Publisher’s Life 3: Your Website

If you’re serious about getting into business, you’ll need a professional static website to be your online business card. This should be a reader’s go-to source for information about your books and authors, and anything else you can think of that would interest your audience.

The front page is very, very important – especially in terms of what appears “above the fold”, or the first screen a viewer will see without scrolling down. This area is your first impression and should showcase what you are and what you do. In my case, it’s the business name at the top (as on all pages) followed by some fancy script programming to make my book covers float across the screen – which became necessary as soon as I had published several titles and they would no longer fit in a static arrangement. Below that I have one of our intro videos, a very brief description of us, and a link to more information about me as the boss. I feel that all these things together give a good impression of our overall angle when someone first arrives on our site.

There are many other pages too. One for each author, with a biography carefully honed by the team; one for each book; a Bookshop with links to buy our titles; a contact page, a submissions page, and pages for each of our genres, collections and projects. That may sound like a lot, but it all built up over time, project by project and author by author.

One page is probably enough to begin with, if you make sure it looks clean, professional and inviting.

Publisher’s Life 2: Getting the dream rolling

Once I knew I wanted to get into publishing, and I knew what my niche was, it remained to research exactly how this could work. I wanted to use a different printer than the one I had back when I self-published, and I eventually landed on Lightning Source as what seems to be the industry standard for independent digital publishing.

I had this in mind as I continued swapping critiques with various people, most in the Lost Genre Guild. One of these was Fred, and as I read his story, I began to believe that this would make a fantastic opening title for my line. I asked him if he was interested, and the rest is history.

Then I needed a name for my business. I didn’t really have many options in mind, because once Splashdown suggested itself, there wasn’t room for anything else. I’m crazy about water, and it’s also got to do with space travel, so that was that.

Next time: Setting up a website.

Publisher's Life 1

I've been in the indie publishing business for about 6 years all up - my own self-publishing to begin with, followed by four years of Splashdown and the release of 26 books, most pictured here. So I thought it might be interesting to blog through the motivations, the technicalities, and eventually the day-to-day decisions that come with being an indie publisher. I know a lot of you are thinking about self-publishing. Maybe it seems like too much scary work. I know it can be - it certainly feels like that some days for me even now! But I'd like to explain how I did it, to help shine a light through what can be a murky and mysterious topic.

Writing will always be my first love. But as I went about self-publishing my first book six years ago, I grew to enjoy the process of making books. And I realised that I could never write fast enough to satiate my hankering for the release of fiction similar to my own: speculative fiction, but with an uplifting and sometimes literary bent. Eventually I found plenty such material languishing in an unpublished state and resolved to do something about it. 

To be continued...