by Ben Zackheim | Jul 1, 2014 | Writing |
I am so pleased to announce the team behind my new Fantasy book series, The Camelot Kids. The ebook series will arrive on Amazon this August!
When I started writing the story years ago I’d hoped to gather an Ace team of illustrators to flesh out my world.
Looks like my wish came true.
The Camelot Kids team
Nathan Fox is our Art Director and cover artist for the series. You’ve probably seen Nathan’s work in Rolling Stone, Wired, The New Yorker or a multitude of Marvel/DC/Image/Dark Horse comics. Let’s just say that having Nathan Fox on your team is like having a Hulk.
Here are some recent illustrations.
So yeah. It’s good to have Nathan Fox on board The Camelot Kids…
And then…Ian Greenlee. Ian Greenlee is an up and comer if I’ve ever seen one. You have never seen work like his. Click on this link, and you’ll see what I mean:
Ian Greenlee
Ian’s work on The Camelot Kids is blowing everyone away. He’s doing the book’s interiors. I can’t wait to roll out the character studies and sketches he’s done so far. I’ll keep showing off peeks here and there, so keep on coming back.
I can’t take it anymore. Just go to his site. Amazing. And wait until you see what he’s doing with The Camelot Kids! I’ll be rolling out peeks at his work in the coming weeks.
Wrapping it all up into a package that will astonish is Raymond Buetens of Slub Design. Ray is an old friend who also happens to have an impeccable eye for book design.
When the softcover comes out, it will be packed with surprises around every chapter. This guy knows how to have fun with a book. Seriously.
On the marketing front is Jeff Rutherford. Jeff works on the deadly-sharp cutting-edge of online marketing. He’s come up with some ideas that are going to get The Camelot Kids in front of every eyeball looking for something, ANYTHING Camelot.
Off we go! The Camelot Kids series will be released in four ebooks from August to November. Then, in December you’ll be able to buy the full book as a softcover or ebook boxed set.
by Ben Zackheim | Mar 19, 2013 | Book Promotion, Writing |
To read about how WordPress can help writers, see Part One!
In my experience, authors are hesitant to sell. That’s okay, as long as they do it anyway. (Tweet this instantly!)
I’m not going to tell anyone what their site should be. Only you know what you want to get out of it. You may just want to tell stories. Blog. Podcast. Post pics of cats. But if you want to use your site to highlight you and your books then I have some pretty strong, and well-tested, opinions. After years at Viacom, Sony, ESPN and AOL, building games and game sites, I can tell you that selling something requires focus.
With focus in mind, here’s what every fiction author website must do:
Highlight the books
Have one or two strong calls to action (sign-up for newsletter, buy, download)
Include blogging, video, illustrations, SOMETHING to keep folks coming back twice a month.
What does an author website need to have? BaB!
I call these fundamentals, BaB, which stands for Books/action/Blog.
Why BaB? Because it wraps up what your book site is all about. Selling yourself and your books.
Think about it for a moment. If you stumble on a site that’s selling something, you’ll visually scan it and, whether you know it or not, you’re making a lot of judgments in a split second.
- Is it pretty? Assuming you don’t go with a puke pink palette, Wordpress will help make that first impression go well. That’s one of WordPress’ biggest advantages. You need to work hard to make it look bad.
- What is being sold and does it look good? Get the best book cover you can afford and highlight it with a WordPress product page. I’ll cover the top themes with product pages in a later post.
- What else is here for me? News? Advice? Videos? Contests? Podcasts? Ways to share? Which social network is important to this writer? Is the site worthy of bookmarking?
By executing on the above three points, your site will do the most important thing it can do for you …
…show the reader what your priorities are…
You know how biz folks are always talking about how smart people remove all obstacles to buying a product? The same holds true of site design. Don’t make me think! Do not assume that I found your site because I wanted to see your book, or you. Odds are I did a search and stumbled on you. Now it’s up to you to convert me. Yeah, it’s like sprinting from a standstill. It’s hard, but you have to try.
Want to see what I mean? Okay, go to Jay Asher’s author page.
I’m not nuts about the overall design, but all the elements of BaB are there, and they’re in the right place. Notice the big honkin’ Buy Button in the upper left, which is where most eyes land when they first look at a page. I’m asked to buy before I even know what the product is! But that’s okay because, lo and behold, there’s the pic of the book. Now I know I’m on an author’s site. Jay gives more prominence to News than to Reader Reviews, which is odd, but they’re both really obvious from the get-go.
