#73: Your Writing Platform Needs a Home Base: An Author Website

  Let’s say you send a query letter to a magazine or a book proposal to an agent. She reads it through and feels there’s potential—it looks like there’s a match between you and her publication or agency. What’s the next thing she’s going to do, most likely? Google you. She’s going to type your name into a search engine and then click around the links that come up. "Let’s see what we can find out about this writer..." What will she turn up? Maybe some articles you submitted to an online organization? Comments you left at someone’s blog? Your Facebook and Google+ profiles? Maybe the race results from a 5K Turkey Trot you ran last Thanksgiving? Is that it? Is that all she’s going to find? If so, you may need to set up a permanent residence. Your virtual home. If you’re a writer working on building a writing platform, you need a website. Help Industry Professionals Find You When you secure your own little plot of online real estate, an editor at a publishing house or literary journal can type your name into a search engine and find articles and “About” information that you compose, that you want him to see, that represents you well, that reflects your personality as a writer. Your author website is presented in your voice and features ideas, stories, and topics you tend to write about along with samples of your work—everything you publish there serves as an online portfolio. It’s the hub of your writing platform. The foundation. Other platform efforts may be super-fruitful, but you still need to have one space where you control your image and content. Help Readers Find You Of course, it’s not just industry professionals who may search for you. Don’t forget readers. Who are you trying to reach? What do you write, and who would read your work if you could just get it into their hands? Again, you want to establish yourself online with the kind of content that will draw those people and help them find you and your work. Imagine if they were to find in a magazine’s archives a story you wrote. It intrigues them, and they search for your name. If they find nothing else about you, that’s a missed opportunity. You could have made a connection with readers, invited them into your space, and welcomed them. All the other places you might start making friends online—on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter—they all offer various strengths and opportunities to connect. But to help people really get to know you as a writer, think about inviting them over to your place for a visit. A Website That Reflects You and Your Work Your website doesn’t have to be fancy with lots of bells and whistles—not at all. It can be simple. At the very least, you want a clean space that doesn’t mislead people about the kind of writer you are and the kind of writing you produce. If you write thrillers, you probably don’t want a lot of white space with flowers in the header. If you write reflective, serious creative nonfiction, you probably don’t want a hand-drawn comic strip like The Oatmeal featured front and center on your home page. And you want a way to get content out there from time to time, even if you aren’t regularly blogging. A Simple, Flexible Online Home You can set up a self-hosted website, which will require a monthly fee, but if resources are limited, don’t wait. With all the free and inexpensive website options out there, there’s no need to be a wandering troubadour with no permanent residence. Come up with a basic idea of how you want to present yourself to the world, and find a simple template that will allow you to create some content—pages people can click on to get to know you, and maybe a blog feature that allows you to write and publi...