Best Practices for Author Websites and Blogs

Whether your website (or blog) is one day or ten years old, you want to make sure the resources that you’ve put into your site will pay off with more readers, more sales, and more opportunities for your career. Learn about best practices for design and content, the most important areas to focus on (what do visitors see first or most often—and how can you take advantage of that?), plus valuable online strategies to help grow your career. We’ll also discuss the principles of effective blogging and online writing, and the basics of search engine optimization.

The Digital Age Author: Best Practices in Marketing, Promotion, and Reader Engagement

In this six-session series, publishing consultant Jane Friedman will teach you the principles and techniques for building your author platform—particularly online—and publishing and promoting your own work, whether traditionally or self-published, using the many new tools and platforms now available to writers. The first sessions will cover the foundational strategies that govern author platforms, with nuts-and-bolts discussions of author websites, blogs, email newsletters, and social media. The last two sessions will look at the self-publishing landscape and what it takes to market and promote work in a predominantly online environment, regardless of how you publish.

Jane Friedman has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in digital media strategy for authors and publishers. She’s the co-founder and editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and is the former publisher of Writer’s Digest. In addition to being a columnist with Publishers Weekly and a professor with The Great Courses, Jane maintains an award-winning blog for writers at JaneFriedman.com. She’s delivered keynotes on the digital era of authorship at the San Francisco Writers Conference, The Muse & The Marketplace, and Willamette Writers Conference, among many others. She speaks regularly at industry events such as BookExpo and Digital Book World, and has served on panels with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund. She has a book forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press, The Business of Being a Writer (March 2018).