When to start an author website?

[Wordmaker]

You're right, 200 books does not a best-seller make. I sold nearly that in two months and I'm certainly no best-seller yet.

If I can offer you some very serious advice, time should not be the major deciding factor in your decision to self-publish. Yes, you can get your book out faster, but you risk rushing it and releasing it before it's ready. Self-publish because you want full creative control and can afford to invest money in hiring an editor, cover artist, and layout designer. Don't do it because you don't want to wait. You're just doing yourself a disservice.

Publishing takes time. I wouldn't worry about something being "current." You need more than a couple of years to see good sales and build up a name. If you're worried that your work won't be current anymore, maybe you should work on it to make it more accessible regardless of when you release it? After all, do you really want to release a book that, two years from now, people won't be interested in?

[arianne]

I meant current in terms of reader trend, not in terms of content. For example, a few years back there was that big Dan Brown Da Vinci Code phase where everyone was buying thriller type books, and now the trend has moved on to things like paranormal romance and urban fantasy. I'm just worried that something paranormal romance I write right now will be buried among the future, say, high fantasy trend.

I certainly wasn't the biggest fan of self-publishing a few years ago, because I'd seen too many vanity writers (you've all met them. They're the people who write something terrible and think it's great because their mom and grandma and auntie have told them it's great, and then they go and self-publish it and try to sell you the stuff...) who used self-publishing as a sort of "woe is me, no one understands my art" shield. I think however that self-publishing is garnering more respect and attracting a much better class of writer these days, so I've been looking into it as an option.

The main thing is to really just write something that's worth reading, I guess

[Wordmaker]

Absolutely. Just as I would never advise anyone to try and write to fit current trends, I would say not to worry that your book won't be as popular 2-3 years down the line. People will read good books, regardless of trends. Just make sure your book is the best it can be, and don't sweat it when it comes to the latest craze.

Looking at the trends, paranormal romance has already passed from being the "in" thing. The next big thing was dystopian following The Hunger Games taking off, but even within a year, people were saying the genre was on the way out. The fact is, people who guess what the next trend will be really are just guessing. They have no way to know what will and will not sell, and publishers understand that.

[arianne]

I would think, though, that someone writing something "in vogue" would find it easier to find a publisher/agent, whereas someone writing a thriller might be told "no one reads these secret society things anymore".

My current work is very urban fantasy, and while there are some original elements it's not the sort of thing that people would think is super duper original (nothing new under the sun and all that) although I like my characters and the plot seems to be going as it should. But, as you've mentioned, the urban fantasy trend has now given way to Hunger Games type books and I'm slightly worried by that as it probably means that agents aren't actively looking for something UF

Some people have told me it helps if you have some sort of "fan base" before you publish, as this will interest publishers/agents marketing-wise, which was why I was thinking about author websites, and whether or not I should start one (even though as an unpublished writer I really don't have that much to say, either on the writing front, or on the publishing front. I could speak for hours about my characters, but as the book isn't published yet, details about my characters are unlikely to interest anyone)

[Wordmaker]

You'd be surprised. A lot of agents are reluctant to take on more books in the trending genres because there's so much in the market it becomes a hard sell. Just try finding an agent for a book where your main character is, or is in love with, a vampire, for example. There's just so much out there since the Twilight craze started that lots of agents and publishers aren't interested unless the book brings something really new to the table.

That's one of the reasons why Locked Within focuses so much less on vampires. They're present in the setting, but the primary characters are not vampires. And even with that, some people said I was pushing it to try and get any book published that had even the barest mention of a vampire.

The problem is that so many people think that writing an "in vogue" book is the way to go that the market becomes saturated and readers become jaded.

[Wordmaker]

Oh, and regards having a fan-base beforehand, yeah, it would be a help. But again, don't sweat it. It would be very hard to build a fanbase on your own, from the ground up, and you might find your efforts are better put towards your writing. Build your site, blog about things that interest you, and just be yourself. If you get a lot of followers, great. If not, there's plenty of time to get them.

