Okay so, if you follow me you probably know I’m a professional author. The odds are high that YOU’RE a professional or aspiring author, since I’m an acquiring editor and getting to know me here is a good way to get me to pay special attention to your manuscript later.
So one of the things that sucks the most about this whole author gig is that, in the current publishing climate, you also have to be a marketer. Nobody wants to do that. I wanna write, not update my website every time I get a new review or cover art for a new book. I have Weebly, and it sucks for me. It took like eight hours to set up, it takes hours to update, and it’s so tedious that honestly I just kind of … don’t do it? Being associated with Riptide means I can kind of get away with having an out-of-date website, but I can feel our Marketing Coordinator giving me the side-eye from friggin space. And most writers–published or not–don’t have the luxury of slacking on the promo side of things if they want to establish a “brand” for themselves and have their books read.
So eventually I went crying to Tal Valante, my long-time partner in crime, co-owner of Riptide, and technical genius / creator-maintainer of Riptide’s website. I said, “HAY, CAN U BUILD ME A THING?” And of course she replied, “OFC.” (There may have been some cat gifs involved.)
So now we have this thing coming down the pipe:
Which is literally a website builder designed by and for WRITERS, with all your writer needs in mind. So, a template builder like Weebly or Wix or WordPress, but like 6000% better and faster because every single feature of Readership Pro is targeted to writers’ needs. So there are templates for everything writerly: blurbs, book pages, reviews, news, bios, excerpts, buy links, etc etc. The site will even put together a press kit for you from the information you’ve loaded into the various templates. No unnecessary designing, no fiddly bits, no entering information on four separate pages (book page, series page, review page, news page, for example) when you have new information (like a great review). It’s GLORIOUS.
Or at least it will be. Things are still in the build-out stage, but the more folks who express an interest now, the faster we can get this done. (This is totally selfish on my part; I want it NOW! :-p) So DO THE THING, writers, and go check out the website, and also the contest where we’re giving away TEN FREE YEARS of Readership Pro subscription! And do me a favor and signal boost the heck outta this, because when this goes live, ALL our lives are gonna be easier 😀
