By Ratika Deshpande
Recently, I was looking up authors who had contributed short stories to an anthology of South Asian SFF. As a fan of the genre and an Indian, it’s always exciting to find stories written by my people. So I Googled their names, hoping to read more of their stuff.
Unfortunately, many of them didn’t have an online presence. Some had only an X (formerly Twitter) or Instagram profile, neither of which I could access because I don’t have accounts on those platforms. Sometimes their bios listed places they’d been published, but they had not linked to those pieces. If only they had a website where I could get in touch or read more!
After the downfall of X, the earliest users of the internet have been reiterating how important it is to have a website of one’s own, the disappearance of which is not dependent on the whims or financial status of a major corporation. Users, too, are moving away from these platforms, because of the aforementioned downfall, privacy issues, and the proliferation of AI-generated content.
With people no longer concentrated on a single platform, it’s become increasingly important to blow the dust off our old blogs–or start a brand new one. For authors, a website can do so much more than a social media profile can.
Consider the website of the prolific fantasy author Marie Brennan. I’d loved her series, The Memoirs of Lady Trent, and upon finishing it, immediately looked her up online to see if she had written more stuff—and she had.
On her website, I found links to more of her books, many of which I added to my to-read list, as well as a page linking to all the short fiction and poetry she had published in magazines over the years. I subscribed to her blog via email, and now I get informed every time she makes a new post on her blog. I don’t need to sign up for any social media or follow her across half a dozen platforms to stay in touch; I’ve also been able to fan-email her directly, corresponding a few times.
Brennan has published very little original fiction directly on her blog. Instead, her posts act as a place for her to make announcements about the essays she posts for her patrons, new publications, award nominations, books read, and so on.
If the authors who’d contributed to the anthology had a similar presence, I’d still be busy reading their work and sending them fan email instead of entering keywords to find even their social media profiles (which becomes more difficult when they have commonly-found names and/or surnames). Author websites like Brennan’s are a godsend for readers who have loved your work and want to read more of it!
If you already have a website, or once you have it set up with the basics—an About page, links to your published pieces and Patreon/Ko-Fi/Buy Me a Coffee page—how do you reach readers?
Write for Other Publications
One way of bringing more readers to your website—and from there, to your published work—is to write for other websites and magazines. This is a common strategy used by freelance writers, especially beginners. When you write for other platforms, you have the opportunity to share the link to your website in your bio (instead of simply listing the places you’ve been published).
For example, I primarily publish articles and essays in online magazines. Every time I submit a piece, I also share a link to my blog, using which readers can and have gotten in touch about something I wrote elsewhere. My stats dashboard shows how, every once in a while, an article published here or in another magazine brought a reader to my site, who then went on to read many of my blog posts or explored my portfolio.
Write Regularly on Your Own Blog
Another strategy is to blog regularly, especially if you host it on platforms like WordPress, whose tagging and recommendations system brings more readers to your blog. The caveat is that you have to write regularly—one post every weekday, for example, is good. (I’d recommend not posting more frequently than that, since a blog reader isn’t seeking the same frequency of content that’s common on platforms like TikTok or X).
To get started, why not take up a 30-day challenge? For example, every November, many bloggers participate in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) instead of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). You can also participate in the #100DaysToOffload challenge, in which you must write 100 posts in one year.
Bloggers usually work in a community and often in collaboration, reading and spreading love of each other’s posts, so participating in such an event can not only help you find more readers but also fellow writers—you’ll be able to practice writing openly and get feedback.
What Can You Write About?
For Other Publications
Authors know a lot about writing, which is one topic to get you started when writing for other publications (here’s a list of places that publish writing about writing). We also read a lot, so writing everything from personal essays about books to literary criticism is also something you can explore when pitching to magazines.
Depending on the genre and topic you’re working on, you also might know a lot about, say, the history of female war correspondents, new developments in neuroscience, or how gemstones form. The research you do for your writing can be used not only to tell fictional stories, but also inform readers who are interested in reading about science, history, philosophy and fascinating people. There are many magazines who cater to such readers and by writing for them—and then mentioning your book and linking to your website in the bio—you can increase the chances that someone who loved your fact-based article on the history of spices will also want to read your novel on the same.
On Your Blog
The biggest benefit of writing on your own website is that there are no rules. You don’t need to follow any conventions or a schedule. You can write about a book you read recently, or you can write about how your novel is shaping up.
In his book Show Your Work!, Austin Kleon builds on the suggestion that people love to see an artist at work. When people watch a project being built over time, they feel more connected to it. Each blog post, therefore, is an opportunity to give readers an update on how the book is going, how you landed a piece in that new publication, what your research process for that historical story you wrote was like, and so on.
These glimpses into the process feel especially precious amidst the flood of AI-generated content these days—readers get to see the love and effort you are putting into a book, and many are striving to support writers and artists through patronage to fight against the AI takeover.
In addition to sharing glimpses of your own work, you can also support other writers by blogging about their work, interviewing them on your website (while they interview you on theirs) and so on. When you own the website, the possibilities are endless.
And you don’t need any technical know-how or a fancy logo (I have neither). You can get set up in 10 minutes on WordPress, Bear, Pika, or any of the dozens of options listed here. In most cases, you don’t have to pay for the service or the domain.
To give you some inspiration, here are some more examples of authors who are successfully using their websites to connect with readers:
“Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff. It’s that simple.”
― Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered
Bio: Ratika Deshpande (she/her) just finished her free, online book on the art, craft and business of writing. You can support the project here.
