I get up ev’ry mornin’

And I crawl out o’ my bed,

Hit the button on my laptop,

Hear that voice inside my head.

Oh, I gotta write a blog now,

Gotta check security,

Gotta make an impact somehow

Or no readers will find me.

To blog or not to blog: a question many new authors contemplate. It is not so easy to answer as some might think.

Aside from the obvious expenses of getting a domain and security and perhaps some “plugins,” which may or may not be free, to enhance the site, and apart from the matter of choosing a name, a brand of sorts, there are so many decisions to make regarding the site itself: What style? What colours? What pictures? What typography? How many pages and what content for each?

Once you have set up, you’re done, right? Wrong!

Unless you have a professional website manager, you’ll be doing the daily work yourself as suggested in my little ditty above: checking security reports, updating the software, making sure the site has not been breached (it’s surprising how many hackers target even the most obscure sites), replying to comments, rearranging and adding information and pictures when a new book is coming out. A blog piles another set of activities on top of all this: dreaming up topics, writing each new post, choosing keywords and tags, finding appropriate photos if you include those as I do, and ensuring you name the source of the photo if it is not your own.

As you can see, websites are a huge investment in time, as well as money, especially if you blog as well as write poetry or short stories or novels. So, each poet or author must decide whether to put in the effort of blogging, or even making a website at all. Some opt for an email address and no more. Or use a service such as Draft2Digital’s author-update option for readers and Books2Read’s author page.

If you are a writer, do you have a website? As a reader, do you look for author websites?

[Photo courtesy of rawpixel of pixabay.com.]