Authors and Websites: What You Need to Know

Before anything else, a bit more shameless publicity: I'll be doing a two hour workshop at the British SCBWI annual conference on 22-23 November. I haven't got a title yet but I've pretty much decided that it's going to be in the format of a web designer/client meeting going through step-by-step what the client needs to know about putting up a website. The tragedy is that my workshop is at the same time as a workshop on character and plot headlined by my friend Miriam Halahmy, uber creative writing guru. Drat.

Anyway. Speaking of the internet. I keep finding myself in little conversations with friends about author websites.

Do authors really need them? What's the point if you're writing picture books for little kids who don't go online? Should authors blog? Aren't there too many blogs in the world already? Aren't MySpace and Facebook just a big waste of time?

And what if THIS is the sum total of our computer savviness:

It's a big, big subject. And if I wrote too comprehensively about it, nobody will ever invite me to speak at their conferences again.

So instead of giving everything away, here's a list of things that authors who are thinking about getting a website need to consider:

1. Which gatekeepers are you targeting? The look and feel of your website is determined by your audience. Are you at a stage in your career where you need to present a professional face to publishers or stir up the interest of readers? Are you trying to get librarians and booksellers interested in your book or are you trying to meet like-minded people for support and contacts?

2. It's not about you, it's about them. The internet is no longer a world of static homepages. The internet-user is used to being able comment, upload, download and engage with a site in a million different ways. If your website can't engage with your visitor, you might as well print out a flyer.

3. It takes five visits to make a sale. I don't know where that fact comes from but it comes up time and again in reference to website effectivity. Whatever it is you are selling (your book? yourself?), ask yourself: how do you get someone to return five times? The answer is what will make your website successful.

4. Nobody can drive it but you. Content management is the bugbear of author websites. You see a lot of author websites that were last updated in the previous century. Ask your web designer, how am I going to update this without you? These days, you don't have to learn code anymore to be in control. The reason blogs are so popular is because blogs are just websites with easy-to-use content management systems. You don't have to be a blogger to have a blog.

5. Write the book. You can blog, you can facebook, you can myspace ... you can do everything possible online but your web efforts are nothing if your product doesn't measure up. At the end of the day, the internet cannot save a bad book.

So go write.

And write well.

Shots rang out, as shots are known to do

My writing pal Christopher Klimowitz forwarded this hilarious list of similes and metaphors formulated by kids in school essays - makes you revise that manuscript a bit more closely!

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual similes and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are known to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

How Brad Pitt Didn't Turn Up for the SCBWI Retreat

So I've just returned from a weekend of writing at the British SCBWI retreat in Codsall near Wolverhampton.

It was very fattening.

Anita Loughrey preparing to gorge during the retreat.

But ultimately inspiring. Don't we all look inspired?

Well-fed retreat attendees just before yet another meal. Click on the image to find out who was photoshopped into the picture (that's what you get when you leave early).

We also saw this goose:

Goose with grass on its beak

What did I learn?

Well Julia Golding (The Diamond of Drury Lane) assured us that it was entirely possible to write 10 novels in two years even if you have three children (and be slim and beautiful and composed but I'm not going to go there).

Julia Golding - and she visits schools and conducts seminars and ...

The charming Shoo Rayner demonstrated how easy it was to get published. All you have to do is write books, illustrate, know html code, learn flash, sing songs, play the guitar, create your own cartoons, design ebooks, have a wonderful, manly speaking voice, speak Norwegian ...

I was so transfixed by Shoo that I forgot to take his picture. Here's a picture of Brad Pitt instead:

Shoo Rayner is a polymath. But Brad Pitt isn't. Or maybe he is. He should get in touch and let me know.

On the last day, the ethereal Tessa Strickland of Barefoot Books came to explain how to solve all your childcare problems by starting up a publishing business. Barefoot Books' business plan combines a conscience with a real love for books and by the time Tessa finished speaking, we had all become Barefoot Book authors ... if only she would have us.

We fell in love with Barefoot Books and Tessa Strickland

The word I would use to describe the SCBWI retreat is 'transformational'.

I came away with a fresh perspective, new avenues into writing, and a sense of confirmation that this thing I am into ... writing for children ... is a really good thing!

Thank you to Sue Hyams for organising the retreat!



Shameless Advert: if any of you are at Hay-on-Wye for the Guardian Book Festival, please, please attend my friend Elizabeth Pisani's talk on Sunday. She drew the graveyard shift ... well, it's at 9 in the morning. As an incentive, she is giving away chocolate and durian flavoured condoms.