Author Websites and the Personal Brand....

I’m over rain...and yes I know we were all praying for rain two months ago when we were facing a country wide drought but all those collective prayers seem to have been answered this last week in constant downpours so that we are looking at floods.

So now that we are stuck inside, our attention turns to Social Networking sites...coz I’m researching them for a little project.

As part of your brand profile publishers expect you to be social networking as well. Now some authors engage with their readers very well on facebook but it is a time suck. After all the business of being an author is writing. So before you set up your facebook fan page, your twitter account, your blog, sit down and make up a profile plan. Where do you want to spend your time?

Dan Schawbel of Personal Branding Blog has written an interesting article that has been posted all over the web this week entitled R.I.P Facebook. He has some pertinent things to say about personal branding and one of them is devote your energy to YOUR website not someone else’s!

So with this in mind I am revisiting author websites.

What should an Author website do?

Bookmarketingmaven has a short post profiling some excellent author websites.

Yael Miller has a guest post on Tony Eldridge’s blog about good web design for authors.

 Publetariat has reprinted a page from Joanna Penn about a great example of an author website. Make sure people can buy your book!!! That is the big message but there are lots of other important little snippets as well...profile... engage readers...FAQs...flash stuff....

Writer Tools

Joanna Penn is a great source of advice. She has successfully self published three books and has a huge following for her blog and website.  On her blog, thecreativepenn, this week she has a guest post focussing on 22 websites every writer must use. It is a great list. There are some great new sites to check out. Two from the list are 3D Animated Avatars for your characters and an Emotion Thesaurus (this is a wonderful resource compiled every Thursday by children’s writer Angela Ackerman.)

Icyte is a great bookmarking site that takes bookmarking to a whole new level. Your bookmarked web pages are always available stored with your highlighted tags and comments so you can access them on other computers or servers. This is especially interesting if you are researching or working collaboratively on a project.

For more ideas on author websites check out my Marketing 101 series. 

In the Blogosphere this week.

B.E.A. (Book Expo America) is underway. Check out Alice, in the sidebar-she's blogging from it. 

Galleycat has links to hot topics at the Expo including  this little video where the CEO of Figment Publishing talks about their latest initiative to bring cellphone novels to American teens.

There is a lot of comment flying thick and fast over Neil Gaiman getting 40K to speak at a library.

Neil is bemused by it and his blog post on the subject is very interesting. I always knew he was a great guy!!! More power to him I say...(holding signed copy of The Graveyard Book close to chest and sighing...)

Over on Craicerplus (myAmplify page) I have links to articles on

The Konrath effect - Will technology ruin new authors?

Ask The Publishing Guru - Choosing a title for your novel. (This one started some interesting comment on facebook)

The Feckless Goblin - 9 unsavoury characters traits of real authors (ouch)

From Victoria Mixon – 7 reasons to be glad that you are a writer. (ohhhhhh)

George Orwell, Mills and Boon writer: Taking literary mashups to the next level (ideas for your next masterpiece)

Enjoy,


maureen

pic is the master himself... Neil Gaiman

Number 100

It’s that time of the year again when the great and the good gather together to witness the awarding of the ultimate prizes in Children’s Literature in New Zealand. Last night they gathered in Auckland for the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards 2010.

The annoying thing about the awards is that they can’t give great cash prizes to all the finalists...because they were all so good.

Every year Children’s Choice seems to up its profile and that is as it should be because we write for the children.

This year the Children’s Choice overall  winner was Wonky Donkey  By Craig Smith Illustrated by Katz Cowley

The winner of Children’s Choice Young Adult was Brainjack By Brian Falkner

The winner of Children’s Choice Junior Fiction was Friends By Joy Cowley Illustrated by Gavin Bishop

The winner of Children’s Choice Non Fiction  was Dear Alison edited by Simon Pollard.

As an interesting side note none of these books took out the top prize in their respective category.

Melinda has a great run down of the winners so you can jump over to her blog to satisfy your curiosity.

Thanks to the power of text and friends I was kept up to date as the awards were announced in Auckland and due to the power of email and friends the results were soon posted up on The Wellington Children’s Book Association website...almost in real time!!!

A nice golden glow was provided by Mandy Hager, her book ‘The Crossing’ was launched at Spinning Gold last Year and who won the Young Adult category.

As I have said before we must celebrate the brilliance, not only of the winners, but of the finalists because it was a truly hard task to separate them out.

I have been thinking lately that it is about time New Zealand woke up to the fact that we have world class GENRE writers  in this country  who quietly get on and do the business and never get acknowledged by the literati or CNZ....This would be a great profile push for New Zealand Book Month. 

Who are our unsung heroes in GENRE FICTION in this country? 

A good pointer to the answer can be found in the nominations for The Julius Vogel Awards for New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Nalini Singh has two novels and a novella entered...She is a New York Times Bestselling Author and Yes she is one of our top Romance authors. If you look down the Julius Vogel list you will see familiar names from the New Zealand Post Children’s Book finalists this year.

OK rant over (...well muted)

In other news... recently Booktalks was launched. This lovely initiative was sparked and germinated at the Spinning Gold Conference last year. The website, where Schools, Authors and Illustrators can hookup through Skype is up and running. New Zealand yet again is among the leaders in using this technology. This week I came across a great little blog Picturebook Junkies (five PB authors) extolling the virtues of Authors skyping into schools in the US and thought yep we’re doing it... only we are more organised.

Nathan Bransford has a great little poll on his blog at the moment - Which fictional land would you like to live in? No prizes for guessing  the most popular...although quite a few authors were extolling the virtues of their own created fictional worlds...heeheehee....

On Craicerplus (my Amplify page) I have links to articles on

Defending Teen Fiction

The Big Digital Issues in 2011

Humanoid Robot in Space...Go R2 (a nod to my geek side)

The Children’s Lit Conference programme...ax murderers, sexism, Pulman and fairytale fallout (this one has generated a few comments on Facebook)

The pic is The New Zealand Post Children’s Book of The Year 2010 Old Hu Hu. Congratulations Kyle Mewburn and Rachel Driscoll.

I can't think of a better pic to celebrate my 100th Blog Post.

maureen


So which fictional land would you like to live in? If you said Middle Earth we'll make room for you in Central Otago where Kyle lives....