[Dresdenus Prime]

If you're having trouble deciding whether to go the traditional publishing route or self-publishing, take a look at this blog post by author Michael Hicks. He is a very successful self-published author, currently with ten books out(I think)

http://authormichaelhicks.com/some-advice-to-new-or-aspiring-authors/

I'm going to self-publish my novel, but I'm making sure it's for all the right reasons. Like Paul said, don't rush to release your book just to get it out there. Whether it's now or two years from now, there will always be a dedicated group of readers who enjoy all genre's, even if their out of "style"

[Wordmaker]

Here's a good post with some advice that you might find useful as regards making sure you have good impact as an author.

[Dresdenus Prime]

Here's a good post with some advice that you might find useful as regards making sure you have good impact as an author.

Those are some great tips! Very enjoyable post to read.

[arianne]

Thanks for the links! All very informative.

The problem with me is that I can worry about anything. I worry about my writing, my characters, my plot, my setting, the publishing industry, book trends, whether or not Elvis is still alive...

However, I DO enjoy writing the book, and as an indicator of whether I'm writing for me or just chasing a trend that's not to be sneezed at, and hopefully other people can tell the difference.

[Wordmaker]

Worry less, write more 

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

There's a huge gap between what the publisher does and the author's personal presence.

Indeed, but irritating the heck out of your publishers or potential publishers is not necessarily a net win.  I can think of more than one fairly respected genre author who ended a career that way.

Personal websites/blogs/social-media presence (or, more to the point, POSTING on them) go very far towards that and are not something a publisher's marketing department could do. Nor should they; it's not their job. Being yourself, putting yourself out there, that's yours.

I truly hope nobody ever asks me to make it mine.

[Wordmaker]

In today's publishing industry, it's incumbent on the author to build and maintain their own online platform. Many publishers these days won't take you on unless you're at least willing to promote yourself online. Some won't take you on unless they can already look you up and see how you're presenting yourself.

It's extremely unlikely that you're irriate potential publishers. Not unless you do something foolish like talk trash about another author or go on a rant if you receive a rejection. Pro-tip: Never talk trash about any author, book, agent or publisher. It will come back to bite you.

Readers want to connect with authors, to know them as people, not just names on their book covers. And really, it doesn't take much work to maintain your platform using a blog and Twitter/Facebook. I manage it with a full-time job and a set of 3-month-old twins.

[Shecky]

Indeed, but irritating the heck out of your publishers or potential publishers is not necessarily a net win.  I can think of more than one fairly respected genre author who ended a career that way.

Maintaining a personal online presence is in no way equivalent to "irritating your publisher". Being irritating online by deliberately contravening requests they've made is.

I truly hope nobody ever asks me to make it mine.

These days, it's a given. The writing/reading world has changed fundamentally in the course of our lifetimes. Today's citizen may not actually demand direct contact with the artist, but it's far, far closer to the norm than it used to be, and putting out some sort of contact is rapidly becoming a sine qua non of the profession. Look, for example, at how many current urban fantasy authors are not only on Twitter but active there. Readers are beginning to expect that sort of thing.

[Galvatron]

As far as trending goes, speaking from the standpoint of someone that buys an absurd amount of books, I've never much cared about whats popular as far as picking what to take home from the book store.  After all I have to like it, and it doesnt matter much to me what others like.

I do agree at lot with what Wordmaker said about say vampires -or any other over used product- because I tend to get annoyed by reading the same ole thing again and again.

A good example, the zombie genre, after World War Z and the Walking Dead took off, the selves where flooded with zombie books, but very few offered anything new, and the authors doing their take on World War Z, well I had already read that, and didnt need to read a knock of version.

I will say some authors manage to take concepts that are way overused and put their own spin on it and make it fresh.  A good example would be David Wellignton, I think his vampire novels are nice and different, yes he uses vampires but they are the more 30 Days of Night style vamp, and no one sparkels, so im ok with it.

Also his Monster Island books have a different feel to them than other zombie type books.

Just my two cents, make your stuff have its own feel to it, make it good, and don't worry about whats popular or when it will be published.  People are still buying the WOT, LotR, and Dune books after how many years?

Trends come and go, good books are always good books