Blackbird Publishing

There are a few very easy – and very important – things all authors should do on their websites. How you do them is up to you – but if you’re not doing these things, you should put them on your to do list right now.

That said, there’s only so much time to fit everything into, so my suggestion is that you make a list of non-writing tasks, prioritize them all, and chip away at them as you have time. This is how I handle these types of things, and while it can feel daunting to look at your list, it also means that when you do have a few minutes you know exactly what the next most important thing is.

Published works

Make it easy to see the books and stories you have published, where to buy each one, and what your latest publications are.

If someone looks at your website and has to dig around to find what you’ve published, they might give up and leave. Ditto for buy links. The entire experience should be as simple and easy as possible.

It’s also important to make it clear what your latest publications are. If the reader thinks the last thing you published was five years ago, they might conclude you’re not actively publishing – even if you’ve published another seventeen books since then. Sure, your dedicated readers will stay on your website, but even with them you want to make this as clear as possible.

Debbie Mumford does a great job at making it quick and easy to see what she’s published, how to learn more about and buy each story, and it’s clear what her most recent titles are. The “What’s New?” link in her site’s header that goes to a page where she announces new releases. For each title she includes the cover, information about the story, and buy links. In addition to this, the right sidebar of her site has a section called “Check Out Debbie Mumford’s Newest Titles” that contains cover images for her most recent publications. Clicking on one of these cover images takes you to that title’s page on Amazon.

Website -> social media

Links to your social media accounts should be visible on your main page, your blog (if that differs from your main page), and ideally on every other page on your website unless there’s a compelling reason not to put them there. For example, they might not be appropriate on a landing page – but they definitely fit on a page listing all of your published novels.

This is very easy to do, but a surprising number of authors don’t add these links, or else don’t put them on the main and/or blog pages. The easier it is to find you on social media, the more likely it is that people will start following you there.

All of the main pages on my website have a right sidebar which displays buttons linking to my social media accounts at the very top.

Social media -> website

In addition to having links to your social media accounts on your website, make sure to set up links back the other way. And, of course, your social media accounts should link to each other as well.

Consider adding author information to your personal Facebook profile as well.

About the author

Make sure there’s at least a brief biography/about the author section on your website. Not only will your readers enjoy learning a little more about you, this also should be something that a potential editor, blogger, etc. could pull from for an introduction to you on their site.

If you regularly write in one or more genres, consider adding that information as well.

Alex Brandt’s author bio page is a great example. It includes a photo of Alex – while you don’t have to include a picture of yourself, doing so can help your readers feel a little more connected to you. Alex’s biography gives an overview of what she enjoys writing and why, and her charming personality comes through to the reader.

Contact information

What if someone wants to turn your book into a movie, or wants to ask you to participate in an invitation-only anthology, but but they can’t figure out how to contact you? 🙂

Be careful with what contact information you make publicly available. A lot of authors have contact forms on their sites to keep from getting spammed by programs that search for email addresses. Another option is to list a contact email address, but have it display as an image instead of text. Just make sure you have some way that people can reach you.

Newsetter

If you have a newsletter, make the fact that it exists clear, and make sure it’s super easy to sign up for.

DeAnna Knippling has a link to her newsletter signup form in the right sidebar on the main pages on her site. Not only does this allow the reader a quick and easy path to sign up, DeAnna also shows a bit of her very interesting personality 🙂 in this section with the text “STRANGE AND WONDERFUL FICTION – NEWSLETTER.”

Personality/branding

Your personality is going to come out in your website whether you intend it to or not. Put some thought into who you are and what you want to convey, and over time you can modify your site to reflect that.

Valerie Brook’s website is one of my favorite examples of how to incorporate your personality into your branding. She’s got the basic elements present, but by using a movie-like look she grabs your attention on the home page. The header image and font are used throughout her site, continuing her fun theme.

DeAnna’s personality comes out on her newsletter sign-up page. Not only does she make it easy to get to this page, once you’re there it’s hard not to be intrigued and want to sign up for her newsletter – and read her fiction! Notice that she repeats the text “Strange and Wonderful Fiction” which is listed on the sidebar on the pages that link to the newsletter sign-up page.

Adding some of your personality to your site doesn’t have to involve anything complex. For example, one of the things I do on my site is have this super awesome retro shape displayed at the bottom of the sidebar, and every once in a while I use it in other places as well. This is super simple to do, and the image conveys a little bit about my personality.

Now what?

If you’re not sure where to start, don’t panic! 🙂

Make a list of the things you’d like to do to your site, even if you don’t have the time to do them right now. Prioritize these things, even if it’s just noting that one of them is a higher priority than the others. This way you have a plan for what to do and where to begin.

If you want to do something but aren’t sure how you want it to look, consider starting with something basic. For example, it’s totally fine if you have plain hyperlinks to your social media accounts instead of fancy buttons – the key is to get the links set up. You can change how they look later.

