Tips about WebSite Building

I wrote this article for those who, like me, have published, or want to get their work published and promoted through the web. If your field of interest is commercial, i.e., you want to advertise your business, the information contained on this page is still very relevant to you. In fact, business is better served by the methods suggested than mere promotion of a book.

The publishing market has changed a lot over the past decade or two. There are more books being published now than ever before, and publicity budgets are both stretched and shrinking. In this climate of increased competition and attention to the bottom line, it's usually only the Stephen Kings and Danielle Steeles who get planned publicity campaigns. The further down the list you are, the less marketing support you're likely to receive.

This may seem counter-intuitive. After all, the Big Names practically sell themselves, so wouldn't it make more sense for publishers to put publicity money into the unknowns? Unfortunately, that's not the way it works.

If you're a new writer; or if you've been writing for a while and have been saddled with the dreaded "midlist" label; you can't rely solely on your publisher to publicize you. You must take at least partial responsibility for getting your name out. There are many things you can do, including setting up interviews with local media, contacting specialty and local bookstores to pitch your book, actively pursuing reviews in magazines and newspapers, arranging signings and speaking events; and going online.

A WebSite, if it's properly publicized, is 24-hour-a-day, nonstop billboard advertising for your writing. It launches you into a virtually unlimited public space, where huge numbers of people have a chance to see you and your fiction. If you're published, it can introduce your books to people who have never heard of you, and put you in contact with readers who want to know more about you. If you're unpublished, it can help you connect with potential readers, and serve as a professional tool to which you can refer people who want to know more about your writing.

One note of warning: what a WebSite won't do, if you're unpublished, is bring you to the attention of agents and editors. New writers often believe that publishing professionals surf the Internet in search of new talent, but this is a myth. Publishing professionals are overwhelmed with unsolicited submissions, and have neither reason nor desire to go online to look for more.

Whether to make the WebSite yourself or have someone else do it is a decision that depends on your time and inclination. Many people don't want to sacrifice the hours it will take to build and maintain a WebSite. A WebSite is certainly time-consuming; and, if it becomes very large, can turn into a real time-sink. Hiring a designer or working with a web-savvy friend will take care of that problem. But relying on someone else means you give up, at least to some degree, control of design and content, and may have difficulty ensuring timely updates. Plus, web design services can be very costly.

The one thing that shouldn't influence you against doing it yourself is inexperience. There are hundreds of resources on the Web and in the bookstore to help you every step of the way. If you can use a computer, you can make a WebSite. It's surprisingly easy; and a lot of fun.

Content is vital. Whether people come to your WebSite by intent or by accident, what will keep them there is interesting content.

An author's WebSite should include, at a minimum, a bio, full information on publications (with cover art scans if applicable), reviews if there are any, and excerpts. This is important: one of the reasons people come to an author's WebSite is to read writing samples; and if you're published, putting up a chapter or two may persuade a visitor to buy your book (be sure your contract lets you do this; some have restrictions on what/how much you can place online). Remember, however, that if you post the whole of a piece that hasn't been previously published, most editors will consider that first rights have been used, which means you'll probably be able to sell it only as a reprint.

In addition to the basic content, try to come up with a hook; something extra that will make your site stand out from the rest. Some authors offer advice on writing technique or getting published; some include essays on various aspects of the writing life; some keep online journals; some provide info about one or more non-writing-related interests; some maintain big collections of links.

Whatever you choose, it should be interesting, well-presented, and focused. Stay away from mishmashes of miscellaneous information, rhapsodies about your pets, scans of pictures drawn by your kids, slow-loading photos of you on your last vacation, and so on. You want your WebSite to express your interests and personality, but you also want it to look professional.

