We are artists and that means we are copyright holders, even if we never assert our rights and never file with the copyright office. According to American copyright law, you own it if you made it. You never have to mail it yourself.
But to defend a case, in the US, you will need to register your work.
Infringement
So, keep in mind that I will only talk about American law. If you assert copyright in another country, the law will most likely differ. Furthermore, if you have any questions, ask me in the comments section. I will try to research and answer you in a timely fashion.
Or ask a copyright attorney. This area, like many areas of the law, has nuances and there can be changes. This blog is no substitute for good advice from an experienced lawyer. If you think you need to protect your rights, then do so properly. And that means hiring an attorney.
(a) Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be. For purposes of this chapter (other than section 506), any reference to copyright shall be deemed to include the rights conferred by section 106A(a).
As used in this subsection, the term “anyone” includes any State, any instrumentality of a State, and any officer or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State acting in his or her official capacity. Any State, and any such instrumentality, officer, or employee, shall be subject to the provisions of this title in the same manner and to the same extent as any nongovernmental entity.
But What the Heck Does that all This Copyright Law Mean?
The American Bar Association explains it better. It publishes a Young Lawyers series intended to help newly minted lawyers understand the nuances of complicated sections of practice. So the ABA explains:
An action for copyright infringement may arise where a third party violates one or more of the exclusive rights granted to copyright owners. To establish infringement, the plaintiff must prove: “(1) ownership of a valid copyright, and (2) copying of constituent elements of the work that are original.”
Ownership of a valid copyright consists of: “(1) originality in the author; (2) copyrightability of the subject matter; (3) a national point of attachment of the work, such as to permit a claim of copyright; (4) compliance with applicable statutory formalities; and (5) (if the plaintiff is not the author) a transfer of rights or other relationship between the author and the plaintiff so as to constitute the plaintiff as the valid copyright claimant.” A copyright registration certificate from the Copyright Office serves as prima facie evidence of elements (1) through (4). If the defendant rebuts the plaintiff’s prima facie evidence, then the above elements of valid copyright ownership become essential to the plaintiff’s case.
So what is the ABA is saying? Registration with the US Copyright office is absolutely necessary to successfully bring an infringement claim. It is helpful for proving ownership and for getting an award for damages.
If you think your work might be infringed upon, if you feel it is a danger and you are concerned about it, then get some peace of mind and register it with the US Copyright Office.
Next up? Exceptions in the wonderful world of copyright law!
Set this site as a preferred source
And yes, of course I have the copyright in my own material!
It is time for a crash course in copyright law. But never worry; no one is going to make you practice law. Least of all, me.
Seriously, you’re good.
Me, on the other hand? I am a retired lawyer, admitted to the New York state bar, 1986. I never worked in the copyright field. However, I have read plenty about it, and of course I have my own legal training and experiences to fall back on.
If you have questions, I will try to answer them. Or contact a copyright attorney if you know one, and ask! Your questions will never offend me.
Disclaimer
Do not infer or imply representation. If you have a copyright issue, and you are defending, or you think you should bring a lawsuit, I urge you to get legal representation as soon as possible.
American Copyright Law
For the purposes of these blog posts, I will only look at American law. The law differs outside the United States, it will be different. Copyright law is Federal, so jurisdiction rests with the Federal courts. It is a civil matter; no one goes to jail for copyright infringement.
If you think your search will pull up a lot of records, select 100 records per page from the pull-down menu to the left.
Make sure to be as specific as possible, but you might need to go less specific in order to be truly diligent.
For example, a search for Sally Field’s character, Sister Bertrille, might not bring up anything. A search for Bertrille might give you something, but a better search would be for the television program the character comes from, The Flying Nun.
Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S.Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works.
Per Section 106 of the Copyright Act of 1967, a copyright holder can:
• reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords † prepare derivative works based upon the work • distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending † perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works • display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work † perform the work publicly (in the case of sound recordings) by means of a digital audio transmission
Hence copyright holders have any number of rights in their own works. Can they allow others to use them? Absolutely! We call that a license.
