Playing with Fyr:
Where to House
a Series
I have had a blog with a couple pages on it for a few years, and I have books coming out. I wasn't interested in trying to run a bunch of additional websites, but I recently got two separate book-1 novels of series picked up. I wondered how I should go about promoting my work without overburdening myself.
I read plenty of articles. A bunch said to create social media accounts for characters, create separate websites, create complimentary content--A LOT of work. But these articles were a bit dated to be honest, about ten years ago. Yet I still saw some authors doing these things. I do want to support other authors, but these accounts clogged up my feed when I really just want to engage with other authors and readers on a personal level. It would be cool if I was really into the series, but the ones I saw didn't convince me to buy it. Then there were articles proclaiming that making series and book alone websites were "so yesterday." I decided to investigate further.
What I did next was cyberstalk a bunch of famous YA authors (important to note because results might be influenced by the age of their target audience). Their websites varied, but I noted similarities--simplicity, accessibility, and personality.
Less is sometimes more. I prefer the look of a sleek homepage. A lot of authors had everything on the home page and links on both sides. Some authors had waaaaay too much going on that I was almost intimidated and did the typical moving on instead of actually reading. To defend myself, quite a few of these sites did not have a mobile version which is necessary in this day and age. It's kind of rough browsing on the phone to find a website that is like a novel and the words are too small to read without zooming in and having to move constantly left to right. People like simple, particularly my young adult audience whom I teach; they freely admit they will not read it if it's too complex.
Accessibility:
On those simple websites, everything was on one page or linked to it. My favorite template was one main page with just links, so I revamped blog to emulate that. I created several pages and had to fight with coding and settings--as always--to redirect my domain to a home page and move my blog to a new page. The point is, they are all on one site, easy to get to via a page bar at the top and links on the home page. On each of my pages there are links to my novels (or will be for some). With my audience, it must be mobile friendly. It took a lot of time to work the kinks out, but I hope it's worth it.
Personality:
Every author I looked at had a blog or the super famous crew had an updates page. Here was writing advice, opinions, projects, etc. You really felt like you got to know the author. I've been blogging for a few years. I change it up but mostly stick with what I know: grammar, publishing, book reviews, writing, etc. You should have a target readership in mind. I focus on aspiring authors and anyone who reads YA. I like to help people learn the craft--especially young adults who read and may want to be writers. The blogging seems essential to me. I've read a lot of blogs via Twitter and end up following, sometimes buying books, and engaging with fellow authors. Blogging seems to be a net to pull in potential readers if done properly.
In the end, I kept my blog and, as I mentioned above, revamped it to try to emulate these three things. I would love if you could take the time to check out my home page, the various links, and see what you think. I'm open to suggestions to make it even better since it is still under construction.
Link to the series Celestial Spheres, book 1 Fyr can be found here.
Link to my homepage can be found here.