Six or seven years ago my advice to aspiring authors of nonfiction books was to build an audience platform by blogging. An example of how critical blogging could be to securing a publishing contract can be found in the case of Ann Marie Ackermann, author of Death of an Assassin: The True Story of the German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee. After an initial assessment of her manuscript, I had recommended she start a historical true-crime blog, and she did. In fact, the editor of the ideal book series at Kent State University Press became a fan of her blog and invited her to submit a book proposal. Her book won a 2018 IPPY in the True Crime category, closed a 180-year-old cold case, and has also been translated into German where it received critical acclaim and was recognized for its scholarly contribution to the history of forensics. Today, blogging may or may not be something an author decides to invest time and energy in. If your authority as an author is based on your subject-area expertise, it remains an important goal to have a visible presence on the internet establishing your credibility. Whether blogging is the best means to achieve that goal depends on you and your project. It may be more important to be listed as an expert source available to journalists and appear as a credible source in news publications covering your subject area. HARO (Help A Reporter Out) may be a better fit to…

Does an author really need to blog? Not necessarily. If you are writing fiction or a children’s storybook, probably not. If you’re writing nonfiction or memoir, probably so. To answer the question, you must ask yourself whether you can reach the audience who will buy your book with a blog. Children rarely make consumer choices about books, but their parents do. Tina L. Peterson wrote a middle-grade novel, Oscar and the Amazing Gravity Repellent. She has a Ph.D. in mass media and communications and is an activist for media literacy. In Media Parentis is where she blogs about smartphones and sleep deprivation, Superbowl Advertising Bingo, and why we need diverse children’s literature. If you have a way to speak to those who buy books like yours, then a blog may be a tool to pull customers to your writing. If you are writing for wildlife naturalists who spend the majority of their time in the field in remote locations like Linda J. Spielman, then you likely don’t need to blog because your customers aren’t likely to be searching online for A Field Guide to Tracking Mammals in the Northeast. But if your book is about a nonfiction subject on which people use search engines to seek out new information, then blogging can be an important instrument in your author’s bag toolkit. Blogging serves two purposes. One, it helps search engines keep your site at the top of the list of hits when someone types in your keywords. Every time you post…

If you’ve been following this blog the past month as you build your new author website, you’re almost ready to launch! Now that you’ve uploaded your text and images into your new Pages, you can see what each one will look like when it goes live if you click on the Preview button as you are customizing the Page. When you are satisfied, hit the “publish” button. I recommend you install a Contact form on your Contact Page. If you plan to use MailChimp for delivery of your blog and/or your newsletter, use Easy Forms for MailChimp as your widget. Once you’ve customized the look of your Pages to fit you and your book, it’s time to finalize the navigation bar. In the dashboard under Appearances, you will find the item “Menu.” Here is where you can determine the structure and order of each of your Pages. Drag each item into the order you prefer.  Home, Author, Book, Blog, Contact. Then click the blue button “save menu.” Now the Navigation Bar on your new website will appear. You’re almost finished. You will want to activate the plugins for MailChimp, Askimet Anti-Spam, Google Analytics, and Facebook Open Graph, Google + and Twitter Card Tags. MailChimp will automate the delivery of emails from your site. Askimet blocks spammers. Google Analytics will import your metrics into your dashboard so you can see them when you sign in. The Facebook Open Graph widget helps your website links load an image and pop up when…