When you look at other authors’ sites, pay attention to what you like/don’t like as a reader. This can help you become more aware of what you can do to improve your own website.

I add/improve things on my site bits at a time because I almost never have huge blocks of time – and if I did, I’d want to use most of that time for writing. I keep a list of tasks so I don’t forget what else I want to do with my website, and I add things to it as I learn new things, or realize I missed something a while back. I’ve been working on my site for years, and I don’t see that ever coming to an end. 🙂 But having a plan helps me know what to work on next.

   

Jutoh is an easy-to-use ebook creation tool that generates ebooks in epub, mobi, and other formats. It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and is inexpensive.

As with all ebook creation software, there are many, many things that you can use Jutoh for. This post focuses on a simple and straightforward way to convert a Word document and a cover image to both an epub and a mobi in mere minutes.

The key to the BFF approach is to set up styles in Word, and have your Word document formatted before running it through Jutoh. Once your styles are set up, you can create a Word template and use that for each new story.

Here are the Word styles I created, and what each is being used for.

• E Chapter – All headings that will appear in the Table of Contents.
• E Start of Chapter – The first paragraph for each chapter or section.
• E Text – Every paragraph in a chapter or section except for the first paragraph.
• E Title – The title on the copyright page.
• E Front/back matter – Some text on the copyright page.
• E Front centered – first line of multiple lines – Text on the copyright page. Used to keep the spacing correct in a section with lines of non-wrapping text.
• E Front centered – last line of multiple lines – Text on the copyright page. Used to keep the spacing correct in a section of lines with non-wrapping text.
• E Front centered italics – Text on the copyright page.
• E Centered Section – Section breaks, as well as some text on the copyright page.

I typically write my manuscript in one document, then make a copy of this template and paste in the text of the story. I do this for two reasons – I find it distracting to have things like the ‘About the Author’ section in a working draft, and I also prefer to write with double-spacing instead of single-spacing, and temporarily changing things like the spacing or the font in a separate document helps me remember to undo those changes when I’m creating the ebook. Because I use the same styles in both files, all I need to do is reset my text from double- to single-spacing, update the book title, copyright information, etc., then save the Word document and run it through Jutoh.

Steps to prepare your Word manuscript for Jutoh

• Insert a title page.
  This is often the same text that appears on the cover, but without the artwork. You may find you need to move the text around to make it look right without the artwork, and you might remove some things that make sense on the cover but not the title page, like pull quotes.
• Set the title text in the table of contents, the first page of the story, and the copyright page.
• Update the bookmark name.
• Add or update the About the Author section.
  I have a standard set of text in my template, so I rarely modify this section from book to book.
• Enter all relevant information in the copyright section – the title, copyright year/author name, cover design/artwork attribution, etc.
• Test all hyperlinks.

Converting your Word manuscript using Jutoh

• Open Jutoh and create a new project.
• Enter the metadata about your book.
  
• Confirm the project name and where you’d like to store the files.
• On the Layout Choice screen, select “Normal reflowable book.”
• You shouldn’t have to change anything on the Import Options screen, but here’s what mine look like just in case.
  
• On the Import Method screen, select “From an existing file containing all sections.”
  
• Jutoh will pop up a message saying its importing your Word document.
• On the Single File Import screen, set “Split by style” to whatever style you’re using in the Word document for your chapter headings. If you’re using my styles, this is “E Chapter.”
  
• Select your cover.
• Click finish. Jutoh has now imported your file! Now you need to compile your ebook(s).
• In the Control Panel, choose your desired configuration (ex. Epub or Mobipocket), then select “Compile.”
  
• Open your ebook using the appropriate reader(s) to make sure everything came out correctly. I also like to open my ebooks on my phone/iPad as well, just to be safe. And test all hyperlinks! You may think they’re working just fine, but it’s no fun to publish an ebook and realize a day or two later that it contains a broken link. Trust me on this. 🙂

You may get errors if your manuscript has a formatting issue. I ran into a few minor things when I started to use Jutoh, and they were all easy to fix because the error messages were very clear.

You’re welcome to use my Word template as a starting point.

There are many other permutations of things you can do with Jutoh – this is a very simple example, but you can go crazy if you’d like. Check out their documentation and website for more information.

   

If you’re curating (aka organizing) a story bundle, how you select authors to invite to participate is entirely up to you. You can publish a call for submissions, or invite only authors whose names begin with the letter M, or who were born under a full moon – anything is fair game.

If you don’t have a firm plan, here are some things you might consider when deciding who to invite.

Quality

A bundle is essentially a box set where each participating author provides a cover, formatted ebook, sales copy, and a short biography. Not only should you consider the quality of an author’s writing, you’re also relying on them to provide a good cover and a well-formatted story. The curator will often not see the finished ebook until launch, and that’s not really a great time to realize an author forgot to add a copyright page, or has an unprofessional-looking cover. So when you’re considering who to invite, it’s worth checking out their existing covers and verifying that they know how to format ebooks.

