I just reviewed my notes from a workshop I attended in 2012.
And there in the section on visibility – making it easy for my readers to find me and my work online – was a poser.
For heaven’s sake, don’t put your blog on the landing page of your website!
Erm. Yes. Precisely.
:: squirms a bit ::
So…my blog is, in fact, the landing page for this website.
:: squirms some more ::
After the squirming, I thought about this particular advice, given by a writer with decades of experience in publishing. A writer who is also in the forefront of the new indie publishing world.
Here’s the thing.
The vast majority of the people who search “J.M. Ney-Grimm” online – or who search Troll-magic online 😀 – have no interest in me, the author.
They just want to know if my newest book has released yet.
Or, maybe, what some of my older titles are, because they discovered my newest work and now want more.
For these folk…landing on my blog is a nuisance, a distraction, even a bore. Yikes!
Thank you, all of you, who like reading my blog. I appreciate every single one of you very much!
But what of the folk who feel that Shakespeare was right. “The Play’s the Thing…”
Luckily, there’s a simple solution: create a new landing page.
That is what I’m going to do.
So why am I telling you all about it? Why not just get the job done and go quietly forward?
Because I am not a tech whizz! And I’m concerned that those of you who have my blog bookmarked or those of you using an RSS feed for reading my blog may have your arrangements disturbed.
My hope is that nothing will be disturbed. Your bookmark will bring you here as usual. Your RSS feed will carry my weekly post as normal.
But if that is not the case…if your bookmark lands you on my new landing page…if your RSS feed suddenly displays only my new landing page…
My blog is still here. You’ll see the word Blog in the navigation bar. Click on it and then update your bookmark (or your RSS feed), and the status quo will return.
I do apologize for any inconvenience. I’m hoping there won’t be any, but…we shall see next week, when I make the change!
Update: I’ve made the switch! The moment I clicked the “publish” button was nerve-wracking. What had I done? Ack!
Once I examined what I had wrought, I felt better. The RSS feed seems not to have been disrupted. My blog appears on my Amazon author page and on my Goodreads author page via my RSS feed. And it’s still there! Yay!
The blog URL has changed. It used to be JMNey-Grimm.com. Now it is JMNey-Grimm.com/blog/. So, those of you with bookmarks…please update them! I appreciate you very much, and hope you’ll continue to visit here frequently!
For more about blogging:
Copyright Statement for My Website
Why Create a Site Map?
Slow Blogging and Other Variations
SPAM Deluge
I’ll do what you did – when I have products to sell.
I’ve been wondering about that.
But until then, most visitors either want to read the last blog post, or go directly to the novel I’m putting up with a scene every Tuesday, so that link is on the navigation strip at the top of the blog.
I gather information where I find it; it says ‘powered by WordPress’ at the bottom of this page, but I can’t tell if you’re self-hosted. So much to learn AFTER I finish writing but before I finish posting all the scenes.
I love that people share what they learn. Thanks.
I’ve learned so much from other indies and other writers who are generous with their experience and knowledge. Many wonderful people congregate around The Passive Voice, the Business Rusch, and Dean’s blog. I’ll be “paying it forward,” for sure. 😀
My site is hosted by A Small Orange using WordPress software. ASO’s support “ninjas” spent many hours with me in their chat window when I was getting set up. (Not being a tech whiz, I needed a lot of support!) I also like that they use green sources of energy to power their servers.