So I got about forty responses from my question a few weeks ago about what was critical to have on an author website, and the overwhelming response was that these, in more or less this order, are what readers are looking for:
What’s New
What’s Next
ALL THE BOOKS
Reading Order, particularly if that’s different from the publication order
CURRENT! INFORMATION!
Okay, so this was pretty interesting! I’m gonna go into some of these more, and then touch on some of the less-widely-asked-for-but-still-requested features!
WHAT’S NEW – well, this is pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it? Readers want this front and centre.
WHAT’S NEXT – the most interesting thing about this to me was people asking for as much lead time as possible on this. It’s probable that people who are coming to your author website are the most likely to preorder things, so if something’s available for them to preorder, they want to do that NOW!
ALL THE BOOKS – also pretty self-explanatory, but subclasses of this include:
Books listed by series
Notification of whether a series is complete! I wouldn’t have thought of this, probably because I know, but this makes sense. Readers want to know whether there are more stories coming or whether a series has wrapped up, or perhaps ended prematurely.
Maybe short blurbs for each title, to remind readers where they are in a series
READING ORDER – Listed by series is clearly great, but a lot of readers would like actual reading order, particularly if the author’s recommended reading order isn’t the same as the publication order.
This includes short stories/bonus material/etc at the correct chronological points, and if series intertwine, a notification of when and where this happens along with a recommended reading order (ie, the author recommends you start with Series X, read up to Book 5, read Series Y up through book 7 where they cross over, and then continue with whichever series you want to, or whatever).
CURRENT INFORMATION – this is really critical. A lot of respondees said it was incredibly frustrating to go to an author’s website to discover the last time it was updated was 4 books ago, which, of course, yeah. I also get really frustrated when I go to an author’s site and find out it’s not current. :)
Beyond those things, other things that readers said would be nice to see were:
Social media links – including newsletters and patreons! – one reader specifically said, “If there’s ways to get bonus content, tell me about it. So I’d add a link to your Patreon with a copy/paste of the lowest tier description that includes bonus/early content access. Then tell me what I get by signing up for your newsletter. You’ve posted a pitch elsewhere, copy/paste it to the sign up page here.”
Other bonus material – maps, short stories; for writers who do sprawling things across a lot of books and a long timeline, maybe a timeline (which dovetails with ‘reading order’), ‘drabbles’
Blog posts, but really only if they’re current
Author appearances, ideally with as much lead time as possible
There was also clearly a strong preference for authors having websites that were updated regularly so people could just go there to find out what they were missing. Readers (correctly, IMHO) felt that a regularly-updated website is much, much more reliable than anything Goodreads, Amazon, Wiki, whatever, might provide in terms of this kind of information, and by all appearances everybody responding really appreciated author websites.
Another writer did suggest that the “what’s new” especially should be an invitation/link/insisting on JOINING OUR NEWSLETTERS (that’s a subtle link to mine!), which is a very, very good idea, because our newsletters are the one way we have to absolutely for sure at least GET information to you (whether you read it or not, that’s between you and your gods, and let’s be real, between me and mine for the newsletters I’m signed up for), but also, look, the truth is, I personally am in fact more likely to go to a writer’s website than sign up for their newsletter, so I’m going to look for a happy medium on that one somehow, because I don’t want to punish readers who aren’t on my newsletter. So I’ll think on that one.
Anyway, overall, this was REALLY HELPFUL and interesting, and I really appreciate everybody who took the time to respond!
Conclusion: human evolution has always depended in part upon some unassuming father’s ability to literally backflip his child out of the jaws of death.
Last week I had to go down to Dublin, and a friend brought me out to lunch to celebrate having signed with an agent. We went to Bar Italia, which is fantastic btw, and when the waitstaff arrived to ask if we’d like to look at a dessert menu, my friend said, “Yes! We’re CELEBRATING!”
They asked what we were celebrating, and I explained I was a writer and I had just signed an agent after looking for one for a very long time. They gave me, and then my friend, high-5s, which I thought was really delightful of them.
But then a few minutes later they came back with a cocoa-powder-covered plate in which they’d written “Congrats!” and which had a small bowl of ice cream with a 6 inch HISSING, FIZZING, SPITTING candle in it!
“Don’t worry,” they said, “we won’t sing!” And they did not, but my friend took this picture which I really love. :heart eyes:
Look, this is neither here nor there, really, but some friends have suggested I’m some kind of weird supertaster/smeller or something because I find wine and coffee and several other foods so off-putting*. I’ve never put much credence into it, but:
I can’t use some of our silver forks because as they oxidize they begin to smell like garlic, and it’s disgusting when I’m eating not-garlicy food. Nobody else in the house notices this.
