Website Creation
Writer’s platform
Now is the time to start building up your writer’s platform. This is where you will launch your work from and you need to start collecting fans. To do this you need to create a short story based in your book or one of your short stories. It can be a side character or an alternate ending. Just something that might interest your readers. This is a bit of a practice for the process as you will need to polish this and put it out with a cover for the world to see. I know it is scary but you can do it.
This article explains why you need to build up a platform.
Website
First, check out other author sites. I like Hurog and Sherrilyn Kenyon. But I’d recommend looking at your favourite authors and see what they have done. In your diary, you need to write down what elements you want to include in your website. You will need to at least do a blog though I wouldn’t do it about the writing process but rather about things that you like in your genre. This is a chance for people to see what your writing is like. They need to hear your voice in this writing. You should create some articles for your website and some graphics.
You can use either wordpress or wix to build your site. If you want to create a website from scratch using HTML you can also go for the Achievement standard on website building. But this lesson is go around the Unit standard.
Make sure you get the elements of design under your belt before you start making your site. And make it a great experience for your audience.
Graphics
Everything looks better with some good graphics. You can’t just use any image you like. You should research a little about copyright and the ethics behind it. If you are using a free stock photo site you need to do your own due diligence as in the end, you will be the one liable if you use a copyrighted image. If you are using free images from wordpress or wix that is alright as they have done the work for you but if you use the following make sure you do a reverse image search to make sure you are within the law.
You can pay for better images (teachers I recommend getting an appsumo deal for depositphoto for you to use in class)
Here are some sites explaining copyrights.
The cool thing in New Zealand is that ISBN can be applied for from the National Library and they are free.
Here is an exemplar for planning a website.
This is more to hit the media studies standard but this can be used as well to plan out a website for the unit standard one. This is an exemplar based on a website I made for my Pen Name. It is the most complete of my websites as I've had about four years to build on to it.
Concept design:
I first went and looked at some of my favourite authors to see what they had done with their websites. I started with Sherrilyn Kenyon's website as she has these cool character profiles that are awesome. The other one I used is Hurog which is the platform for Patricia Brigg's books. She has a strong following so I wanted to make sure I had a website that would appeal to fans as well as being useful to myself as the author. I also checked out sites like Lindsay Buroker who not only appeals to fans but to other authors. And lastly I looked at Ilona Andrews because they are a pen name but they don't hide who they are so they are similar to what I want to achieve.
Treatment:
Many of the sites are dark in tone and they have strong colours like rich blues and reds. Though I can never compete with the art work on Patty's site I knew that was the feel I wanted from the website. I liked the extras you can get with Sherrilyn Kenyon's site so I made sure I had extras like world bibles and the like. The landing page is the one page that never really stays the same. I will change this up depending on news and what events are coming up. I don't expect people to stay long here but instead explore. I didn't want too many tabs but rather fewer so people would have to jump through links to go down a rabbit hole. There are short cuts for some but often you are forced to first go to a page before you can go to the end link. This is done for many reasons like getting some Algo love from Google who will rate a site higher when people spend longer and also because I want to entice and show a journey through the experience.
The other thing I had to be clear on was brand. I'm busy at the moment changing my branding as I am currently both fantasy and science fiction. I'm leaning more towards fantasy and historical fantasy like the Blazing Blunderbuss books. Which all have illustrated covers and rich but muted tones. Which my science fiction and Urban fantasy are more primary colours. This is because I want to lean more towards a steampunk aesthetic in the future but in the meantime, I wanted to lean on the primary colours as they appeal to my audience who want action and easy to access fiction. Even when I go more steampunk I will be leaning towards blues/teal and oranges/brass. This will give my website the contrast I need and still be different enough from many other steampunk aesthetics. I don't want my buttons to get lost in the background images. Blue as well is a calming colour and is used to indicate trustworthily. The richer oranges and brass are about energy and adventure as well as wealth as it will go towards the gold tones as well.
Production Materials:
I used Wix as it is a templated platform and so I don't need to know HTML to be able to make a website. It also has a lot of plug-ins that many of the other platforms don't have. I also liked that you could have it free though I have moved up to the paid platforms. It is fine for a author website but if I wanted to do something like webinars or something this platform wouldn't be able to handle it and I would be better off creating a website from scratch and that I would hire out. For a layman this is a simple programme that allows the most customisation.
Some practicalities I had to think about was a privacy policy as there are laws in the EU that require it. That is another reason why I went with Wix as they already have a secure webpage which is required under this new law. I needed to comply with this as I wanted a Newsletter. Newsletters are useful as you can control your own marketing without having to go through other gatekeepers and in that regard the website pays for itself because if I had to do newsletters through other platforms who have collected their own subscribers I would have to pay. Wix also has automated systems when people subscribe so I can customise welcome emails.
Images were another practicality I had to think about. You can't just grab images from wherever. I at first had a subscription from AdobeStock but that proved expensive so instead, I bought 100 images from DepositPhotos. This is still the cheapest way to get images. I could have used the ones provided by Wix or used something like Pixabay or Pexels. Unfortunately, with some of those sites you can't always be sure of the legality behind the images so that is another reason to go with a paid option. All the images on the site are legally sourced. And most have a limited license for use.
Another practicality I have to be aware of is the blog. The impact of a website effectiveness can be updates. The easiest way to update a website is to add a new blog and being consistent is important. This has been difficult as coming up with topics can be sporadic. The site does have a system to schedule posts and I use this when possible. I've also made it that any new blogs are sent to the newsletter. I've also made sure that any advertising on the side will either take people to the Amazon page or back to the website. I make the assumption that people have found the blog first before the site as I am still an unknown author. The topics and headlines on the blog have to be the kind of thing that will be clickable and enticing to an audience.
I tried out different layouts and just hid them away on the page until I was satisfied with them.
Here are some logo designs I was thinking about
Images that I used for the website
