Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

Theo Black, web designer and husband of author Holly Black, took to criticizing the websites of his former clients. I think Black is a talented guy but his vision of website design is style over functionality. I much prefer the functional and generic websites that he disdains because these sites are easier to navigate and faster to load.

But whatever your tastes in website designs are, it makes no sense to publicly criticize an author for leaving you. It’s bad for business and tacky.

I think that there are some schools of thought that because these are sites for authors who are artists, then the site should reflect their vision. I think sites are for readers and should cater to their preferences. Teddy Pig wrote an article on site design for epublishers and I think the comments at the Smart Bitches site are also instructive of what readers are looking for.

I know that the change in look and feel here at Dear Author is the subject of some controversy. I can promise we will be addressing quite a few of the complaints (font size, glaring red color, lack of elegance), but much of the re-design is here to stay because of one important reason and that is the site loads about 3 times as fast as it did before. For some people, that is a meaningful change. As whey noted yesterday, a website’s content is the most important feature. If people are clicking away before the content loads, then the best content on the web won’t matter because those visitors will never have read it.

According to some sources, a site begins to lose visitors if it does not load within 7 seconds. Other surveys claim that after 8 seconds, 1/3 of visitors will click away. If the author is new, what is compelling to keep a reader waiting until the site loads?

In looking at other sites for inspiration, I noticed that many, many authors websites are inefficient. I know that I’ve written about this …

This is a special post by Bookseller Jolie after talking with some other booksellers and readers.

Readers want to buy your books; booksellers want to sell your books. Even though this article is all about the peeves, it’s really about how to help authors get connected to readers. The only way to do that is have a fabulous website where readers and booksellers can find the answers for which they can use in order to buy more books!
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#1 - Series links are not easily identifiable.  This should be its own special link on the home page!
When readers find a book they like, they want everything they can get their hands on!!! Whether it’s more in that series or another series you may have!

Booksellers want to stock your series, have all the books on hand. 9 times out of 10 a reader will buy all the books in the series, if a bookstore has them. While booksellers are a smart bunch, we can’t know ALL the books that are interconnected! Like the reader, we’ll go to the author’s website for the information.

# 2  Printable booklist - This makes it so …

Sharon Shinn, author of such fabulously romantic fantasy novels as Archangel and Dark Moon Defender, has launched a website at http://sharonshinn.net. Shinn’s many fans will be pleased to learn that her new site includes the author’s news, biography, links and interviews, FAQs, contact information, and even behind-the-scenes details about her books for both adults and young adults.

Tor had one of the worst websites on the ‘net. It was probably worse than the meanest fan blog ever created. I never understood how an imprint devoted to publishing the best in science fiction and fantasy could be so unimaginative in the design and function of its site; not to mention the completely outdated nature of its information.

Today, I received a notice that it has a brand spanking new website: Tor-Forge.com. It has the all important NEW RELEASE section. It loads superfast. It avails itself of some of the latest web technology (Ajax). It’s got a great clean design where the focus is on the book covers. Each book page that I visited included an excerpt! Congratulations, Tor, welcome to the 21st C.

The advertising firm of Spiers New York conducted a survey which revealed that 18% of readers have visited a publisher’s website and 23% have visited an author’s website. So, I guess if you don’t have an online presence, you may be missing out on giving nearly a quarter of your potential readership information on your books. I’ve been an active proponent of author websites. It doesn’t make sense to me in this day and age, not to have a website despite some demurrers of publishers to the contrary. Via Publisher’s Weekly.

It may surprise you, but the top visited publishing website is Spark Notes, a study guide publisher. Next up is Random House, ranked 8133 and then Harlequin (excluding non romance publishers). St. Martins is dead last and that’s because their website basically has no usable information. Nothing like failing to highlight your authors, St. Martins.

Publisher
Rank

Spark Notes
3791

Random House
8133

Harlequin
17964

Simon & Schuster
28719

Harper Collins
31464

Penguin
51790

Elloras Cave
59790

Hachette
…

Dear Authors:

This past week readers have been talking websites and how we really like them. Author websites provide us with information on what is next, what you’ve written in the past and whether we will like your books if you are new to us. Essentially, they are an online sales brochure which help convince eager readers to buy, buy, buy.

During the Nalini Singh viral blogging experiment, I visited alot of blogs. I visited the blogs that linked here and then I would visit sites that were linked to the blog I visited. I’ve visited websites of virtually every author I’ve read and every author that I am somewhat interested in. Let me say that like the writing, the quality of the website/blog varies a great deal from very amateurish to very professional. I’ve seen very good websites for bad authors and very bad websites for good authors.

Some authors, like Sylvia Day, are dismissive of the need for an online presence.
Right now, yes, because so few romance readers are online. The majority of them don’t participate in the online romance community.
It is true that the number of readers who post, blog, …