Design your site to the lowest common denominator. I don't mean make it boring or stupid. I mean that you want the widest possible variety of users to be able to view your site in comfort. Web design has increased enormously in complexity since I put this site online in early 1999; there are any number of amazing things you can do now that you couldn't then. But web-users don't necessarily keep pace with these changes. There are plenty of people who still use older browsers and low-speed modems and slower computers, and these people simply can't accomodate many of the new design gimmicks. If you want your WebSite to reach the largest possible audience, you need to design for the least web-savvy, rather than for the most.

Go easy on the extras. Aside from their annoyance factor, things like Java applets and midi (sound) files frequently cause browsers to crash. And though tasteful graphics greatly enhance a WebSite, too many of them can mean loooong loading times. Be careful also of animated GIFs, which can substantially increase your loading time (this is also an aesthetic issue: lots of moving images on a page is...well...tacky, and detracts from a unified design impression). And remember that image maps, even well-designed ones, can be a nightmare for Lynx or other text-only browser users (yes, there still are quite a few).

Think twice about using frames. I like frames, if they're well-used. But lots of people don't, and some older browsers can't accommodate them. If you do use frames, provide a non-frames option.
Give your graphics HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes. This is one way to sweeten the slower loading time of a graphics-heavy site: it ensures that browsers load the text first, so your visitor has something to read while waiting for graphics to appear.

Plan for visitors who can't or don't want to see graphics. Plenty of people surf the Web with their browsers' graphics feature turned off. Always use the ALT tag to provide a title for your images, so these visitors will know what graphics are there and what their purpose is. This is especially important if you use graphics as links, or have graphic headings for your pages. If you use a background graphic, specify a background color that's close to it, so your page will retain its color scheme even graphics-free.

Strive for shorter, separate pages. Don't cram everything together on a single, long page. Use separate pages for separate content. This not only gives your site a greater feeling of organization, but takes account of the short attention span of Web surfers (see further down for an article on this).

Strive for a uniform look. Obviously your subject and layout will be different on each page, but your WebSite should possess a unified aesthetic. WebSites where every page looks completely different can produce a disjointed and confusing impression. Choose a color scheme, background, font style, and heading style, and stick to it throughout your site. Another way to produce a feeling of unity is to use the same graphic elements throughout.

Give careful thought to navigation. If you do have a long page on your site (like this one), make sure you include "Top of Page" links at the bottom of the page. A page with a number of separate headings is improved by the inclusion of anchors, so that people can jump down to a specific topic. A "Return Home" or "Main" link should appear on every page.

Most important: make it possible for a visitor to go anywhere on your site at any time by including your table of contents links on each of your main pages. If you use META tags properly (see below), search engines may not deliver visitors to your entry page, but to some other part of your site. A lack of navigation options will make it impossible for the visitor who wants to know more to access the rest of your site.

Be careful with color combinations. Science fiction and fantasy WebSites in particular often seem to be color challenged. Electric pink print on a lime green background may seem like a cool idea, but it's incredibly hard on the eyes. Likewise heads in five different colors and text in a sixth. Likewise text or link colors that don't contrast adequately with the background.

Be careful with backgrounds. Choose a color that's easy on the eyes. It doesn't have to be pale, but it should be something that doesn't make you squint. If you use background graphics, bear in mind that while swirly psychedelics or complicated lace designs look very cool on their own, they can make text extremely difficult to read. (Some people have told me that I'm not taking my own advice with the background graphic I use on this new WebSite. Oh well. I think it works well the way I planned it.

Be careful with size. Huge print that takes up lots of screenspace (and if it's big on a 17-inch high-resolution monitor, it will be really enormous on a 12-inch low-resolution monitor) is very annoying, as is teeny tiny print that looks like bird tracks.

Remember that lots of people still use small-screen, low-resolution monitors. Browsers will generally adjust text and tables to fit on smaller, low-resolution screens. However, this can substantially change the look of your pages, especially if image placement is important. Be sure to test your site in small-screen format (there's a resource for doing this below).

