Every professional author needs a website, but too often bad design choices and lack of focus prevent it from doing its job. Some have conflicting messages about who they are or what they write. A shocking number of published authors don’t include book covers anywhere on the homepage. And unpublished writers sometimes don’t know what to say about themselves except, “I’m looking for an agent.” Is there something more you should be doing?
Whether your website is one day old or ten years old, you want to make sure the time and energy that you’ve put into your website will pay off with more opportunities for you and your writing. This 2-hour live webinar will address best practices for any author website—whether you’re published or unpublished—with simple tips and tricks you can put to work immediately.
Instructor Jane Friedman has been building and improving her own websites (janefriedman.com and hotsheetpub.com) since 2009, and was the web editor for the Virginia Quarterly Review, where she oversaw a major relaunch of the publication’s website. She’s also consulted with a diversity of organizations and creative people on how to improve their website for the last decade.
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Meet the instructor
Jane Friedman
Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is THE BUSINESS OF BEING A WRITER (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing. Learn more at her website, janefriedman.com, which receives more than 100,000 visits monthly.
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