web presence

How To Build Your Own Self-Hosted Author Website In Under 30 Minutes

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This post by Joanna Penn originally appeared on her The Creative Penn site on 8/13/15.

Your website is one of the most important things to get sorted if you’re taking your career as an author seriously.

It’s your home on the internet and the hub for your books.

It’s how readers, agents, publishers, journalists, bloggers and podcasters judge how professional you are.

It’s where you can start to build an email list of readers.

A free site is not good enough if you want to take your author career onwards and upwards.

But your own site doesn’t have to be a big deal. It’s not expensive and it won’t take long to set up.

In [a video on the linked page below, written transcript also provided there], I take you through why having your own site is important, how to get a hosting account and set up your wordpress site, as well as using an example theme and how to start your email list.

 

Read the full post on The Creative Penn.

 

Google+ Is Being Dismantled, And That’s A Good Thing

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This post by Nate Swanner originally appeared on Slashgear on 3/2/15. It’s being shared here because it should be of interest to the many authors who’ve used Google+ as the foundation and hub of their author platform efforts and web presence.

In a recent chat with Forbes, Google’s Sundar Pichai turned a few heads by noting Google+ would be considered as parts — not the sum of those parts. Rather than a social network, Plus would be a stream. And Photos. And Communications. Adding a bit of fuel to the fire was the subsequent dismissal/resignation of Dave Besbris as the head of Google+. Besbris took over for Vic Gundotra, who spearheaded Plus from inception. With a new boss in Bradley Horowitz, the circumstance around Plus might sound confusing. That’s because they kind of are.

The first thing to note is that Google+ isn’t going anywhere yet. It’s still Plus. Google has no plans to change that right now, regardless of how anyone considers it. You’ll still log on, and it’ll still be Google+.

Though Google isn’t saying Plus is dead, it was also never really lively. From the jump, it was dogged with a ‘ghost town’ moniker, and seen as just a bit too different to really latch on. Worse were those nearby streams, often full of people asking how everything worked, and being shamed by knowledgeable users or ignored. Plus was/is just weird.

 

Read the full post on Slashgear.

 

Lemons Into Lemonade: How To Deal With Online Harassment, Share Your Story

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This post by Christina Katz originally appeared on The Christina Katz Writing & Publishing Studio on 2/18/15.

I am always encouraging my students to turn their lemon life experiences into written lemonade. And this is me following my own advice.

I was persecuted and harassed in a huge online community yesterday, and lemme tell you, it was WEIRD.

The person doing the bullying seemed quite fixated on me and was following me around as I moved from group to group, offering me chastisements in a private Facebook message thread that she initiated.

I persistently asked to understand what her issue was with me, and my question was never answered.

The only comment that came close was, “I want you to buy into what I’m trying to do, that’s all.”

Sooo, yeah. Let’s just say chasing me around on social media is not a good way to get me to buy into to WHATEVER you are trying to do. Especially when you fail to communicate to me what that is.

In the end, I could not reconcile with the person, so I left a group she facilitated that I was part of, and reported her to the folks responsible for the larger groups’ existence.

But I did not get away from her before she took some totally uncalled for swipes at me.

 

Read the full post on The Christina Katz Writing & Publishing Studio.