Use META tags. META tags (in the <HEAD> portion of your HTML document, which is not shown in a browser) enable you to feed information about your site to the search engine web spiders that are constantly crawling around the Internet indexing things. META tags allow you to provide a description of your site's content, plus a list of key words that make it more likely that your site will appear when someone does a web search. Of course, nothing is ever simple: many search engines use additional factors, such as how many times various keywords appear, to index WebSites. There's more information about this on the next page.
Check your links. Before you upload your site, test all your links, internal and external, to be sure they work. Visitors should never, ever get the dreaded 404; Not Found message.

Test your browser-readiness. Different browsers support different HTML tags, and can express colors, tables, and font faces differently. Sometimes the difference is subtle; sometimes it can be striking. Make sure you check your site with a variety of browsers before you upload it.

Proofread! Typos, misspellings, and misplaced apostrophes will make you look unprofessional. You're a writer, after all! You're supposed to know these things.

Validate! One browser may ignore a mistake in your HTML, but another may not. The only way to be certain your site will display the way you want it to is to be sure your code is as correct as you can make it. The best way to guarantee that is to use one of the many HTML validation tools. I promise it will turn up mistakes you didn't know were there.

Creating the WebSite is only the beginning. It must be kept current, so it doesn't start to look neglected. Links must be regularly tested to be sure they haven't gone bad. And content should be frequently changed and updated, to create interest and give people a reason to come back (a good way to advertise this is to include a "What's New" page, where you discuss and provide links to recent additions, like this).

Most important: a WebSite must be publicized. This is an area where many writers fall short. I think writers have a certain amount of resistance to thinking of their WebSites as commercial products. But as much as a WebSite may be a way for a writer to express him or herself, or to reach out to readers and other writers, it is first and foremost an advertising tool. And advertising isn't effective if no one sees it.

I also think that many people fall prey to one of the more pervasive Internet misconceptions: if you put it online, people are bound to show up. After all, there are millions of Internet surfers, with more coming online every day; and every one of these folks is potentially part of your audience, right?

Wrong. This logic doesn't take into account the vastness of the Internet, and its lack of organization. Putting up a WebSite is like placing a book in a gigantic library, where millions of other books are arranged in no particular order, and the only way to make sense of the chaos is to use one of hundreds of different indexing systems, each of which has its own method of organization. Under those circumstances, what are the odds that anyone is ever going to find you; unless you make an effort to get yourself included in as many of these indexes as possible?

Publicizing a WebSite is time-consuming, but it's not difficult, and there are a ton of free resources on the Web to help you.

Before you do anything else, spend some time checking out sites with purposes similar to yours. This will help you get a feel for web design, and make content and design decisions for your own site

A web host, or server can be thought of as a databank where all your site files are saved. Each group of dependent files, also called a site, is saved under a unique address. You can compare it to your harddisk. When you get a space on a Web Host, you get a unique address (directory) to which you upload (copy) your files for access to anyone who types that particular address (directory). Here is an example of how your address is displayed: http://www.your_host.com/your_address/your_indexfile.html A site will not work without an index file.

There are lots of servers that provide space for web pages free of charge. #1 Free Web Page List provides an extensive list. Nearly all include extras, such as pagebuilder utilities, graphic libraries, and e-mail. While they're a bargain in terms of space, some of the free providers do have various disadvantages, such as intrusive advertising and slow loading times.

A word of advice: think long and hard before deciding on a server that forces you to use popup ads. In my opinion (and I'm not alone), popups are right up there with midi (sound) files in my list of Annoying Things About Other People's Webpages. If the popup is limited to the index (first) page, it's not so bad, but some servers force popups on every single page of your site. When I run into one of these, I generally leave without investigating further.

I chose yahoo because of the choice they give. You are allowed to choose between two different sizes of popup ads that they put on your site. The small ad is hardly intrusive, considering the number of ads already on my site. In fact, until I am established on the web, I will gladly have their ad on my site for free. I feel that it adds to my site. This doesn't have to be the case with you too.

