This post starts a new series: “Clever Internetizens” — it will be a series of interviews with people on the web who have a great web presence. They utilize their websites and social media effectively across a variety of disciplines. Today I’m talking with author & librarian, Sara Ryan (http://sararyan.com). Sara has written two novels, Empress of the World and The Rules for Hearts, and a bunch of comics including the series Flytrap. She’s currently working on a graphic novel for DC Vertigo called Bad Houses.

I was in grad school at the dawn of graphical web browsing. As soon as I learned how to ftp and change file permissions, I set up what was then known as a Personal Home Page. (Old. School.)

I used it mainly to recommend things I liked.

• How long have you had the website that you have now?

I’ve had sararyan.com since 2001 (here’s a snapshot via the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20010219040125/http://www.sararyan.com/). The design has evolved considerably since then.

• How did you decide what it should look like?

I knew I wanted a sort of collage/bricolage appearance, because I wanted to be able to add images relating to new projects without necessarily changing the whole design. And I think the site’s retro/antique look is paradoxically less likely to feel dated over time.

I also asked my readers; the Flickr and LibraryThing widgets and the prominence of the blog on my frontpage came as a result of their feedback.

And finally, I worked with highly skilled code monkey Space Ninja (spaceninja.com) to develop the details of the look-and-feel and make sure the site worked on different platforms.

• How often do you update it?

It varies wildly — sometimes I post several times a week, sometimes I take a hiatus for as long as a month. Probably the average is about once a week.

• How do you use it to publicize the work that you do?

Like most folks, I announce events and link to interviews. I also make a lot of work available on the site. I have several short comics that you can read online (you can also buy them as chapbooks), and I’ve recorded myself reading my first novel, Empress of the World, in its entirety as a series of podcasts. I’m working my way through my second novel, The Rules for Hearts, too.

• How else do you publicize your work?

I like Twitter.

I’m on Facebook as well, in a low-key way. I respond to comments on my wall, but I’ve never set up fan pages for my books or used it to send event invitations. I can’t quite bring myself to cross that particular self-promotional Rubicon.

And I crosspost my blog entries to LiveJournal. It’s not as popular as it once was, but a fair number of folks still hang out there, especially genre writers, so there’s a certain sense of community.

My overall approach: I don’t force myself to participate in spaces that, for whatever reason, don’t feel right. Lots of writers are on GoodReads; I’m not. Lots of writers have Google alerts set up for their names and book titles; I don’t. And sure, I might miss out on seeing some nice reviews, but I also don’t have the stress of wondering whether a particular mention will turn out to be depressing or delightful.

• How do you balance and prioritize the tasks of writing and self-promotion?

In a sense, the balance is easier for me to maintain than for some of my friends who write full-time on a book-a-year schedule. They always need to simultaneously promote the current book and write the new one.

I have longer stretches between books, so the level of self-promotion ebbs and flows fairly organically. And sometimes I’ll take a hiatus from the blog (as I did in August) to devote more time to writing.

• I love that you’ve posted individual podcasts of you reading your work – what prompted you to do that?

I noticed that my computer had GarageBand!

Seriously, I like reading out loud, and podcasting seemed like it would be easy and fun — which it has been, in part because I, um, don’t worry too much about sophisticated audio production values, e.g. I just record and post.

I started the Empress podcasts as a way to build up to the publication of Rules, and continued because people seemed to enjoy them.

• You regularly blog about other authors and books you recommend – what prompted you to do that?

I read a lot; I like talking about what I read with friends; I like treating blog readers as friends.

• How much do you share about projects you’re working on before they’re published? Does it help your process at all?

I share much less than I once did. I’m less likely to report on word or page count, more likely to discuss process in a broader sense. I wrote a while back on the differences I’ve observed in revising a graphic novel script vs. a prose novel, and I have a post in the works about unexpectedly useful reading.

I think the danger of talking too much about a project-in-progress is that readers may wonder what’s taking you so long (!) and/or get tired of it before it even appears. And publishers often move a book’s release date, so if you’ve said Hey, it’s totally coming out on September 1st!, and then you find out it’ll actually be February 27th of the following year, well, that is no fun for you or your readers.

• What’s your advice to authors when it comes to their online presence?

Have one. At minimum, basic information about your books, a bio, upcoming events. Make it easy to contact you if you want to be contacted. In terms of social media, do what interests you. Don’t blog if it feels like homework, don’t tweet if it feels like a waste of time.

That said, don’t be afraid to try something new, either. It took me a while to get the point of Twitter, now I find it nigh-indispensable.

Thank you, Sara, for your thoughts and advice to those looking to create or optimize their web presence!

Recently I’ve been asked about which to invest in first for an online platform if you had to choose just one: a Facebook page or a website.  Like with most things, it depends!  There are a number of factors that will go into your decision, like what Facebook audiences have come to expect, how much content you have to share, and the overall goals of your project/business.  I’m going to break down these factors + the limitations of each, so read on to learn more about which is better for you when it comes to Facebook pages and websites. Read more …

It’s unavoidable, to have a website you need two very important things:

1. A domain name (like outboxonline.com)
2. A web hosting service – the place where you’ll put the files that make up your website so that you can access them through your domain name (see above)

These can be mysterious and often confounding propositions – where to begin? Read more

Earlier I wrote a post about how to give feedback on a website. It was less about the ins-and-outs of giving feedback, and more about a tool you can use to make it easy to deliver your feedback. This time I’m going to talk a little bit about ways to give helpful feedback to your web designer. Read more

All too often people are left in the position of using the tools they have at their disposal for giving feedback on a website. As a web designer, I’ve received feedback as prose in an email, over the phone, as a bulleted list in a text document, as a document that has been printed, scanned, then emailed to me, etc…

And they’ve been effective for the most part – but wouldn’t it be nice if you could put your notes right in place over the actual website, then easily send that to someone?

Well, technology is a wonderful thing, and I’ve discovered this wonderful tool called Bounce (http://www.bounceapp.com/).

Bounce lets you easily add notes right over an image of any web page – you just enter the URL, they take a picture of the page, then let you make notes on it & send it on to someone. It’s simple, it’s elegant, and makes life just a little bit easier. Who could ask for anything more?

Every now and again I am reminded that it’s easy to get swept up in the details rather than focusing on the bigger picture when designing a website.  As website designers, we’re really serving two needs:

1. Design (and possibly implement) an engaging, usable, website design to sell a product or service, or to act as a resource.
2. Help the owner of the website understand their goals, so that their website helps them achieve said goals.

It’s often easy to assume that someone looking to have a website fully understands and acknowledges their overall goals.  To create a successful website design, not only does the client need to fully understand their goals, but the designer needs to as well to create something that helps meet them. Read more

Most people are under time constraints – they have lots going on and not enough time to do it.  So things sneak up on them and then need to be done in a hurry.  We’ve all been there!  But what are you to do when you need a web presence ASAP, but don’t have the time to plan and implement the whole site before your deadline?  Create a page that has the critical details on it and then plan out the rest of your site knowing that your web presence, while minimal, is still working for you.

Do not settle for an old school “under construction” page, or for the domain parking page that your registrar puts up there to make money off of you while you get your site underway!  The page you create should have some basic, but critical information on it. Read on to find out what to include on your Coming Soon page…