March 25, 2016 
Lauren 
I was chatting with a client earlier today about the website she’s building—as a debut author she’s had a blog, but now that she’s gearing up for her first book to come out, she needs a website to showcase her book as well. She sent me the work-in-progress, and I was giving her some ideas that I thought would help her to finish it up.
But it got me to thinking about internet presence in general. I’m well aware of my own clients’ websites and social media accounts, and to some degree familiar with those of other DGLM clients, especially those I work with on subrights. But for all that we talk about the importance of an author’s internet presence as agents, I realize my go to examples are kind of out of date. Some of those websites probably don’t even exist anymore. I used to have a much better sense of the lay of the land. I can point people to my own authors to show particular strengths and models of best practices. But it’s time I re-expand my reference points.
So tell me, dear blog readers: which authors do you love on the internet? Whose Twitter feed are you retweeting the most? Whose Facebook posts do you like (or heart or smiley, now that that’s a thing) the most often? Which websites do you keep bookmarked? If you were going to model your own internet presence on an existing author, who would you emulate?
I find Shannon Hale thought-provoking and entertaining on Twitter. I like Sara Zarr’s podcasts. I like Kate DiCamillo on Facebook. And I would love to have a website as upbeat and helpful as Kate Messner’s.
Thanks, Kate! Some good recommendations there.
Actually, my go-to info page for new events in the book world is the Entertainment Weekly bookpage and Publishers Weekly; I spent some little time not too long back visiting various hopeful writer’s sites (or “begging blogs” as a lot of the Starbucks hipster crowd calls them) and had to come to the unavoidable conclusion that they really don’t help a writer much. I stayed with one for several months; a hopeful ex-agent who’d written her own book and was blogging her thoughts about the Writing Process (somebody shoot me, this girl makes a terrible cup of coffee) and by and large, I was the only customer she had. I suppose it wasn’t totally depressing; she eventually placed her book with a little back-jungle agency that hadn’t updated it’s blog in 3 years, and they sold it, although I haven’t seen a trace of it anywhere. The twitter-sphere is largely an urban legend in regard to the wider market, so I don’t waste my time (newsflash-most readers don’t) although once you make it past customs and have any kind of readership in actuality instead in your dreams a blogsite might not be a bad promo tool, provided you can talk about something more interesting than the Writing Process and what you had for dinner last night. I’ll say it again; the only people who read writer’s tweets are other writers. All this can actually happen, but it requires a lot more sophisticated fly-fishing technique than a smartphone can deliver. Whoa, was That longwinded or what? I’ve really got to go to Starbucks rehab………….
I haven’t yet seen an author’s page that wasn’t cluttered and full of meaningless noise. But then, I don’t get out much.
I agree that a webpage that is regularly (i.e., at least twice weekly) updated is essential. It give you the opportunity to point your potential buyers towards a place to buy, and entices them to buy more (by providing teasers/previews of your next or other works).
But I really think the rest of it all is just desperate people shouting into the wind and hoping someone, somewhere, might hear them.
I read, a number of years ago, that 98% of blogs aren’t read by ANYone. Most of them don’t deserve to be.
If you were to look around at author websites now, DC, you might find yourself pleasantly surprised. Streamlined and spare is kind of the new norm for websites, author sites included! Blogs are probably not the default as much as they used to be–social media has stolen a lot of their thunder.
Thanks for your thoughts, Kevin. There are actually many DGLM clients with a large social media fanbase well beyond other writers, especially on Twitter, and just last week I sold a book at auction for a writer whose audience was built mostly via Twitter. But it is important for authors to know their own strengths and where their audience can best be found, since some platforms work better for certain categories than others.
True enough; I think the demarcation line here is the whole signed/unsigned thing; after you have a platform and an actual product there’s a variety of online promo options, all of which work in different ways and degrees, depending on your audience and product. Unsigned, you’re invisible, and getting through customs is (or should be) your only concern. Attempts to ride the social media dragon past this bottleneck do (very, very, occasionally ) work, but it’s better to just accept the numbers as they are (somebody posited that about 85% of all queries are deleted unread by most of the “skyscraper agencies”-depending on the number of unpaid interns on staff) and sharpen up your game for the next lightning strike. By the way, since we’re yacking about exposure and whatnot, there was a great article a few weeks ago in PW about a guy who spent several years in the ad business who published a YA novel that got an agent, a megabuck sale and an highpower agent practically in the same breath, (all without doing any of the above) mostly just by inside connections and good old fashioned hustle. There were about 47 comments to this piece, which were by and large besides themselves with righteous fury from unsigned writers who’d been left in the dust. I didn’t join in; the guy’s book sounded like a medium-grade thriller that I don’t expect to see on the bestseller list or the metroplex marquee anytime soon, but it was a Circe De Soleil masterpiece of turnstile jumping, so I couldn’t help but like the guy…………
Substitute “7-figure film deal” for one of the agents in the above longwinded yarn, please…
I think one reason why it\’s a lot harder to get a sense of the lay of the land is that there are a lot more blogs. I\’ve read estimates of between 12 million and 60 million on WordPress alone, which in turn diminishes the impact of each individual blog. Most of the blogs I read regularly only came to my attention when I randomly googled a particular author or work, and found that work reviewed on a particular site, which I then took to checking out regularly. So I guess the reviews brought me to the site rather than the other way round.