How much space do you need? Probably not as much as you think. This entire WebSite, for instance, takes up less than 6.5mb (of course, I don't have great numbers of graphics, animation, or midi files). For an average WebSite without big graphic files or a lot of tricky technology, 5mb is plenty.

Note that some free space providers have objectionable clauses in their Terms of Service (TOS) agreements. Be sure to read these carefully before committing yourself.

Obviously there are many more free servers out there. For help on finding these, you can go to some of the free sites listed further down on this page.

Graphical (WYSIWYG) web authoring software works a lot like a desktop publishing program, allowing you to produce web pages without using HTML. Graphical software is fairly easy to use, and the convenience of mouse-click formatting and drag-and-drop can't be beat. Plus, it's nice to see what your webpage looks like as you assemble it, rather than staring at a page of text and code.

I wouldn't recommend, however, that anyone use graphical software as a substitute for knowing HTML. In order to use the software most effectively (and to do things like adding webrings and counters to your site), you really do need to be conversant with HTML.

The disadvantage of the graphical programs is that they lock you into their own HTML styles, which won't always validate (see the Validating Your Site section below for the importance of validation). Most include an option that allows you to work directly with HTML if you wish, but here again the programs have their own way of doing things, and they may alter code you import or write yourself.

Most WYSIWYG software isn't free, unfortunately, though some companies let you download demo versions. Here's a list of various kinds of software. C|Net provides reviews to help you compare them. There are also reviews at ZDNet.

With HTML editing software you work directly with HTML code, but a variety of tools make it easier. Some HTML editors are free, and many are inexpensive shareware, but some are as pricey as the graphical products.

HomeSite Reputedly one of the best HTML editors for Windows 95. Includes a browser for easy viewing.

As I mentioned above, it's not a good idea to embark on making a WebSite without understanding at least basic HTML, no matter what kind of software you choose. There are a host of HTML tutorial and help sites on the Web. Below are a few I liked. You can find many more in Yahoo's HTML Guides and Tutorials Index.

Many of the free webpage providers include pagebuilder utilities that make it possible for you to create a webpage online. The later editions of Netscape offer Composer, a pretty nice web authoring option (I assume Internet Explorer includes something similar, but I don't use it, so I don't know for sure). And Zy.com, an Internet services site, offers a nifty feature called ZyWeb, which enables you to make a webpage from scratch using just your browser. You can sample it for free, but if you want it permanently you have to pay.

There's an amazing number of places where you can get free backgrounds, graphics, guestbooks, counters, and lots of other embellishments for your WebSite. A few are below.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) programs are used to upload webpage files to the server, and download them again for revision. You probably already have an FTP program, either through your server, your web authoring software, your Internet service provider, or your web browser. If not, some FTP resources are below.

I know I'm going to reveal myself as incredibly stupid, but I can't be the only one who has made this mistake (I hope), and I would have been very grateful if this had been made clear to me. So here goes....

A webpage is a text file. It contains text (like this) with embedded code that tells browsers how to display the text, and also how to display the graphics (backgrounds, headings, and images) that go with the text. The graphics, in other words, aren't part of the page: they are separate files. Browsers call them up and display them according to the directions provided by the code.

It's a good idea to check your WebSite in a number of different browsers to make sure it works in all of them. More people than you think use text-only browsers, or surf with their graphics turned off. You want to be sure they can navigate your site as easily as everyone else.
Lynx Viewer Lets you see what your pages will look like in Lynx or a similar text-only browser (or if people have their graphics turned off).
Browser Compatibility Chart This resource from Webmonkey (a very useful site) allows you to compare which browsers support which features.
Web Site Viewer A service from AnyBrowser.com. Allows you to view your site as your visitors do.

Bobby A free service that checks your webpage's compatibility with a variety of browsers, and also assesses its accessibility to those with disabilities.

Yahoo's Browser Index Links to many browsers you can download, plus lots of information.

