The Creative Process

Many artists would consider it heaven to practice their particular talent and have an outlet waiting to take their product off their hands and sell it for them. The money they’d receive would make it possible to live a comfortable life. They would be able to purchase more material or equipment to continue their art. No one would pressure them to work faster than they desired and they had no responsibility to market and promote. Heavenly, for sure.

As an author for more years than I care to admit, the reality—from a writer’s perspective—is really more like this:

 –     Get a super idea for a book with the perfect hero(ine) and unique setting.

 –     Tell your friends/co-authors you are going to write said book. They ask you for the working title.

 –      You sit down and create a list with the perfect key words for your title (you do know about meta data right?).

 –      Take your title and go to Zon to research how often it’s been used in your particular genre. Find it 46 times and discover the latest title was a bestseller last month. Protecting your creative spirit, you look for less overused titles and keep researching. Two pages of scratched out titles later, you decide the heck with it and go back to the first title, figuring your publisher/agent will change it anyway.

 –      Sit down to write the book and research a lot as you go. Part of the art you thrive on is discovering everything is not smooth sailing, and your characters or research take the story in unexpected directions (ie. dead ends). You throw out a few chapters, add a new secondary character or antagonist, make some plot notes to take you to the end, and march on.

 –      If you are already a published author, this is where distractions will come into play. Your publisher wants revisions on the last book you submitted or has asked that you update your website, Facebook header, Twitter header, and/or blog to reflect the upcoming book. Oh, and have you submitted the necessary things for your blog tour/book signing/interview?

 –      During a writing break, you check on your books that you put up on retail sites after getting backlist rights reverted and creating a company to handle the process. Darn, still not enough sales to worry about having to pay quarterly taxes.

 –      You discover the indie books, though, have actually sold more copies than you imagined. Is a book/series ready to take off? Should you write more in that series and hold off on the next book to your agent/publisher? Can you?

 –      Ads…should I be doing ads to keep the momentum rolling on Facebook, Twitter, Bookbub (who won’t take your ad without a gazillion reviews), or the dozens of sites that advertise they will help market your book? Oh, yeah, about getting more reviews….

 –      Indecisive, so go back to writing. Critique partner calls and asks what $wag are you taking to the next convention (bookmarks, trinkets with your logo, goodies attached to business cards, cups, mugs, screen cleaners, nail files). You set out to order some and go through the process of wondering if any of it does any good. Your sales don’t seem to skyrocket after the piles of expensive items disappear into conference bags and goody rooms. Your friends claim it is helping in name recognition. Sure. Right.

 –      You continue the process above until the current book is done. You send it off to your agent, while guiltily thinking you should be putting it out via your indie company.

 –      Agent suggests you change the title and asks for revisions before she/he sends it off.

 –      Sigh. The cycle goes on with unexpected variations every day.

What part of the creative process do you find rewarding, or fun, or a pain in the backside?

Sandy loves the creative process with all its quirks. Her current books are action-adventure, suspense, with humor, sexy characters, and team work. She has a new book at her agents, and is managing backlist titles, in particular a historical paranormal romance series (written with her sister) which takes place in Salem, the perfect read to get ready for Halloween.

Tips For An Effective Website

By Sandy Parks

Everybody wants a website that is easy to use and effective as a sales or information tool. All these things are within easy reach whether you do your own, have someone do it for you, or a combination of both. All of it depends on your technical abilities and knowing what a good website requires. Having designed several websites, I've put together a list of my top eleven tips for an effective website for authors.

1. Make sure your name and what you do (author, writer, cover artist) are across the top, in an easy to read font, and against an eye-catching background. The header above with Sandy Parks has “Author” in the header. On the header below for Sandy Moffett, I waited and put the info as a header in the first column to the left. Why the left? In a responsive or mobile ready site (ie. your cellphone), your left column is usually the one seen first.

2. Have simple clean navigation on every page and even at the bottom if it works for your site. You should be able to reach all the pages on a website from any page on the site. That also goes for your blog. Many times I have left a website to check out an authors blog and then can’t find a link back to the website or vice versa. I leave frustrated and they’ve lost a potential fan/sale. The header photos both have an example of a navigation bar that should be on all pages. This one is horizontal, but they can also be vertical. Some fancy sites even have a floating navigation box. Personally, I find them distracting, but others love the convenience. What is not obvious in the photos, is that on the website the navigation bars have more drop down choices when you roll a cursor over them. Too many choices on the main bar can clutter the page.

3. If you link to locations off your website (Amazon, blog, information, favorite authors), those should open in a new window so viewers can easily tab back to your page (not using back arrows). When you add links in most programs it will ask if you want to open on a “blank” page or in a "new window." Answer yes, and your link will open a new tab and window on your search engine. Easy. Try out this link to Anne Marie Becker’s website and see if it opens in a new window (but please come back for the rest of the tips).

4. Make your website compatible with mobile devices! This is extremely important as Google and likely other search engines are giving ranking priority to “mobile ready” or “responsive” content. What does this mean?

If you search for your website on your phone or tablet, the columns should automatically condense to one or two columns (as in the photo to the left). For example, if you have a three column site, it should realign to one long column for those reading on a smart phone. Or perhaps two columns for ease of reading on a tablet.

5. Also important with a MOBILE compatible website is the navigation when in mobile configuration. It should show at the top of the window at all times, rather like when viewing Facebook or Twitter on your phone. The screen shot below shows three small bars in the upper right, and the selections that would normally be across the top of a wider website are now stacked up and still accessible. I’ve clicked on Books & Writing so submenus are visible (in light blue). You can also hide the menu’s to see more content.

6. Have a Newsletter Signup on the FIRST PAGE, not the Contact Page. Some viewers never click on the Contact page and thus will never see your sign-up notice/link/form. You can see an example in the photo above. Mine links to MailChimp, but there are many sites/methods which can help collect the information. Many successful authors will tell you these lists of readers can make or break their sales.

7. Add Twitter feed (example below). It updates your website whenever you post on Twitter so search engines note your site is active and that helps keep it visible to searchers. You can find the information on how to add it from the Twitter site.

8. Place links to buy books at every available vendor on every page where that book is mentioned. This is not as easy as you think. On my websites books are mentioned on the home page, a separate book category page, and a separate book excerpt page. There are places where I have added new book material and have yet to add a link. That’s why I also keep a website To Do list. When you add links they should include your affiliate link for the vendor. That is another source of income for an author whether indie or traditionally published, so check it out if you haven’t set up an account with a vendor. If you use icons for the vendors on your website, you should double check if the vendor has a required style. Several of the ones on my site need to be updated to reflect recent changes.

9. Your most recent book cover, if not more, should be displayed on the HOME page. The whole purpose of your website is to encourage sales and make the title of your book and your name familiar to the person stopping by.

10. No flashing, twinkling, constant motion on your site. These type things can be terribly distracting and actually drive people away (music is also a touchy subject and not recommended). Photo or banner rotators are fine if they are set to move or change slowly and have professional content (photographs that relate to subject, book covers, etc). You can also have some quick initial or introductory motion, but once people are on the sight and looking at content, that should be it. For example, Julie Moffett wanted something geeky for her website (about a geek sleuth) so she has motion as you load the site and particular pages.

I could go on and list many more examples, but have to do some website tweaking of my own. So I’ll close with this last tip.

11. Check out all your links and other things on your site once in a while, especially after adding new content and updating the old.

Hope these tips help. You can check out my less than perfect website at Sandy Parks or Sandy Moffett. I'd also love to hear your website tips or opinions.