In the top menu I see there are a whole bunch of reasons for me to come back to the site if I like the book. There are links to his blog and to videos that tie in with his books. The site is bookmarkable. I would also follow the site, which I’ll explain in a later post.
So, yes, Jay Asher’s site has BaB! The books and buy action are tied at the hip on the top of the page, which is how it should be. And there’s content to keep the reader coming back to see what he and his characters are up to next.
Maggie Stiefvater‘s site tackles things in a different way. But let’s check out what she does and (maybe) why. Does Maggie have BaB?
It’s a design-heavy site, with a long load time, but when it does load it intrigues (just like her writing). She knows her audience (young adults) and her pub has made a judgment that the design of the site must capture her audience’s eye and let them know they are definitely in the right place. Since Maggie is busy building a very potent brand, where she is the product, she’s very prominent. Still, notice the biggest words on the page? “Welcome Reader”. She knows that she needs to let folks who don’t know her well that they’re on a writer’s site. Books are here. If you navigate to the books, you’ll find a very succinct and pretty presentation. You can also get fresh content if you come back to the site for her blog.
But this is where things fall apart. Where can I buy her books? Nowhere. I need to either search for the books manually on my site of preference, or go to one of the books’ official sites. From there I can find a Where to Buy section waaaay down on the page. Maybe the publishers figure she has a big enough name so they don’t need to worry about losing sales. But even the slightest bump in the road to purchase is lost money.
I’ve noticed this weakness in a lot of big publishers’ author pages. Maybe they know something I don’t know, but I’d say a design that hides the buy button isn’t doing anyone any favors. Including the readers.
So enough with the studies. How can you take this simple concept of BaB and apply it to your site with WordPress? We’ll explore the answer in the next post.
See what a good landing page needs to have to get the job done. And read part three of my series on WordPress for authors and writers.
You may also like:
WordPress for authors and writers (part one)
WordPress for authors and writers (part three)
WordPress for authors and writers (part four)
by Ben Zackheim
by Ben Zackheim | Nov 9, 2012 | Opine, The Camelot Kids, Top Menu, Writing |
NOTE: This is the third post in a series,where I hope to capture the stress, heartache and rewards of writing a book with characters from the Camelot mythology. The title of my upcoming book is The Camelot Kids.
Catch up with part one and part two in this series for a complete picture.
***
Writing is hard.
Writing about famous figures is harder.
Writing about Camelot is downright dangerous. The consequences of taking creative license with something that has Ivy League programs dedicated to it invites wrath that’s usually reserved for atheists writing about God. But, really, can you think of a more exciting hill to climb?
When I started researching The Camelot Kids, I’d never read any of the classic Arthurian tomes. I’d never seen the racy Excalibur flick or Disney’s Sword in the Stone. But somewhere along the line I’d become so familiar with the gist of the key characters that I spontaneously grew an appetite to consume their stories, old and new.
As I immersed myself in the myth of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table I’ve been struck by how familiar it is. Where did I ingest the story so deeply that I could tell you about Mordred or Morgan Le Fay? How could I recall the young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone? Why was Lancelot so burned into my mind’s eye?
When I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, I was surprised to find that it was good to see these old stalwarts, these staples of fantasy. It wasn’t quite the same as seeing a new Indiana Jones movie, or picking up a new Harry Potter, but it was still a tug at the heart which is the sole domain for old favorites.
But how could a myth that I’m unfamiliar with mean anything to me?
(more…)
by Ben Zackheim | Jul 29, 2012 | Shirley Link & The Safe Case, Top Menu |
Well that didn’t go as planned.
After months of preparation for the launch of my new chapter book series, Shirley Lock, I released it to the world on the 3rd of July, 2012. A big day!
I’d put off writing professionally for decades, in my quest to make a lot of money doing boring work. The pent-up desire to tell stories was reaching critical mass. So, as I pressed the “publish” button on CreateSpace and Amazon KDP, it felt like losing 450 pounds in a split second.
I always knew that it would be tough to put my neck out there with a book. It’s hard for every writer and artist to release their work into the big, bad world. I was nervous. But I was ready!
Or was I?
One hour into promoting my newly released book, I got two messages on Facebook from “Friends”. The messages were posted on one of my promotional posts announcing Shirley Lock & The Safe Case.
One comment read, “What the HELL…”
The other comment read “Do you have something you want to tell us?”
Since my wife knew them better than I did, I asked her if she had any idea why these two were posting such cryptic messages on the first promotional post for my book. She said she was chatting with one of them on her computer.
He was claiming we stole his idea.
(more…)