It's a good idea to see how your page will appear on different sized monitors. Most browsers will automatically reformat your pages to fit on smaller screens, but this can dramatically change the look of your WebSite. The Screen Size Tester lets you test your pages in a number of different monitor formats.

Check out Stat.Market, for information about what browsers/screen resolutions people use most.

If you don't want to spend the time to check your links yourself; a task that must be done not just when you first put your WebSite online, but on an ongoing basis to make sure external links haven't expired; you can get software that will take care of it for you. Infolink is an inexpensive program that will check all your links, internal and external (if you download it, you get 50 free evaluation runs). Net Mechanic will also check your links for free.

One annoying feature of the software I used to create this WebSite is that its idea of HTML doesn't always accord with what's absolutely, perfectly correct. This doesn't seem to affect how the page is viewed in most browsers; I've tried a number of them to make sure; but it does mean that my site won't validate with any of the validators below, and I can't put the nifty validation icon on my Index page. But at least I know why the site won't validate. And the validation process turned up a lot of other errors that I was able to correct.

Dr. Watson A free service that will validate your HTML, check your links (internal, external and graphic), check your spelling, check search engine compatibility, and estimate your download time.

NetWhistle ISPs aren't always as good at keeping their service uninterrupted as they should be. This free service will visit your site as often as every hour, and send you an e-mail if it's down.

An excellent general information source is VirtualPROMOTE, which discusses a host of publicity and promotion issues and offers many resources, including an informative newsletter. PR 2 Free WebSite Promotion Course is another good resource for information on web promotion. And check out Yahoo's Announcement and Promotion Index for a list of sites that discuss promoting and marketing your WebSite.

NetStrider provides a page that reviews search engines, provides information on how WebSites are ranked and listed, and hosts a large listing of search engines, directories, and indexes to which you can promote your site.

For a one-stop-shopping approach, try SelfPromotion.com, a service that automatically submits your site to a big list of search engines, indexes, and award sites. The owner requests a nominal donation for use of the service, but it's well worth it, especially for the awards, for which he pre-screens and ranks your site. There's also a lot of practical promotion information here.

And take a look at Georgia Tech's surveys on how people find webpages. Search engines, other webpages, and directories rank highest.

It's important to get your WebSite indexed by the major search engines. A substantial portion of my traffic comes from netsearches, either for me specifically or for some category I fit into. (And some I don't; it's sometimes peculiar what search engines throw up in response to phrase searches)

For overall information on search engines, Search Engine Watch is a great place to start.

A netsearch on Yahoo for "submit url" will turn up a list of submission programs that will submit your site to a limited number of search engines for free. Submit It! and Add It! are just two examples. Each of these programs has a slightly different mix of search engines. Use the manual submission option; it takes longer, but it avoids submitting to the same search engine twice and lets you know which links are outdated or broken (there are quite a few). You may have to go separately to the Big Names (see the paragraph below) because not all the free submission programs include them.

Write down the search engines you've submitted to so you won't forget, and check them out periodically to be sure they've added you. Often more than one request is needed, but be careful, because you don't want to spam these folks. It can sometimes take months to get listed. Once you get listed, check back now and then to be sure you're still listed. WebSites can drop off a search engine for no apparent reason. If you vanish, resubmit.

It's really not worth your while to sign up for one of those "submit your URL to 500 sites for $99" deals. There are dozens of search engines, but the vast majority of people use only a few. You can see a list of those that are currently popular at Search Engine Watch's Major Search Engines and Directories page.

It's nice if you can get a high search engine ranking for the keyword searches you expect people to do. Most people abandon websearches after a few pages, and if your site appears on page 10 it's unlikely the searcher will persist long enough to get to it.

META tags, which make it easy for search engine spiders to index your site, can help. How to Use META Tags, from the invaluable Search Engine Watch, provides a good introduction. META Builder will build tags for you, for free.

