self-promotion | Kenneth Ronkowitz

Charles Dickens was a big self-promoter and if he were writing today he would definitely have a website and be on social media.

I have built websites for several authors and their needs are generally similar. (A few of my samples are here.) If someone just typed your name in the search bar, what would we find? Chances are they are looking to find out About You (biography), your Publications, any Events you might be involved in (readings, workshops) some samples of your writing, and a way to Contact you. And those 5 topics make up a reasonable starting place for a website menu.

For a business, if you don’t have a website you don’t exist, and for a published (or hoping to be published) author that is also true. It has been true for a decade or so that having a website is a mark of validity. (That is unfortunately also true for conspiracies, scams, and questionable groups.)

Every writer should have a website as a way to market and promote yourself and your writing, build your audience and sell your work.

I have worked on designing sites for a number of writers who were actually told by their publisher that having a site was a requirement for being published. The bigger publishers often will host a page for your book with a few of those elements but a lot of the marketing of writers (especially novices) falls on the author. Self-promotion is important.

I wrote recently about some tips to help you boost your search engine optimization (SEO). One of those ways is for authors to have a social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. It can also be having a blog as part of your website so that fresh material is out there about you. If the only update to an author site is when they have a new book (which might be a year or years apart), people are not going to return to your pages.

Authors use blog features to stay in touch with their readers. You can also guest blog on other writers’ sites. In this past pandemic year, online blog and book launch tours and interviews became commonplace. Even commenting on other people’s blogs and including your name and website URL helps.

Search engine spiders are out there 24/7 on the web looking for changes to web pages to feed their algorithms. If your site remains the same, it doesn’t help your SEO or hold your audience.

Typically, there is a lot of time between books, so short-form publications keep your name visible. Publications in periodicals can bridge the gaps. Offering some new writing as a blog post, memoir, story excerpt, poem also keeps the gap filled.

Having social media followers helps build audience. Besides the obvious big platforms like Twitter or Facebook, consider offering some video. Audiences are quite wiling to watch short videos recorded with some care on a phone and posted on YouTube (which also allows you and others to easily share on their own sites).

I believe you should own your name as a domain and as a handle on social media sites. You should also do that by creating accounts on some sites where book authors are featured. Check out Goodreads, LibraryThing, BookBub and
LinkedIn (particularly for nonfiction writers and journalists).

Being a self-published indie writer is more common and accepted today. In the last century, a lot of “vanity presses” would print your book for a price and do little else for you. Now, sites for self-publishing offer more from social promotion to press releases to entering your book in contests. If you are in control of your own book distribution, then get it with as m. Everyone thinks first of Amazon and yes it should be there, but also consider Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, OverDrive, Libby, Hoopla, Scribd, Tolino, Playster, Bibliotheca, and Baker & Taylor.

Today, authors need to do more of the promotion than ever before and it is easier to do it than ever before.

It’s rare to find any published writers that don’t have their own website. Publishers usually create some kind of pages for their authors, but you really need your own place to promote yourself, your writing, your readings, workshops and appearances, and probably to share some samples of your work.

Mystery writer Harlan Coben has a very good author site that is obviously professionally maintained. He has his own Facebook account, plus one for the books. He is on Twitter and he uses Instagram. Harlan is a friend and former student of mine and I know that he does much of his own social media. His website points you to all his social media (including an old-fashioned email newsletter – know your audience – not all of them are on social media) and the social media points you to the website.

We are past the time of having to explain why a website is important, and are now pretty deep into the time when any writer – novelist, non-fiction writer or poet – also needs a social media presence.

You don’t necessarily need to be on all the social networks. In fact, even though it is advisable to take possession of your name real estate in all the big networks before someone else does, you probably can’t put out enough content to make all of them seem active unless you have help.

Besides having a truly personal account, having a closed or open Facebook group is a good way to share information, events, photos, reviews and press. Depending on target audience, the chances are much better that readers will check their Facebook – or other social networks – more frequently than your website. Those social posts may drive readers to more in-depth material on the website such as a book preview.

Instagram is the visual place to be, though some treat it in the same way as Twitter (which has also become more visual from its early days) with hashtags and short messages.

Of course, there’s also LinkedIn and Pinterest and plenty of others out there and on the horizon. But again, don’t over extend yourself. LinkedIn is a purely professional, yet still social network, and you would think a professional writer should be there. Yes, have a profile, but that’s not where your readers expect to find you. You would be spending you time better by being in GoodReads which is populated with readers and allows you to do things like offer free book giveaway promotions.

All of this might be handled by someone else – a publisher, agent, publicist – but for the majority of writers reading this, it’s all up to you.

I am still a believer that most social media needs to point to a website where more significant content is found.

My own predilection is for poetry, so I look at a lot of poet sites, both as a reader of their work and as a designer of websites. They range tremendously from simple, homegrown, self-maintained sites, to slickly designed sites. The latter type is often infrequently updated, which is not a good thing. A good test is to check their page for readings and other events.

I checked 7 poet sites in my bookmarks to see what’s new or updated.

Marie Howe‘s site is nicely designed, but hasn’t been updated in 3 years.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan‘s website has up-to-date book information and a complete bio for others to use. Her event updates are on a complementary blog that is updated at least once a week with readings, workshops or her poetry. (I know that because I’m the one who maintains the site and blog.)

Laura Kasischke has a good basic site, and Laura Boss has a simple, but clean and updated website.

taylormali.com has a very nice site but shows no “gigs” upcoming or in the recent past.

kevinyoungpoetry.com is a good, modern site and up to date in content, and so is the site for robertpinskypoet.com. The fact that their URLs are not kevinyoung.com and robertpinsky.com means someone else grabbed that very important piece of their identity real estate. That is often done as a business venture with the aim to resell it to the author or celebrity. A domain/URL will usually cost $15-25 a year, but resales frequently go for $5000 and up. Get it while you can…

Robert Hass has only a site done by his agent barclayagency.com/hass.html but no personal site – but roberthass.com is owned by someone – probably not the poet Robert Hass.