By Nick Daws – Author of Write Any Book in 28 Days – Or Less!

If you’re a writer and don’t have your own website to advertise yourself, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities. How do I know? Well, I’ve had my own site for about seven years now, and during that time it’s brought me dozens, possibly hundreds, of work opportunities. Here are just a few which came my way as a result of people seeing my site…

* Hamlyn Publishing (UK) wanting me to write a couple of two-page spreads for a proposed book.
* A retired gangster living in Ireland wanting me to help write his memoirs.
* A local video company, wanting my help scripting a training video.
* A US publishing house wanting me to ghost-write an exposé of malpractice in the insurance industry.
* A UK publisher, wanting me to quote for producing a series of city guides for publication on the Internet.
* And, not least, White Cliff Computing Limited, whose interest in my work led to me writing two courses for them, “Write Any Book in 28 Days – Or Less! and Quick Cash Writing.

I didn’t actually take up all of the opportunities mentioned above. Sometimes I was too busy with other projects (and I must admit the retired gangster scared me a little…). However, the point is that none of these approaches would have come my way without a website.

There are other benefits as well. If I’m applying for a new writing project or commission, I can simply suggest that the potential client refers to my website if they require any further information. It saves constantly sending out weighty CVs or résumés, and makes me look like a technologically aware, up-to-the-minute sort of guy (this becomes more important when, as in my case, you are no longer in the first flush of youth). The website also helps me keep in touch with readers of my books, and it provides me with an additional (if small) income stream through advertising.

OK, I hear you saying, you’ve sold me on the benefits of having a website, but I’m a writer, not a tech-head. I don’t know how to create my own site, and I don’t have the spare cash to hire someone to build one for me.

Let’s take the latter point first. Getting a website built for you need not be hugely expensive. Freelance writers really don’t need whizzy, cutting-edge designs with Flash animation, online databases, shopping trolleys, and so forth. A basic site which showcases you and your work should be more than sufficient. Try entering “website designer” in your favorite search engine and you’ll get hundreds of potential designers. Approach a few with details of your requirements and see what responses you get. You may well be pleasantly surprised by the quotes you receive. Website design is a very competitive field – and, of course, the designer you use can be based anywhere in the world.

However, if at all possible, I do strongly recommend that you consider building and maintaining your own site. This has all sorts of advantages. For one, you can update it yourself quickly and easily, and you can also create it exactly as you wish. You can add bits, take bits away, try out advertising, start your own newsletter, etc. etc. This is the route I have taken, and although my site is never going to win any awards for its design, it suits my purposes very well.

In my time, I’ve used various programs to create and maintain my website, starting with a program called the CompuServe First Web Page Designer (now, I’m sure, residing in software heaven). If I was starting again today, however, I would definitely invest a few bucks in the Newbie Club First Website Builder. This is a four-volume guide to creating, writing, designing, automating, uploading and promoting your own website, in fully illustrated e-book format. As well as the four beautifully written e-books, you get loads of free software, including the Super Easy Mini Site Wizard, which will build a basic site for you in literally minutes. Check out everything on offer in this product at http://newbieclub.com/builder/?hotproducts. I guarantee it’ll blow you away.

Even if you decide to hire a professional designer to create your site for you, the Newbie Club First Website Builder will show you everything you need to know in order to take over the running of your site and maintain and update it yourself. Incidentally, the Newbie Club, which is aimed at people new to computing rather than IT specialists, also produces a free email newsletter packed with hints and tips for newcomers to computing – you can sign up to it at http://newbieclub.com/?hotproducts if you wish. Although I’ve been using PCs for quite a while now, I still subscribe, and regularly pick up useful hints and tips I hadn’t been aware of before.

Nick Daws is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England.
You can discover his exciting course online at “How to Write Any Book in 28 Days – OR LESS!”

While I would much prefer to celebrate the new year by listing the births of new writers, my clairvoyant talents are sadly lacking in that direction, so I will just have to do the opposite and bid a fond farewell to some of the writers, some well-known and some not so well-known, that we lost in the past year:

May their works live on forever even if they couldn’t….

Two I’ll miss the most are Robert Jordan and Madeleine L’Engle. How about you?

If you’ve been looking for some research and writing tools, but haven’t wanted to spend tons of money to try each out to see what would work for you, then you might want to check out WritersGiveaway

Perfect for professional authors, new writers, screenplay writers and short story writers, this site is giving away writing goodies, such a software and eBooks, which would sell separately for as much as $3780, for just signing up for their twice-a-week free newsletter. (You could even sign up, get the software and unsubscribe if you wanted, but you’d be missing out on the ongoing great writing info they provide weekly.)

Currently, just some of the free writing tools included for signing up are:

• Novel Writing Software
• WriteSparks! Software
• EXCLUSIVE Jo Condrill Interview
• EXCLUSIVE Nick Daws Interview
• Great Ideas for Fiction!
• Mugging the Muse!
• Sticky Notes Software
• 25 Screenplays
• The Art of Writing
• How to Structure Your Short Story
• and more

So if you’ve always wanted to be a writer, but didn’t think you could afford the tools and guides needed to get you started, here’s your chance to get some or all of what you need for free. Check out WritersGiveaway for more information on all the writing tools they’re offering.

Whenever I find an author I like, I try to read all his or her works, but some have sooo many pseudonyms, it can very hard to find everything that person has written, especially when they cover many different genres. It can also make selling or collecting books a bit tricky as sometimes the true first edition of a book is under one name, but later re-issued under the author’s real name (or ‘current’/most famous pseudonym), making that book look like a first edition or printing, but it’s actually what is called a ‘first thus’ (a version that is different than the true original, but still the first of its kind…)

An example: J. D. Robb’s first book, NAKED IN DEATH, was issued as a paperback (the true ‘first edition’), but then it was later reissued as a hardcover with the author listed as Nora Roberts Writing as J. D. Robb. Many people, seeing that hardcover book with its complete numberline (10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1) think it’s the first edition, when it’s not. (That’s an example of a ‘first thus’ – first time in hardcover, but not first time in print.) Either version is a good read, but the paperback version is the more valuable since it came first.

Some authors use pseudonyms to ‘remove’ themselves from an unwanted association with the past, such as Juliet Hulme: she changed her name to Anne Perry (using her stepfather’s last name and a new first name) after she had served time for her part in the infamous New Zealand murder of her friend’s mother and wanted/needed a fresh start for her life and writing career. Other authors use pseudonyms because they are so prolific that their publishers are afraid too many books from just one person would ‘dilute’ the market/’brand’ so they have the writer use different names when writing in different genres (such as ‘Nora Roberts’ writing ‘romance’ while ‘J. D. Robb’ writes ’sci fi/crime’ novels.) Others just don’t feel their original names are ‘literary’ enough or want to sound more ‘neutral’ (not male or female so they appeal to all) so use just initials or change to something they feel will ’sell’ better.

For just an idea of how fun it can be to try to find all the books by an author, here’s just a small list of some writers and their pseudonyms (some familiar and maybe not-so-familiar ones):

For anyone who is a rabid book collector or just a connoisseur of pseudonyms, then don’t forget to check out Hawk’s Authors’ Pseudonyms III (filled with 61,000 entries with authors from all over the world!) Libraries, bookdealers, book collectors and genre fans have all found Hawk’s Authors’ Pseudonyms to be an invaluable reference when trying to figure out who’s who…