Broad Support and User Base

WordPress has one of the largest user bases of any content management system.  Why is this a good thing?  Well, it means that there’s a lot of community support.  It means that if there’s a feature you want, there’s a good chance someone has already developed it as a plug-in (there are tens of thousands of plug-ins for WordPress).  If you run into a bug or other problem, there’s a good chance that you can find someone else who has already experienced this problem with a Google Search.  This all translates into fewer hours and more features for your author website.  You get more for less.

What this also means is that rather than having to go out and buy expensive books to learn how to design WordPress sites, I have been able to learn everything I know from reading online.  So I have less up-front investment (although still quite a bit of investment in mastering parts of it). Those savings get passed on to clients, ultimately.

Great Back-end Usability

The back-end of a site is the part that only the site author sees.  It’s where you go to manage your content, write new blog posts, and so on.  Because your readers never see this part of your software, you might be tempted to be satisfied with any old thing–that is, if you’re already a computer expert, and don’t have any trouble learning new interfaces.  Not all interfaces are created equal.  Now, WordPress hasn’t always had a nice, user-friendly back-end, but these days, it’s quite simple and beautiful.  I enjoy spending time inside of the WordPress software, configuring things, and a good portion of my enjoyment is due to that.

And chances are, you’ve already used WordPress.  A lot of authors have already used sites like WordPress.com to set up blogs in the past.  So this means you spend less time learning an interface, and more time working on your writing.

Power Theme System

WordPress allows you to configure and lay out your site any way you want, and it does it through a straightforward theme engine with well documented template tags.   Through a combination of plugins, theme writing, HTML, CSS, and judicious JavaScript, there hasn’t been a design concept I have come across that can’t be implemented in some fashion with the system.  And using a good blank theme as a starting base, you can have a theme up and running from an HTML prototype very quickly.  You dream it up, and I build it.  It’s as easy as that.

A CMS, Not Just a Blog

Some people make the mistake of thinking that WordPress is just for blogs.  That’s only a small part of what WordPress can do these days.  With a few basic plugins, you can build just about any kind of Content Management System feature you might want.  And most importantly to authors, it gives you a user-friendly way of managing and editing that content.   Rather than having to spend money down the road paying your webmaster to update your site, you can do it yourself through the back-end.  It’s a win-win for you and your webmaster.

Conclusion

So those are just a few of the reasons I use WordPress.  I was very hesitant to adopt it early on because I had read a lot of negatives, but each one of those negatives has been addressed by the development team.  Eventually, it made less sense to stick with an old warhorse like Movable Type and to move on and work with the younger, more dynamic WordPress.  Since I made the move, I haven’t looked back.

In this day an age, a domain costs almost nothing, and hosting, not much more. I charge $15 a year for a domain and $20 a year for hosting for my clients, and there might be cheaper (but less feature-rich) hosting available out there. Sff.net might have been cool a decade ago, but it’s not now. It just looks unprofessional. Buy a domain, and if you can, make it your full publishing name. If you can’t, don’t get too clever, by which I mean don’t pick something you’re going to hate 10 years from now. Domain names can be changed, but you should really try to avoid it, to preserve your ratings in the search engines.

2. A biography and bibliography with lots and lots of links.

If someone is coming to your website, it is likely that they want to know who you are, and what else you’ve done. Don’t be stingy here. Don’t publicize anything you’re embarrassed of, such as that mpreg slash fic that you wrote late one night while drunk, but definitely include your bibliography, and if your story is available online, for free in a webzine or for sale in some form, link to it. If you don’t, you’re missing a chance for a sale to a potential fan.

3. A News Blog with an RSS feed. Or a newsletter. Or both.

Note that I said a News Blog. Writer blogs are great entertainment, but they are notoriously cluttered with nonsense quizzes, word counts, whining, and so much other crap that finding out when an author you like has a story coming out can be harder than it should. Maintain a clean weblog that is simply for announcing your sales, appearances, and other professional items of interest. Don’t use it to post pictures of your cats. I’m an RSS feed man myself, and I think they are the future, but perhaps you should do an email mailing list as well. Post the same content to both, but make sure it’s clear that they are the same information, so your fans don’t sign up for both and get irritated for receiving duplicate information.

