Awesome Author Sites, a series of tips from HTK

Over the next few weeks I will be listing and elaborating on my best hints about whether and how to design and maintain an effective author site. These are some of the same topics I illustrate at length in my “AuthorSites” talks to writers’ groups, beginning with the talk I did last May for the Illinois chapter of SCBWI.

Author Sites: Hybrids

But before we begin I first have to say: Author sites — and I’ve designed and produced over two dozen of them to date — are tricky. Why? Because they are hybrids; they are part personal and part professional.

Your site is personal because as a writer, there is always a part of you in your work. In fact, your site needs to be personal because discovering something of the author-person is one of the main reasons some of your visitors googled you and found the site in the first place. If you are going to place yourself on the web, you need to be prepared to share.

Your site is also a powerful promotional tool for your work. Teachers, librarians, booksellers, parents, editors — people responsible for getting books into the hands of book-lovers — all are potential visitors to your site. These visitors will be looking for signs that you are a professional, someone who can be trusted with a child’s sensibility or an avid reader’s attention.

Straddling Conventions

There are conventions regarding personal sites (it’s probably okay and maybe even expected to post pictures of your dog) and conventions about professional sites (it’s probably not okay and maybe even a downright bad idea to post pictures of your dog).

There’s no one-size fits all rule for where you, the author seeking to put up a site about yourself and your work, should place yourself on the continuum of personal-to-professional. We can probably, in the comments and in future articles, come up with some guidelines, but all I am asking of you here is to begin thinking about the balance you want to achieve. I’ll touch more on this as we go along.