Works Created on or after January 1, 1978 The law automatically protects a work that is created and fixed in a tangible medium of expression on or after January 1, 1978, from the moment of its creation and gives it a term lasting for the author’s life plus an additional 70 years.
and …
Works in Existence but Not Published or Copyrighted on January 1, 1978 The law automatically gives federal copyright protection to works that were created but neither published nor registered before January 1, 1978. The duration of copyright in these works is generally computed the same way as for works created on or after January 1, 1978: life plus 70 years or 95 or 120 years, depending on the nature of authorship. However, all works in this category are guaranteed at least 25 years of statutory protection. The law specifies that in no case would copyright in a work in this category have expired before December 31, 2002. In addition, if a work in this category was published before that date, the term extends another 45 years, through the end of 2047.
What does this mean? Well, the short answer is that you generally do better to publish your work! After all, you can never expect anyone to guard against copying it if they do not know it exists.
The other important takeaway: you do not need to assert copyright or mail it yourself or anything like that. Does it help to register your work? Absolutely! And you will need it to defend a lawsuit. It is an absolute requirement for that.
If you ever doubt have concerns, do the legwork (or have your lawyer do so), and register your work.
Shama Hyder Kabani’s prose style is engaging and direct. Furthermore, if you go to her own website, the way she writes represents an obvious reflection of the way she really speaks. Major points for authenticity.
Three Main Sites
Shama says that the three main social media areas/sites you should focus on are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Forget most others.
However, this part has changed and is out of date, for I would argue to swap out Instagram or even Snapchat (depends on demographics) for LinkedIn. That is, unless your audience is mainly business people.
Or maybe TikTok.
In addition, your should present your company (and, by extension, yourself) on all three with a kind of what I like to call professional intimacy.
That might sound like an oxymoron. However, the idea is, be genuine and sincere but also hang back in terms of too much sharing and togetherness.
Your customers want to know about your company and your product, to be sure, but a little personalization works (and, in fact, can help to build trust). But too much personalization does not work.
Your prospects and customers really do not wish to hear that you are going in to have a root canal.
ACT
So Shama’s three points come under the ACT acronym:
• Attract – bring the prospects and customers in with good, lively (and up to date) content † Convert – turn your prospects into customers (and this may take several visits by them before this happens) and • Transform – turn successes into magnetic forces of attraction
Attraction is your brand, your outcomes, your differentiators. And Social Media marketing is extremely good for this. Clarity of communications is key.
However, Social Media remains a less optimal tool for converting strangers (prospects) into clients (paying customers).
However, it is good for converting strangers into information consumers, which can often be a major step in moving them along the path from prospect to client.
Transformation
Transformation involves social proof. That is, we are more inclined to do something if we see others doing it.
Therefore, you have to do a good job, and use your success in order to attract more successes. That is, ask your clients if you can retell their success stories.
Make it easy to buy and pick your tactics (means of marketing) last – you need to get the essentials (such as theory) in place first.
Strategy is the big picture. Tactics are the when, the where and the how.
Blogging is also key. The idea behind blogging is three things:
† Educate – use your blog to add value by giving away good information. • Market – make it attractive to buy and † Sell – make it possible to buy.
Shama Hyder Kabadi is Walking the Walk
The book is a brisk read. Of particular interest are the testimonials in the back. As you go along, you realize that Shama practices what she preaches on every page of the book. And, it worked, am I right?
Because if she got you to buy her book and check out her website, then she has already converted you to a client. And all she needs to do is sell you her services and she hits 100% of her target.
Finally, the most amazing thing is, even after you realize how much you are being marketed to, you just do not seem to mind so much any more.
Dave Kerpen has a rather interesting book here. This book is thoroughly likeable, if you will.
Likeable Social Media
This book was required reading, as a part of my Community Management class at Quinnipiac University.
And it made for an excellent read.
For Kerpen, a lot of social media success comes from listening to, and then surprising and delighting customers and potential customers. Are your posts what they are interested in? If you received this post, would you bother clicking on it?