But META tags aren't an automatic guarantee of a good ranking. All search engines categorize WebSites differently, using a variety of criteria, including site popularity, number of hits, and keywords on various pages. If you want a good ranking, you must use more than one strategy. Search Engine Submission Tips from Search Engine Watch is a good place to begin to unravel the complexities of how to optimize your site for search engines. See especially the Search Engine Features page, which details how different search engines do their indexing.

One last note: don't even think of spamming search engines (creating META tags that repeat a keyword or a set of keywords over and over, or repeating a particular keyword hundreds of times on a particular page). Many search engines watch for spamming, and exclude sites that employ it.

There are a couple of ways to check your rankings. The Did-it Detective is a free (for now) service that will check to see if your site is listed and indexed by a number of major search engines. And Rank This! is a free tool that allows you to check your site's ranking in a number of popular search engines, in response to various keyword searches. See also Search Engine Watch's Measuring Link Popularity page; link popularity can be an important criteria for search engine indexing.

While listings for search engines are created automatically by "spiders" that crawl the web and index web pages, web directory listings are created by human editors, who review a site description submitted by the site owner, and then decide whether to list the site.

For a literary site, most web directories aren't all that useful: I receive less traffic from my directory listings than from almost any other source. Yahoo is the major exception; I get hits from Yahoo nearly every day; and there are a couple of others, some of them geared specifically to writers or the arts.

Be careful about submitting to a directory more than once. Some are quite selective; if they decide not to list you they may not let you know, and if you repeatedly bombard them with requests they will become very annoyed. Bear in mind that it often takes a long time to get listed; Yahoo took over four months to add my listing. Wait at least two months before promoting again.

Ever wondered about those "Best of" or "So-and-so's Site of Excellence" graphics you see on WebSites, and how they got there? Most of them are fairly pointless; do you, or your visitors, really care if Joe's Personal Main Page gave you its Smiley Cute Web Award? Other awards are little more than free advertising for the WebSite they come from. But there are awards that are more meaningful, and these can add interest and credibility to your site.

The best way of finding appropriate awards is to surf sites that are similar to yours, and check out the awards they've received. There are also free auto-submit services, such as Ultimate Award Submit and Awards Jungle, which will submit your site to a long list of participating awarders. Only use such services if they offer you the option of submitting manually; this prevents you from submitting for an award that isn't appropriate.

Before you get started, take a look at VirtualPROMOTE's article on submitting for awards: it offers information on the various awards and what they mean. And Promotion World offers some useful information about awards, including advice on designing your WebSite with awards in mind.

Don't submit for an award more than once (unless the award criteria indicate that you can, or you've substantially changed or updated your site). And don't submit for an award that isn't appropriate for you.

Awarders check out your site personally. They don't want to waste their time on spam submissions.

There is a webring for every topic you can think of, and probably some you can't. Webrings can definitely bring visitors to a site; after bookmarks, they're probably my biggest source of traffic. It often surprises me that webrings aren't more extensively used, especially by writers, since there are a huge number of writing-related webrings. I think perhaps some people perceive webrings as tacky. Well...I admit, they're borderline. But I can't argue with the visitors they bring me.

Some webmasters place all their webrings on a single, separate page. I find this annoying. If you arrive on a slow-loading page that has nothing but webrings on it, how inclined are you to check out the rest of the site? I think a webring is most effective when it's placed on the page to which it best applies.

Don't think you're limited to one subject for webrings. If your WebSite covers a number of different topics, you can join webrings for each of them.

One drawback: many webring graphics are...for lack of a better term...hideous. I try to stay away from these (though sometimes it's not possible). To avoid aesthetic schizophrenia, I standardize the look of my webrings by using the same basic arrangement and links format for all of them (see any of the pages mentioned above for examples). Most webring owners don't mind if you do this, as long as you don't mess with the graphics, and get all the links right.

