Your author website is your virtual home on the Internet.

Every author should have one, even if you also have homes on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

That’s because you need a home that is truly your own. A home that Google can index and make easily findable. A home that you control separate from platforms like Facebook or Twitter.

You might be thinking: “But Facebook makes it so easy to make yourself at home! Why bother with a website?”

It’s not an easy question to answer because so much depends on the author. The path you take is going to be largely determined by the following:

• Your technical ability (or desire to learn)
• Your budget
• Your desire to go beyond website templates to create a completely customized author website

With these criteria in mind, I find that there are two general paths one can take regarding their website: Building vs. Renting.

Building a custom home (website)

When you build your home, you will probably need to hire an architect (web designer) to create the home according to your needs. The designer can often also host your website and manage it on an ongoing basis, charging an ongoing fee. This is a perfectly reasonable way to proceed, particularly if you have no technical ability and no desire to bother with web pages and HTML code. But you also need a budget — some web designers will charge $3,000 to $5,000 to create a website. And you’ll also need to pay an hourly rate for text changes down the road. If you want to have your own blog, for example, you will need to think about whether or not you want to pay someone to do this for you instead of you learning how to use WordPress and doing it yourself (it’s not as difficult as it may seem).

What does a custom website look like? Check out this one.

I should stress that even custom websites are often built on standard templates or design frameworks. So a web designer is still often using an underlying template, even though you may not notice it.

Renting a semi-customized home (website)

Now let’s say you don’t want to spend a lot of money. I first urge you to see what’s available for you to use cheaply. You would rely on a web hosting company that provides a template for you to use. You might want to check out:

SquareSpace
SquareSpace offers templates. Here is one that I think can work as an author website. You can start a free trail with no credit card.

Wix
You can create a free account on Wix as well — I’m not a huge fan of the templates.

My advice, whichever way you go:

• Use photos selectively. Keep the focus on text; photos can add to download times.
• Make sure the design is “responsive” — so it will adapt to mobile phone screens easily.
• You’ll probably want a blog included, so you can easily add “news/events.” You could even have your news/event links simply go to the blog. This is a big question: How active do you want to update the site?
• Finally, if you hire a designer, make sure it’s “work for hire.” You want to own that website so you’re able to update it, change it, etc. Designers sometimes will charge quite a lot for minimal updates or changes.

We’re excited to once again be headed Down Under to meet with authors and readers.

We have two events planned that all are welcome to attend:

Christchurch, New Zealand

Writing about Animals: Literature’s evolving relationship with the animal kingdom

November 10th, 3 to 5pm

At the University of Canterbury

New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies

Engineering Core Lecture Theatre, Building E12

 

Perth, Australia

Sunday Session

November 26, 4 to 5:30 pm

At the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre

If you have any questions or would like to meet us along the way, please contact us.

As many of you know, Theo is our General Manager. But most of you do not know the story of how he became our GM.

In 1999, we were living in Boston in a fourth-floor walkup studio. My coworker had adopted a cat from a shelter south of Boston. At just nine months of age, this little cat was terrorizing her first cat, a cat twice his size. Near tears one morning, she told me she had to return him to the shelter.

We had wanted a cat for years but our lease wouldn’t allow it. But we were worried about this feisty cat’s fate and didn’t want to see him returned to the shelter, where he might not have had another chance at finding a home.

We couldn’t get official approval from our landlord, but he lived below us (with his dog) and gave us unofficial approval. And so we took my co-worker’s cat home.

Theo was his name and we never considered changing it.

He was a holy terror. He was missing two toes from his back leg. Had been hit by a car was the official story. But it was clear he had been starved as well. So young and so sadly obsessed with food. Got us up at all hours of the night. We tried free-feeding, but he nearly doubled his weight in month. So from then on he was on a controlled diet. I remember thinking at one point we should have just had a child as eventually they let you sleep the night through.

And then it occurred to me that we did have a child.

Ira, our friend who is now with Theo, once said, as he watched Theo walk into a room, “That cat oozes testosterone.” And did he ever.

From Boston to San Diego, Seattle and then Ashland, he traveled with us, wanted to be with us always.

Eighteen years.

We had our challenges along the way. We could never adopt other cats or dogs because he had such a hot temper; he barely tolerated us at times. And then there were the emergency room visits. A urinary blockage one year. Diabetes a few years later. A torn ligament in his knee that had to be replaced. In the end, it was a tumor in his jaw that he couldn’t overcome.

We started Ashland Creek Press on a whim. Not knowing where it would lead us. We adopted Theo on a whim as well. Funny how those things you do on a whim end up changing your lives for the better. We regret not a single day. We only regret that we did not have more of them.

He made us more patient, more flexible. He gave us so many wonderful memories. His stubbornness inspires our writing, our publishing, keeps us going in the face of rejection.

He was an indoor cat all his life, but boy did he love to go on walks.

So we will leave the position of GM open for now. We think it will take 3 or 4 felines at least to fill his shoes, or paws. And, after a time of mourning, we will try to fill them.

We had eighteen wonderful years with Theo. Right about the time many parents are sending their children off to college, we had to send ours off as well.

Such is life.

And such an empty nest.

Theo
1999-2017

I’m pleased to announce that we are open once again for general submissions.

Thanks for your patience. We expect submissions to be open until June 1, 2017.

You can submit here.

As always, there is no submission fee for regular book submissions, but please carefully review the types of books we’ve published so far, as this is a good indicator of what we’re looking for.

Writing for Animals Anthology
We are 90% complete with articles for this forthcoming anthology of essays for writers. But we’re still looking for one or two more excellent essays, and submissions will remain open until March 31, 2017.

Thanks for your continued support of Ashland Creek Press.

“Raymond’s prose often lights up the poetry-circuits of the brain…”   — The Seattle Times

I’m pleased to announce that Ashland Creek Press has published the third edition of Midge’s Raymond’s award-winning short story collection, Forgetting English.

In this new, expanded edition of her prize-winning collection, which includes a reading group guide, Midge Raymond stretches the boundaries of place as she explores the indelible imprint of home upon the self and the ways in which new frontiers both defy and confirm who we are.

The characters who inhabit these stories travel for business or for pleasure, sometimes out of duty and sometimes in search of freedom, and each encounters the unexpected. From a biologist navigating the stark, icy moonscape of Antarctica to a businesswoman seeking refuge in the lonely islands of the South Pacific, the characters in these stories abandon their native landscapes—only to find that, once separated from the ordinary, they must confront new interpretations of whom they really are, and who they’re meant to be.

Forgetting English won the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. Here’s what two reviewers had to say:

“Raymond has quiet, unrelenting control over the writing; each story is compelling and thrives because each detail and line of dialogue reveals just a little more about the characters and the evocative settings.” —The Rumpus

“All of her stories are heartbreakingly honest … I wouldn’t be surprised if she started getting compared to Alice Munro or Jhumpa Lahiri.” — Seattle Books Examiner

Learn more.