When I finished my first book, “Goat Games”, I wanted very much to sell a few to help pay for the time and printing costs. I was assured that the key was to have an author website.
Having tried to play by the rules all my life, I dutifully started an author website. I didn’t know much about having one, wasn’t online at home (still aren’t) and I made lots of mistakes.
As the number of books increased, the number of pages increased. The backlist of blog posts went up. The number of visitors crept up. Book sales didn’t.
Getting Noticed
It seems I am woefully behind the times as this is most of my online presence. The only social media I’m on are Pinterest and Goodreads. I do have author pages there and on Smashwords and try to update these monthly.
All these various accounts take a lot of time I don’t have. Since I am not online at home, my internet time is about five hours a week at the library. It doesn’t go very far.
So Get Online
That’s not simple here in rural Missouri. My home is surrounded by hills blocking signals. Therefore, the nearest cell service is a quarter mile hike away.
Internet service from the phone company or satellite services is barely above dial up. There’s lots of talk about better service, but every notice I’ve seen indicates it will be expensive for service inadequate for running a website.
My Author Website
Maybe this site will attract some of the visitors I used to have before my last hosting service had so many problems with my site. I am slowly getting the site organized.
I’ve had contact with computers since they ran on stacks of punch cards. That doesn’t mean I know much about them. I don’t. And learning about new things with so little time is difficult.
The new Contact Page is a case in point. Each week I negotiated my way through another step. It has left me with an account for running email campaigns I don’t do, a cloud account I don’t use and spam cluttering up my email. It would help if I could limit my contacts to English.
At least I do have an author website. And I will be adding a new book page soon as my new novel has a complete draft and is in edit.
