How I made my author website in 3 easy steps

And a gratuitous Thomas Pynchon mention

I created my author website a couple of weeks ago following a prompt from Kelly Caldwell, the head of faculty at Gotham Writers’ Workshop, in her newsletter. With three books now published, it seemed worthwhile to have a single landing page where people can find me.

Here it is:

The whole process took me three hours. That’s three hours not writing or earning money but, as I enjoy tinkering, I’m not begrudging it. Here’s how I did it:

1. The first hour was spent researching a hosting/design platform, as well as how to register a domain name. I used jmarshallauthor.com rather than jamesmarshall, to reduce the amount people need to write. I ended up choosing Wix because it seemed simple, affordable and I liked the look of their samples.

2. Wix guided me through an AI prompt that did most of the design heavy lifting. Here is where AI is useful. It asked me what the purpose of the site was, what type of background and tone, and some key things I wanted.

I discarded a couple of options (anything to do with candles, blankets and soft focus: AI can only use what it’s given, and I shuddered at being lumped in with the candle-scent-for-inspiration mob) and settled on the black background. It also came up with this logo:

3. The last part was me uploading images and copy for the site. The AI autogenerated three blogs for me, but that was overstepping the mark. I set up space for my three books, with links to Amazon for purchase, with images. I added an ‘about me’ section and also a ‘Q&A’ part. The latter is one of Kelly’s ideas because Google likes tracking bullet points and clear answers.

It was as simple as that. I have some familiarity with moving things around on a website, but I’m not a coder. There was a lot of dragging images around and dropping them into boxes. Wix has nice lines and sections to help it all match up neatly.

Ten days later, I noticed that half of my visitors were from the USA (thank you), so I added a USA flag by each book’s ‘purchase now’ button with a direct link to my books on Amazon.com (you’re welcome).

I don’t know whether it will generate more sales, but I have somewhere to signpost interested people. I know that this Substack newsletter has NOT generated sales, so I need something that Google can pick up.

I can now get back to writing my third novel.

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Thanks to

Scott Bradfield

for reviewing Stone and Water on his YouTube channel.

“New books by Thomas Pynchon and... James Marshall! And many other writers ALMOST as interesting as the both of them put together!”

Who cares about the New York literati when I get a mention from the Master Bather himself?

Writing Magazine also published a mini-profile of me this month:

This might be a ‘Vanity-metric’: something to show your granny but it doesn’t actually make a difference to sales. We shall see.

Thanks for reading.