Diary of a Wimpy Author

by - July 12, 2011

See no evil...
Photo by ucumari
These days becoming a published author comes with a non-optional side order of marketing and publicity. I’ve dreamed of being a writer, but I’ve never dreamed of being a salesperson. Frankly, I suck at selling. But numerous articles told me I should be developing an online presence even before my book is published. I cringed at the idea, but when I sold to Carina Press, I finally bit the bullet.

Having read all the advice on offer, I decided I would start out slow with just a blog/website. I wanted something relatively quick and easy to set up and maintain, and I wanted something cheap. I eventually chose Blogger over Wordpress. Wordpress has a cleaner look and heaps of templates, and I like how you can make it look more of a website than a blog. But I chose Blogger because:

No ads. To eliminate ads from Wordpress you have to pay a yearly fee.

Cost. To register a domain name through Wordpress and link it to your blog costs $17 per year, and $8 more to make it private. I got a private domain name mapping through Blogger for $10.

Customise. Blogger lets you fiddle with the HTML, whereas this is a paid upgrade for Wordpress.

I know other people have had problems with Blogger, but so far I’m happy. I’d love it if Blogger would let you have a home page that isn’t the blog page, and I’m hoping that this will come some time in the future.

I’m trying not to get too hung up on my stats. (My numbers are pathetic, BTW) I’m not trying to develop a blog following. My blog/website is a place where readers can see what I’ve written (fervently hoping I have more than just one book in me) and contact me.

For me setting up this blog has been quite a challenge. I’m not yet ready to tackle Facebook and Twitter yet. For the moment I’m happy to be a wimpy author.

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