Webring The premier host for hundreds of webrings of all kinds. You can search for rings by topic, and sort results by a variety of methods, including popularity. This is important: it's not worth bothering to join a webring that has low traffic, unless it's highly topic-specific. NOTE: Webring has been acquired by Yahoo. Utility doesn't seem to have changed, but the ring interface has, and the threat of Yahoo's ugly Webring graphic looms, though right now I'm still able to use my customized format. Additionally, some people may find Yahoo's Terms of Service objectionable.

The Rail The Rail hosts a series of topic-oriented "journeys" through WebSites of related content.

Banner advertising services will display an ad for your site on a big list of member sites. Categorization allows you to broadly target the kind of site where your ad appears. In exchange, you display others' ads on your site. The number of displays you get generally depends on your WebSite's traffic. Link Exchange and SmartClicks are two of the largest of the free services.

Before you make a decision, take a look at Banner Tips, a site that discusses all things banners, including design and effectiveness. And Promotion World has a number of useful articles on banners, including reviews of different banner services.

Many sites will link to your WebSite for free. Link exchanges ask that you give them a reciprocal link, while free-for-all sites don't.

Power Submit is a free service that allows you to submit your URL to a large number of free-for-all sites (but be warned, a lot of the site links here are dead); the FFA Submission Script Page is another. LinkMaster also offers lists of free-for-all and link exchange sites (as well as lists of indexes, awards, and hotlists; click on their "free announce resources" link). And Link-O-Matic, a fee-based free-for-all submission service, offers a no-charge 10-site trial submission that you can use as often as once a week (you can access it from the FAQ section).

In my experience it's rare that free-for-all sites or link exchanges are either useful or appropriate for an author's webpage. There are usually several hundred very diverse links, organized according to extremely broad categories; you have to wonder how interested people are in picking through them all. Plus, many sites use a classified ad approach, and after a few weeks either drop your link entirely, or push it way down the list.

A better approach, if you can spare the time, is to go in search of genre or writing-oriented sites (of which there are a huge number), and judge on a case-by-case basis whether it's worth suggesting an exchange of links. I get a steady stream of visitors from such exchanges. The free link sites I've submitted to, on the other hand, have generated almost no traffic for me.

Adding a signature line to your e-mail messages is the easiest publicity there is. Every time you post to Usenet or a mailing list, or send an e-mail, you're providing people with an opportunity to visit your WebSite; all without effort, cost, or spam. I get a steady trickle of traffic from my sig line.

A sig line should include your full name and WebSite address; some authors also include the title of their most recent publication. Try to keep it short (4 lines or less); web users can be insanely touchy about small issues of this sort, and may become annoyed if your SIG line is too long.

Newsgroup Postings, Internet Announcements, and Bulk E-Mail
A short, matter-of-fact posting to a newsgroup appropriate to your WebSite is a good idea when you put your WebSite online, and again if you make any substantial changes or updates. Writing-related Usenet newsgroups include alt.writing, misc.writing, rec.arts.sf.composition, and rec.arts.sf.written. You can find a full list of Usenet newsgroups at Deja.com.

Be sure to check out the newsgroup FAQ's, and lurk awhile before you post, to monitor newsgroup etiquette. And don't bombard a newsgroup with update posts. Usenet users are very sensitive about unsolicited advertising, and aren't shy about telling you so.

Net-Announce! is a newsletter for the announcement of Internet events, new resources, or changes in existing resources, e-mailed to a list of subscribers twice weekly.

Writers are sometimes advised to send out a blitz of bulk e-mail to announce their books or WebSites, but I don't feel that this is a good option. Whether you send it yourself or employ a service to do it, the likelihood is that the majority of recipients will regard it as spam.

People LOATHE spam. Consequences can range from nasty personal responses to complaints to your ISP; and if enough complaints are received, you will lose your account; to actual damage to your career. I read an article recently about a writer (published by a major print house) who didn't trust his publisher to handle his publicity properly, and hired a marketing firm. The firm convinced him to send out bulk e-mail asking people to read his book. Reaction was so intensely negative that his sales actually dropped, making it possible his publisher will reconsider purchasing his next book.

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