Case in point for surprise and delight
In May of 2015, my husband, parents, and I went to a Mexican restaurant in my parents’ town. We had eaten there before, but not so much that they knew our names or our usual orders or the like.
My husband and I did not visit my parents too often. And he visited them even less than I did. To the restaurant, even if my parents were repeat customers, my husband and I surely did not look like repeats.
There was a short wait until we got our food. Without prompting, we received a little appetizer, which mainly consisted of little breaded and fried mashed potatoes, configured a bit like sticks. There were three bits of sauce in different colors.
The potatoes and sauce, most likely, were leftover odds and ends. It may have taken the chef all of ten minutes to make the dish. I did not see anyone else getting the appetizer. We thanked the server. The appetizer tasted good.
They served us our food, and you would think that would be the end of it. But it was not. We did not order dessert. Yet we received a plate of flan and four spoons anyway. No one asked us. We just got the flan (it tasted really good). We were not charged for either little extra.
These twin activities impressed us, so much so that I have even linked back to the restaurant. Win-win!
Surprise and delight your customers. Or, as I would like to say, where’s the flan?
Being Likeable
By no coincidence, Kerpen named his company Likeable Media. From its positive name to its obvious association with Facebook, the book and the company are all about creating positive and meaningful experiences for customers and potential customers.
Kerpen begins with listening and with careful, accurate, and specific targeting. For example, not all women in their 50s or 60s and beyond have the same interests. He strongly urges marketers to dig deeper.
He also encourages them to have empathy for their customers. Is a post interesting? Would it be welcome to the customer base?
The first fans should be preexisting customers, with perks for the really rabid fans. Another skill to master: engaging in a true dialog.
This means not just accepting praise, but also effectively and expeditiously responding to complaints. It also means owning up to your mistakes when you make them.
Honesty
Kerpen advocates authenticity, honesty and transparency in dealings, and promoting an exchange by asking questions, which goes right back to listening. From listening, comes the surprise and delight.
Did the restaurant hear us complaining about slower than normal service? Possibly. The appetizer and the flan certainly helped to quell those complaints and win us over.
Because he is talking about social media (and not restaurant service), Kerpen’s flan moment does not just cover coupons and offers. It is also the sharing of stories as social capital.
Some of this includes stories of the company (e. g. how a product was invented that spawned an industry). But it also encompasses the stories of the customers themselves.
Imagine being a soft drink company and asking customers who drank your soft drink during their first date to share their love stories? Attach this promotion to Valentines’ Day and maybe even ask a couple about their future plans…
Finally, rather than hard selling, Kerpen exhorts marketers to simply make it easy to buy. Good products and services will always have customers. Generally, you do not need to massage demand. But you do need to make it easier for customers to open their wallets.
Social Media Marketing by Liana Evans was a book that I might have read a little too late in the semester. In all fairness, I read this book toward the end of my first social media class at Quinnipiac (ICM 522).
Hence it felt like I already knew a lot of what she had written, but that was likely more a function of timing than anything else.
Sorry, Li.
Been There, Done That
So the Liana Evans book is interesting. However, I had just read a ton of other works about very similar work, strategies, and ideas. Therefore, it ended up being maybe one book too many. Plus it ended up an optional read, anyway.
Furthermore, other works seemed to have said it better. So these days, books just do not get published fast enough to take proper advantage of trends and new insights. Hence blogs, in general (although not always!) end up more current and relevant.
What Was the Best Thing I Learned from Liana Evans and Her Book?
Possibly the best takeaway I got from the book was when Evans talked about online communities, particularly in Chapter 33 – You Get What You Give. So on page 255, she writes – • You need to invest your resources, such as … † Time to research where the conversation is • Time and resources to develop a strategy † and Time and staff resources to engage community members • Time to listen to what they are saying, in the communities † Time and resources to measure successes and failures • Giving valuable content † It is similar to a bank account • Don’t bribe the community
And ~
† Rewards come in all fashions • Research who your audience is † Give your audience something valuable and/or exclusive • Don’t expect you’ll know everything † Listen to what your audience says • Admit when you are wrong † Thank your community
Finally, much like we have been telling people for years on Able2know – listen before you speak!
