Monday, January 19, 2009

Author Website or Free Social Networking Tools?

Um – why not both?

I just invested in a domain name for my pen name, Judith Graves. I haven’t quite got my official website up yet, but will in the very near future. I decided the clean look of a domain like www.judithgraves.com is just so much easier to market than a lengthy Myspace or Facebook URL.

In a few months I should have a booktrailer completed for Under My Skin, thanks to Madison at M2 Productions. After viewing other trailers, I cringed at the thought of plastering a ton of URLs at the end of mine, when a single domain will do. From my official site I can direct visitors to the freebees of Myspace and others.

When it comes to promoting your writing, it is convenient (and damn fun) to use free sources, but it is still important to have a domain name and official website for marketing purposes. Myspace and Facebook pages can be hacked and altered, these sites could shut down, or become obsolete. For $15 a year, I think the stability of a domain is worth it.

So – do you have an official website?

3 comments:

Gretchen said...

Absolutely. http://www.gretchenmcneil.com

First off, it's the easiest way for someone to find you on the web, and a clean URL like www.yourname.com is what people will hit first. Secondly, you can link to your networking sites from there - like your blog with FB links and Twitter feed - adding the informal to the formal, so to speak.

Tracy Belsher said...

Gretchen - just checked out your website - OMG girl, that's awesome! Great concept for your novel - wow, so impressive.

Thanks for sharing the link.

Tess Sharpe said...

Great post Trace. Can't wait to see the site in action!