I can only use certain dishwasher tablets because there are some lemon-scented ones that leave a lemon scented flavor on the plates and it’s disgusting. Nobody else in the house notices this.
I just made brownies in a pan that had recently had a strongly-flavored fish dish baked in it, and, like, IT HAD BEEN BOTH HAND WASHED AND RUN THROUGH THE DISHWASHER and the bottoms of the brownies tasted like fish to me. Nobody else in the house noticed this.
So, like… :}
*I actually have a kind of working theory that I’ve got some kind of intolerance to fermented foods, because while I LOVE milk and ice cream, I have an incredibly low tolerance for cheese and can’t eat yogurt at all, don’t like sourdough breads, think wine tastes like grape juice that’s gone bad (and i don’t even like grape juice, so that’s just extra bad), find beer just plain disgusting, and can only eat really mildly pickled things if at all on the pickling front. Get thee behind me, sauerkraut. This could well all be pure horseshit, but the only fermented things I like at all are hard alcohols, which I also barely drink (because I get hangovers for days and it’s not worth it, not bc I dislike the hard alcohols). :shrug:
Today I found out that my great great grandfather was a reverend who died of a sudden heart attack in the pulpit whilst leading his congregation in a stirring rendition of Nearer My God To Thee, and I’m so sorry to him but I absolutely cannot stop laughing about it
Gomez and Morticia Addams got divorced. I woke up mortified and with a sense of inexplicable dread.
you literally don’t need any other plot and i would watch the movie
Every ‘normal’ adult is fussing around Pugsley and Wednesday because “poor children that must be so hard for you to see mom and dad break up like this”
But the kid are absolutely unfazed, arguing that “it’s alright they will be together again soon”. The normie are so sad for the “children clinging to vain hopes” until Morticia and Gomez get married again two weeks after the divorce.
In the meantime Mama and Uncle Fester fight about which one of them will go to whose custody.
They pretend to argue in court and at meeting with lawyers over the splitting of the properties but that’s mostly Gomez insisting to leave more and more thing to his wife in an angry voice.
At home they decided not to talk to each other so Lurch has to (begrudgingly) transmit messages from one to the other, even when they are sat on either side of the table.
That works (more or less) then Morticia says one word in french and Gomez run to cover her with kisses until Morticia remind him that they are spliting (that’s the only moment he seems to regret the whole thing)
Recent Reads: Species Imperative, Julie E. Czerneda
Along that whole topic of ‘books don’t have shelf lives…’
I’ve been aware of Julie Czerneda’s books since they first came out, and somehow just sort of hadn’t ever gotten around to reading any. I specifically remember the title A Thousand Words for Stranger, which I still think is a great title, and I specifically remember the cover art for the Species Imperative trilogy.
Well, the other day, book one, SURVIVAL, was on sale at Kobo, so I thought “yes I should buy this” and I did, and read it, and immediately bought and read the second two, all in about a week.
For one thing, they’re like custom-fit to my little Alaska-raised heart: the lead, Mac, studies salmon (how could I, a girl from the Kenai, not love a salmon-researching heroine?). She deals with magnificently-realized bureaucracy and characters who are just so human they kind of kill me. One of my favorites is just awful.
Furthermore, the aliens are AMAZING. Absolutely TERRIFIC. Occasionally very, very funny (they’re not, overall, funny books, but the moments of humor land perfectly), very alien, sometimes heartbreaking, and always compelling.
I was unreasonably pleased with myself for anticipating a couple of the plot points, and the only thing that annoys me about them is that I have, in fact, been aware of them since their publication, and I haven’t read them before now. :)
SURVIVAL, Book One of Species Imperative Available everywhere now (should be a magic link that lets you choose your store)
Dr. Mackenzie “Mac” Connor is a workaholic and trained biologist at the Norcoast Salmon Research Facility. When she and fellow scientist Dr. Emily Mamani settle in to monitor this year’s salmon runs, an unprecedented arrival interrupts their research: Brymn, an archaeologist and the first Ohryn alien to ever set foot on Earth. He has come to get Mac’s help in uncovering what created the Chasm—a part of the universe whose once-populated worlds are now mysteriously empty of any life-forms.
When a devastating attack on the Base results in Emily’s abduction, Mac is forced to flee with Brymn—and to wonder if Earth may be under attack by the Ro, the aliens Brymn suspects are behind the Chasm. Cut off from everything and everyone she knows, Mac finds herself in grave danger and charged with protecting the human race from extinction…
