it.
EC Sheedy, who is hurrying off to write her new web designer some harassing emails.
Being dyslexic, I always end up reading SWAK as SMAK. Which always strikes me as harsh. *G*
*sigh* Still no gravatar
Sarah, did you associate a gravatar with your email address? Even after you make the gravatar, you have to link it to your email address, which you can access under “my gravatars”.
That was what I forgot to do the first time.
Great post Jane - I especially agree with #9. There is nothing so frustrating than finding an awesome author and then not being able to have more information about other titles now damnit!
I’d never heard of SWAK either - good to know I’m not alone in the world!
I did that. This is what I did. Signed up for the account. Took an avatar off my computer. Resized it. Saved it. Associated it with my email address. I even double checked to make sure it was the right email address though it had to be as I had to verify the email. *sigh*
Maybe it will show up tomorrow.
Thanks Bam.
Ha! I may not be able to post but I have a pic now. Of course everyone is probably standing on the heads trying figure out what it is at that size. :D
No, numbers 1,3,4,5,6 don’t bother me at all.
One of my major peeves which will make me put an author on a don’t touch with a ten foot pole is when they publicly trash a fellow author (especially one more popular that they are-it reeks of sour grapes). I don’t mind criticism of a story, or the book didn’t work etc. I mean trash talk.
Um, so Stephen Colbert friended me. How does he rank against Brad Pitt?
God you must be a mind reader! I will totally ax a writer from my keeper shelf if he/she is a PITA.
Now you guys have to figure out what that stands for..lol.
I’ll throw in what I know, which isn’t - regrettably - that much. A print run of 200,000 is about 300,000 less than a NYT Bestseller. But it’s right in the range of a USA Today List author. Whenever you see print runs rounded off like that, it’s a bet that they’re quoting from Publisher’s Weekly which lists the number they get from the publisher. I don’t know why publishers inflate the number so much, but I’ve looked at my stated print run and then compared them to actual print runs. Subtract about 40% and you’re closer to the real number.
Authors and Blogs - I once heard an actor say that he hated to be on the Letterman show because he had to be himself. He stated that it was easier to be a character. Maybe authors feel the same way. Frankly, I think blogs are brain suckers - at least for me. I’m simply not that interesting in person. Nor is my every thought worthy of publication. I’m a writer, so I’m a shadow person. I’m the nerd in the corner madly scribbling away. Shine the light on me and I am very, very uncomfortable. And frankly, uncomfortable is good. Being uncomfortable keeps me from behaving like an idiot most of the time.
PITA = Pain In The Ass?
*huge sigh* STILL no gravatar. (technology hates me) I’ve deleted the account and started a new one to see if maybe there was some glitch. If that does’t work, I’ll just learn to accept *shuddering disappointed sigh* the standard grey super spy photo beside my name. *G*
So nobody else here gets personal e-mails from Le Pitt and La Jolie? Wow, now I feel really special. Oh, look at the time, I better get the little one ready for his playdate with Maddox. Ta ta.
Jane, you are so…Jane. And that’s a good thing!
I did put up a Myspace page. And then totally ignored it. Just can’t deal with Myspace. Thus I’m only one-friended. His name is Tom. I think he friends everybody.
Funny the black backgrounds look tres cool on my computer. But there sure are a lot of websites lately with so many bells and whistles, you can never find the content.
SWAK
Plugs and puppies…er smacks and smittens, er Kats and Kittens…
Wait. Kisses and Kitties!
I finally gave in and got a MySpace account a week or two ago. I hate the interface, and I’m now ignoring it as much as possible after friending a few other writers I know from elsewhere, many of whom also hate it. :-) My profile says very clearly “this way to my website and my real blog on LiveJournal”…
Bless every author that uses Livejournal. Seriously, I loathe Myspace. I have one, and I’ve used it…three times, I think. I’m sorry, I prefer my LJ to MySpace, no matter how much LJ wants to make it MySpace, Jr. I can navigate that site, put in filters to read certain groups at a time. I won’t be reading a Stargate fan fiction one time and a “the puppies all died!!!!” post the next. Plus? You can get rid of the pink and yellow heart designs with ?style=mine or light, and wow, that’s easier to read.
As for #9, I hate those kinda websites. I never visited JK Rowling’s site because it was so hard to navigate, especially when I had dial-up. What ever happened to straight forward, clean, easy navigation, nice designs that work for dial-up or DSL? Did someone bury the designers in their backyard for not thinking neon green and purple were the height of awesome? And please, someone remind authors that book information is a plus. I hate having to go through Amazon. Lord do I. Especially when putting books on my library list for later reading.
#2, I can’t stand writers that do it, fan fiction or published. It’s annoying. Seriously. We know it’s out there after about the third time we see it linked in a day, and if we haven’t put it on the list to read, being a spammer is only going to piss people off.
#10. Ah, yes. I can’t stand that. I see that in fandoms all the time, but I hadn’t thought published writers did it. That’s just…sad. Its not like writing patterns are so vastly different between the writer and the gusher for the most part.
Authors not keeping their sites updated is a BIG irritation of mine. Particularly if the author writes a series then, at the very least, there should be a chronological listing of books in the series. And, in the case of ebooks at diiferent publishers, make note of where to find the books, okay? If the AUTHOR doesn’t seem to care much about her books, why should I?
Oh, and one more irritation- is there some law I don’t know about that says that paranormal authors MUST use dark backgrounds with light text on their websites? I HATE reading that- it leaves stripes floating in front of my eyes afterwards. So, if you put an excerpt up on your site with that black background/white letters layout, I WILL NOT be reading it. Is that an age thing? Does that contrast bother anyone else?
(okay, let’s see if my gravitar works…)
Update: Nope, no gravitar- just the gravitar symbol. I signed up yesterday, should be working. I think I’d rather be a shadow spy. *pouts*
Update: Signed into Gravitar to see if that helped. Nope, nada.
Oh dear God. I’ve just realised that I hate MySpace so much that I completely forgot to add a link to it on my website, even though I was actually doing updates last week. Paging Dr Freud…
Decisions, decisions… If I put a link to it, people might be able to find it, and I do not see that as a good thing when I have a perfectly nice LiveJournal with an interface that does not drive me crazy or force me to turn the computer speakers off. (Autoplay music on websites — remember kids, just say no.)
QB: my website is (mostly) black text on white, because my own reaction to trying to read red text on black and other fashionable “paranormal” colour schemes is to hunt down the web designer and beat them about the head with a wet kipper. And I felt that way even before I got old enough to need reading glasses.