4. A professional design

This isn’t cheap, but if you are a professional author, you owe it to yourself to hire a designer who can build you something nice and maintainable. Tony Geer does great work. Tobias Buckell’s website is a model example of this list. We work fairly affordably ourselves. But seriously, your nephew who has a copy of Front Page 2000 isn’t going to be good enough. Spend a little money on it, and you’re going to have better results. People buy books based on covers, and they’re going to judge you by how professional and fresh your design is as well.

5. Full stories and/or novels. Possibly excerpts.

Free samples have been used in marketing since the invention of capitalism. Writers and other intellectual property creators are often terrified of this, and admittedly, there’s a risk that all your stuff will be stolen and you will be left penniless. If you’re lucky! Someone who comes to your website may not have read anything you have written. Post a story from a year or two. If you’re brave, put it in the Creative Commons as soon as you can. That might limit resale rights, but chalk it up as a marketing expense. I’m not going to go into the Creative Commons too much here, as Cory Doctorow does it better than anyone else. Let me just say that I agree with him, but I understand those who don’t, and I don’t think this will make or break you. But try it out, and see what happens. It worked for Peter Watts!

6. A way to buy your work.

Post links to Amazon, Fictionwise, whatever. Make them prominent. If you have work in print for sale, it should be easy for me to buy it. Somebody really has to make this as easy as iTunes. But that’s a topic for another issue. Link, link, and link again.

7. A way to contact you.

Boo, spam! Nobody likes spam, but if you don’t have a way for fans or potential publishers to contact you, you’re missing out on fan mail, hate mail, and possible sales. There are javascript tricks you can use, or you can set up a specific email address that you check on a regular basis. You really should have this email address be at your domain above, too. Even if it forwards to your gmail account. It’s a matter of perception. If you own a domain, and you should, use it for your email.

8. A Press Kit

I was running out of ideas, so I stole this one from Tobias Buckell’s page. Short story authors probably don’t need press kits, but novelists might. Photos, book covers, and anything else that makes a reporter’s job easier when he wants to report on your work is a very good thing.

9. A Goodies Section

I have serious doubts about people loving books so much that they want desktop wallpaper, icons, and such, but hey, if it doesn’t cost you anything to make them or have them made by a designer, why not? Little rewards like this don’t cost much, but they might be just the edge you need to start a buzz about your latest work.Think outside the box here. I’m hesitant to give this idea away, but if your readership is young and nerdy, consider publishing D&D gaming stats for your characters and creations. Make it easy and allowable for your fans to play in your world. They’re not going to make any money off of it, so don’t worry. It stopped being yours when you published it.

10. Something nobody else has tried.

See the idea about about D&D stats. Do something like that. Do something wild and new. It’s a tough world out there for writers. There are a lot of us, and I wish I could say that the best writers win. But marketing money has a direct effect on sales. If you’re reading this and giving it serious consideration, then there’s a good chance that your publisher doesn’t have any marketing bucks for you. That means you need to take matters into your own hands.

5 Things I don’t recommend doing:

1. Featuring your photo prominently in the design.
2. Posting your daily word counts and/or in-depth analysis of your daily work. This is interesting to other writers. Probably not so much to fans, unless they want to be a writer too. Keep a separate blog for this.
3. Your rejections. I’ve ranted about this before. Posting about your rejections is something you should stop doing. I can understand why you might do it, but keep it private. You might say something you regret. Editors read websites too.
4. Excerpts of unpublished work. Sorry, nobody cares unless you’re super-established and semi-famous.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t release the whole thing online if you want.
5. Bad reviews. I’ve not read books because of the bad reviews their own authors have publicized. If you don’t link them, I won’t hear about them. This is contentious, but I just don’t recommend it personally.