Not only is this important for you as the curator, it’s also important because you should be considerate and respectful of the other authors who are participating in the bundle. They’re trusting that you will ensure their stories are in a collection they can be proud of.

A related consideration is whether or not an author has indie-published previously. If not, you may need to help them find someone to format their ebook and/or design their cover, or else help them yourself. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this – there are many talented authors out there who don’t know the difference between an epub and a mobi. But helping someone else may take more of your time, so make sure you feel comfortable with what you’re committing to.

Note that there are different types of bundles, so what you need from an author may change depending on the bundle and the site you’re going through. For example, BundleRabbit will soon be offering a collaboration feature, so the considerations with that will differ because the authors will coordinate on their own to create the ebook and cover.

Promotion

Do you, as the curator, want to handle all of the marketing? Or do you want the participating authors to help out?

Generally a bundle’s authors do things like post about the bundle on Facebook or Twitter, announce it in their newsletters, and/or write about it on their blogs. If you’re inviting an author who you know won’t do much, if any, promotion, are you doing so because they have a name/following that will help draw in readers? Because their writing is so good you don’t care if they promote the bundle? Because this is a friend, or an author you admire, and you want them to participate just because it makes you happy?

All of these situations are fine – just make sure you’ve thought through your reasons ahead of time. For example, if you plan to do the bulk of the bundle’s marketing on Facebook, and are expecting the authors to help out, it might not make sense to invite an author who doesn’t have a Facebook account.

Theme

Do you want to invite authors based on their writing ability, or on whether or not they have already published stories that fit the bundle’s theme – or both?

Suppose you’re curating an urban fantasy bundle. You might want to invite authors who already have multiple novels published in that genre in the hope that the bundle will appeal to the authors’ established fan bases. Or you might invite all the successful urban fantasy authors you know, then open the remaining slots up to people who you know will be able to write high quality stories that fit the theme. And, of course, you can just ask whoever you want regardless of what they’ve written and/or published in the past. 🙂 The key is to make sure you know what you’re doing and why.

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However you choose to select who to invite to participate, it’s important to remember that a bundle is always a team effort to some degree. So whatever factors are important to you should be considered up front, not after you’ve invited someone and then realized they’re not a good fit.

Think through what’s important to you early on, and you – and the authors – will be happier with the end result.

   

Why should your personal Facebook profile contain your author information?

If you’re like most authors, you’ve probably used your personal Facebook profile to join writing-related groups, ‘liked’ Facebook pages that relate to a topic you write about, and so on. These groups and pages almost certainly contain members/followers who aren’t connected to you personally, so those people can only see things in your profile that you’ve made publicly available. That’s great, but it falls down if you want people to be able to find, say, your author website.

As a real-world example, about six months ago I was looking for authors to participate in a ghost-themed story bundle. I know plenty of talented people who could write great ghost stories, but I decided it would be fun to find a few new writers to work with who regularly write ghost stories, like Mark Leslie. I wandered through the various Facebook groups I’m in, found a few authors who sounded like they might fit the bill, and then went to look them up. Most of them either didn’t have links to their author websites on their personal profiles. I was able to find a few of them by googling, but not all, and after a while it got to be too time-consuming to try to track people down. I’m sure I missed a few authors who would have been perfect.

For the record, when I went to look at my own profile I discovered my author website was not visible to people who weren’t already connected to me. 🙂 But it is now!

How do you make author information on your personal profile public?

Here’s how to set your author website and social media links publicly available in your personal Facebook profile.

• Go to your personal Facebook profile.
• Click the ‘About’ button below your cover photo.
• Click on ‘Contact and Basic Info.’
• Make your website public.
  • Hover over ‘Websites’ in the ‘Websites and Social Links’ section. An ‘Edit’ button will appear to the right of this line. Click it.
  • Enter the URL to your website, if you haven’t already. Note that you can list multiple websites – for example, you might write under multiple pen names, and have one site for each.
  • Set the visibility to ‘Public’ by using the dropdown link.
    
  • Click ‘Save Changes.’
• Make your social media links public.
  • Hover over ‘Social Links’ in the ‘Websites and Social Links’ section. An ‘Edit’ button will appear to the right of this line. Click it.
  • Enter whatever social media links you want to add. Keep in mind that the visibility setting will apply to all of them.
  • Set the visibility to ‘Public’ by using the dropdown link.
    
  • Click ‘Save Changes.’

You can verify that this worked by viewing what your profile looks like to the public (i.e. anyone, even people who are not connected to you).

• Click the 3 dots to the right of ‘View Activity Log,’ which is on the bottom right side of your cover photo.
• In the dropdown that pops up, click ‘View As.’
• Click on ‘About,’ and verify that the information you specified as public is displayed.