Eye Candy for Your Website

An article entitled "When Marketers See Double" appeared in the Wall Street Journal the other day regarding the use of stock photography by major corporations in advertising spreads, on web pages and in other marketing materials.

It seems that in order to maximize their bottom line, these banks, retailers and the like are purchasing stock photos for as little as $1 each rather than paying for costly photo shoots. While by and large these photos cannot be used in whole or in part in a company's logo, for example, they do serve as "eye candy" intended to further the attractiveness of a product and enhance the professional image of the company.

There's no reason why we as aspiring novelists cannot avail ourselves of the same resources. Indeed, the photo used here for my profile and in my header was purchased for $1 from iStockphoto.com (please see website for terms and conditions). I have a file full of others as well which I intend to use once I launch my website www.rebeccadecourcy.com.

Many of us maintain our own websites and still more of us our own blogs. These constitute our personally-defined, "official" presence on the web, and as such they should serve to convey the impression of a writer who is not only creative, but also professional and organized.

Most editors, I would wager, much prefer working with an author of this type, and should you have the opportunity to refer one to your website, it makes best marketing sense to provide an attractive, exciting virtual environment within which they can come to know both you and your work.

As writers we often rely on our verbal abilities alone to sell us as professional and viable authors. In this increasingly visual age, however, we owe it to ourselves to provide as many effective non-verbal indicators of who we are and how we approach our craft as possible.

To give you an example of how these stock photos might be used on your website, I want you to visualize the cover of the book you are currently working on or completed manuscript you hope to publish. Are there people on it? Is there a specific location involved? The American West? An English country house? A private plane?

Now go to iStockphoto or any other stock photo website and browse the available images. Are there any that capture visually the atmosphere you're trying to evoke, the sub-genre in which you are writing?

Now, purchase and download the photo.

On your website, upload the photo and next to it a "teaser" from your manuscript -- a headline, a promo and an excerpt, for example (taking appropriate precautions, of course). If you have published (even e-published) authors' comments on it, include those as well. Underneath, provide a way you can be contacted.

Now, even though your manuscript has yet to be published, you have provided editors, potential readers and the like with a fully-realized marketing package for your book. You'll have broadened their sensory experience, and hopefully increased the sensory pleasure, of your work. Indeed, if you do it right, you may very well have them begging for more.

I'm curious to know your thoughts on this. I'd also like to hear about the marketing strategies you've adopted for your website. In what specific ways are you making your website work for you?

Basic Marketing Tools

Apologies for the delay in posting -- my life has been a bit mad of late.

I promised you a brief primer of sorts on inexpensive -- sometimes free -- marketing tools for the aspiring romance writer*, and to start I've chosen Basecamp.

Basecamp is not, strictly speaking, a marketing tool. It is, rather, one for collaboration. However, it is extremely useful for writers as, among other things, it allows you to save your work remotely and to make it available for comment by others. It automatically records edits as well so you can compare versions of a book/chapter or revert to previous versions.

You can also make to-do lists, set milestones for yourself, leave messages for others, and chat with other users.

Not only can you refer any crit partners (or AFL alums) to your very own project webpage, but also all those published authors and editors you meet at various conferences and meetings! (NB: You cannot hide individual versions of a Writeboard -- where you post the content of your work -- so if you give someone access to a Writeboard, they will have access to all previous versions as well.)

Rather than walk you through the entire process, I'll refer you to the website which provides an excellent set of dummy-proof tutorials on how to get started.

Let me know what you think!

*NB: I am in no way affiliated with any of the services I'll be discussing, but rather have used them in the past (either in a personal or professional context) and have found them useful. As a result, I cannot take responsibility for any of their services or content!

Bad Sex

While reading my favorite newspaper, The Guardian (UK), online, I came across an article on the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award. It is, inevitably, titled "Stiff competition on Bad Sex shortlist".

The purpose of the award is "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it."

What a divine idea. And yet another reason why I simply adore the British.

Tonight the winner was revealed as Iain Hollinghead for a passage referencing "bulging trousers" in his novel Twenty Something. Thrilled to be the youngest ever recipient, he quipped "I hope to win it every year."

So, a question for you all. What would you nominate? Examples from romance novels -- or of your own writing! -- are particularly welcome.

And please read the article -- it's fabulously cringeworthy.