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Continuing our series on Writers and Technology, Relief Advisory Board member and author J. Mark Bertrand describes why writers should have their own website. I’m on the West Coast, chilling with a fellow writer in a coffee shop that’s far too stylish for either one of us, and he’s explaining to me the problem with publishing today.
“The problem with publishing today,” he says, “is that you can’t get a book published until you already have an audience—but how do you build an audience without a book?”
“Chicken and the egg,” I say, portentously swirling my espresso. Should my pinkie be out or not? “Vicious cycle.”
“You have to be a celebrity. You have to be professional speaker. You have to be—” his eyes narrow, “—you have to be a blogger.”
The way he says ‘blogger,’ it sounds worse than a scab busting the picket line. Like there are guys who would betray their friends, sell out their communities and hand their souls to the Man—but at least they have the self-respect, the common decency, not to blog.
Not the first time I’ve been exposed to contemptus bloggi. Usually, though, it’s coming from Old Media types quaking at the thought of pajama-clad bloggers stealing their scoops. And really, those days are gone. Now the nightly news runs YouTube clips before the break. What I’m faced with here is something else.
“I mean, maybe I should be blogging,” he says. “But I’m a novelist. I’m not gonna waste my time writing about what was on TV last night when I could be finishing a chapter of my book.”
He has a point there. Blogging is a great tool for procrastinators. I bet if I copied all my blog entries and pasted them into a Word document, there’d be a book there. A freakin’ trilogy, no doubt. But I’m not going to give up so easily. After all, I have a blog. I consider myself a writer, not a “blogger,” but let’s not get all semantical. I blog, I have advised others to blog, and I am unrepentant. Sort of . . .
“A blog can be good,” I say.
He regards me with suspicion, as if I’d just remarked without qualification how cool it was of Hitler to build the Autobahn.
But it’s true. An author these days needs a website. And a website these days needs a blog. I’m nothing if not the poster boy for that.
* * *
It’s not a panacea, of course, but an author site is the ultimate convergence device, a business card, a curriculum vitae, a newsletter, a publicity machine. And in spite of the publish-on-demand revolution, a website is still the only context in which a professional can self-publish without any stigma attached. That’s what blogging is, after all: a guilt-free vanity press.
I know writers who’ve gotten book deals as a result of their sites. In fact, I’ve experienced it myself. Editors have read my blog posts, listened to podcasts, and then dropped me a line. People I’d have never thought of querying, and it turns out they already like my work.
When I think about all the things aspiring writers waste money on—nice laptops, special software, correspondence courses, manuscript critiques—a good author site is worth every penny. I’ve never heard of anyone sitting at Starbucks with an aluminum MacBook Pro when an editor walks up.
“Hey, cool laptop. You shopping any manuscripts around?”
But with websites it happens. A lot. Your site is always working for you, whether you know about it or not.
* * *
It’s 2004. The Art & Soul Conference at Baylor University. I’m in the lobby between sessions, browsing at the Eighth Day Books table. Minding my own business, in other words, in sharp contrast to everyone else. They’re networking. All of them. Somehow they’ve managed to meet up over the course of the event, to learn each other’s names. Not me. I’ve kept to myself. I’m a social moth.
“Hey, aren’t you—”
I turn to find a smiling man at my elbow. People are always saying I remind them of someone. Usually a crazy brother-in-law. I start to say, No, I’m not.
“—Mark Bertrand?”
“No, I’m . . . Oh.” Yes, actually. I am.
“I thought so,” he says. “I read your blog.”
That explains it. At least half the people I know, I met through my blog. Only I don’t usually meet them. Not without planning it in advance. The crazy thing is, for a brief shining moment, I feel like a celebrity. Somebody knows me. Somebody’s familiar with my work.
And the thing is, he’s not the only one. I got an e-mail this week from someone who’d read my book and enjoyed it.
“I’ve been reading your blog for a year and half.”
And then you bought my book. That makes you think, doesn’t it?
* * *
They call it a web presence, and if you have a cynical turn of mind (as I do), you may be tempted to trumpet the irony.
“We’re not really present online; the web just redefines absence.”
But that’s not true. You are present on your site the same way authors are on the page. When they visit your site, people don’t just know who you are. They know you.
The benefit from a professional standpoint should be obvious. When editors or agents want to check you out, your site is the first place they’ll look. That’s why the most important thing on your business card isn’t your name; it’s your URL. (Ideally, they should be the same thing.)
Through your site, you’re present to the public, too. At first, there won’t be many of them, but in time you’ll be surprised. If you have something interesting to say, the odds are someone will listen. Being able to write well doesn’t hurt either.
If you hired a marketing consultant, he might say your author site lets you project an image. It actually does more. Through the site you can project substance.
* * *
There’s a life-cycle to an author’s website. First there’s the earnest, unpublished larval stage, typically characterized by long lists of novels-in-progress with breathless back-cover-style summaries. As you mature, the site does too, which means it loses focus and needs a design overhaul, something you promise you’ll do before Stage 3, Glorious Publication. Then you’ll have a book out and you’ll keep wondering what happened to re-designing the site.
“At least I’m keeping it real,” you’ll tell yourself. “My site is . . . organic.”
My coffee-sipping interlocutor on the West Coast is afraid. Not that he won’t be a good blogger, but that his site will look ridiculous. He’s no designer. Following my analogy—a website is the 21st century business card—he worries that his card will be crappy and homemade. Laughable. The opposite of professional.
“Without a site, there’s at least a mystery,” he says. “I could be this genius in a cave somewhere doing work too fine for anyone to comprehend. But slapping some clip-art on the page and some scrolling text . . . then the mystery’s gone.”
Fake it till you make it. Or more precisely, if you don’t fake it well enough, you won’t make it. He’s right, of course. We’ve all seen lame author-designed sites that impress us about as much as a lame, author-designed-and-published book.
“Less is more,” I say. “If you go with something like Typepad, the templates help, and people understand what they’re looking at and don’t judge. There are ways to do it well with no design sense.”
It’s a challenge, I admit, but life is challenging. If you’re an author in 2008, you’ve got to be Googleable and e-mailable. You’ve got to have a presence. If you’re not an author but you want to be, the need is even greater. There are tools to help—and people to help—but the beginning is this: admit you have to do it.
“Fine,” he says, looking defeated, but also relieved.
“And when you are famous,” I say, “the cave will still be waiting. Get an audience, and then you can worry about dodging them.”
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that cheered him up.
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