In Today’s Journal
* My Quote of the Day
* Update on the Author Website
* Update on the Journal Website
* Re Tips for Author Website Design
* Of Interest
My Quote of the Day
“Don’t overreach. Good fiction is important, but in a lesser way than some writers imagine. It isn’t a cure for human ills or a call to be a better person or a soapbox from which to teach anyone anything. Good fiction serves a modest single purpose: entertainment.”
Update on the Author Website
Woohoo! I’m close to finished with updating the author site.
Early yesterday morning I revived my readers’ newsletter (Harvey’s Notes to Earth) and added a subscription link directly to the menu at the author site.
If you’d like to subscribe to that infrequent newsletter, click Subscribe.
I also added a Contact Me menu item that opens your email service when you click it. So that pretty much wraps up the author site.
Update on the Journal Website
I’ve also pretty much finished revising the Journal website. I added a LOT of new stuff, so I hope you’ll stop by and take another look. It’ll be well worth your time.
Specifically, check out the dropdown menu beneath the For Fiction Writers tab. I added a dozen new pages to that dropdown menu, and each page has numerous links.
Offerings now include
- video interviews with famous writers;
- a dozen or so articles from experts on licensing;
- a few dozen articles from experts on marketing, publishing, and distribution;
- dozens of articles from helpful organizations, helpful pro-writer websites, helpful topical websites, and much more;
- a listing of some of the royalty-free image sites I’ve used for book covers; plus
- dozens of direct reference materials including dictionaries, conversion tools, and website tools.
I hope you’re excited. I’m certainly excited for you. This could literally be a life-changing passive-study opportunity for you. I even took the time to alphabetize the list.
Of course you won’t be able to read it all in one sitting or even in several sittings.
But it might be a good idea to visit the site once or twice a week for a half-hour or an hour or so for the specific purpose of learning. There’s far more than a masters degree worth of information there.
Disclaimer
Most of the items I linked to in the For Fiction Writers dropdown menu are not by me. They’re provided by proven industry professionals, bestselling writers, etc.
But I’ve read most of them at one time or another and found them important enough to share.
Also, note that there’s almost certainly some duplication of some articles from one dropdown menu item to another, so I suggest you keep a running list of articles you’ve read as you read them so you can skip over them if you encounter them again.
For articles directly from me,
be sure to check out the On Writing Fiction tab. I’ll add to that from time to time, but for now there are around ten short articles with my thoughts on writing fiction.
Especially if you’re new to the craft or new to TNDJ, I encourage you to read those.
Happy learning, and good luck!
Re Tips for Author Website Design
One writer mentioned he’s heard that personal author websites are secondary right now. I forgot to address that in the post a few days ago, so I’ll address it now.
I suspect some pundits are saying author websites are secondary or even unnecessary because so many writers consider their social media a replacement for their website. Or maybe because they have their website hosted through Shopify or somewhere else like that.
Using Shopify or Payhip to license your work is fine—I recommend it—but I advise strongly against using them for your website.
Why? Same reason I won’t buy a house that’s controlled by an HOA. You don’t own Facebook or Shopify, and the people who DO own them can change the rules on you at any time.
I strongly recommend setting up and owning your own website on WordPress.org through a hosting service.
Your writing is your intellectual property, just as your house is your “real” property. You should be in complete control of it.