Rating
Review: 4/5 stars.
Want More Book Reviews?
If my experiences with book reviews for social media resonate with you, then check out my other book review blog posts.
Check Out Book Reviews on Social Media, SEO, Analytics, Design, and Strategy
As writers, we might not be thinking too much about website speed. But the truth of the matter is, we are all going to have to. But why?
Website Speed and You
Now is the time to get into the weeds just a little bit, all right?
Suppose you are looking at two separate websites. One is blazing fast, or at least it is fast enough that you do not notice the pages loading or anything like that. But the other one? Not so much.
All other things being equal, you are highly likely to hang around the faster site. In fact, you may even believe it is better than the other one. Why? Because your experience is markedly better there.
Now let us assume that the slow site is somehow better. Maybe the content is better written, or the writers have more authority. Or the site just might be prettier.
If you could ever see it, that is.
The Wonderful World of the First Contentful Paint
Er, come again? The term first contentful paint merely refers to the first moment when a visitor can see anything on a screen on your site. It is measured in, I kid you not, tiny fractions of seconds.
Yep, sports fans, the human race’s collective attention span is just plain that short these days.
Think of how quickly you scroll through notifications or click from one record to another. Do you play any video games on your phone or otherwise online? Then you are probably moving quickly there as well.
But what, pray tell, does this have to do with the design of your writer website. After all, the people who are visiting are just interested in your stellar prose, right?
Uh, if you believe that, then I have an awesome deal on a bridge to sell you.
The Visual World
We are living in an intensely visual world these days. Add that to how fast everything moves, and you have got a recipe for flashing everything. Or so it may seem.
Website speed generally comes down to images. How fast do they load? And woe be unto you if yours load slowly.
What are the Worst Website Speed Issues Out There?
It all has to do with images. But more specifically, it has to do with how your site performs on mobile. While you may experience the internet on a desktop or laptop, most people do not. At least, not outside of work.
Rather, they are experiencing your site (and everyone else’s site, from here to Pinterest or wherever and beyond) on tablets or phones.
In fact, there are a lot of people who do not own a PC at all. They might just have a phone. Think that is somehow rare? Think again. It is practically a way of life in a lot of Asia.
So, your site has got to perform well on mobile devices. And, since they are often less flexible than bigger devices, everything starts to slow down when you view it on a phone.
But the good news is that you can fix this stuff!
Fix Your Website Speed Issues
There are probably more ways to fix speed issues, but these three will help you quickly.
Your Theme is Sluggish
Some WordPress themes are great! They are nimble, they look good on mobile, and they do not sludge up your site with unnecessary code.
Others, not so much.
One of the reasons why a site is slow is because of far too much extra HTML and other code (e.g. JavaScript). If your site is slow, then do yourself a favor and seriously consider a lighter theme.
Just Google (or check within WordPress itself) for a theme that is light or fast. I have seen both terms in use.
Often, your site does not even have to change too radically. After all, you already have your content (or maybe you have not quite started with content yet, but it is on your radar).
Knowing that, for example, you want a wide background image and a centered logo means you know what to look for when you are browsing for a new theme.
A WordPress theme, by the way, is often free. You should not have to pay simply for someone to not lard up a theme with excessive code.
Your Images are too Large
This is so fixable it is not funny! There are two ways to approach this. Use both of them.
As Pogo (satirizing Commandant Oliver Perry) said, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
If your images are too large, then shrink them either or both of these ways.
Crop What You are Going to Crop, and Resize What You are Going to Resize, Before Uploading an Image
WordPress will crop images for you. But the problem with that is, you end up with two versions, both cropped and uncropped. If you only want the one version, then do your cropping before you upload!
Same goes for resizing. If you have, say, a 1000 x 750 image and you really only want it to be 500 x 375, then, again, do your resizing offsite.
Compress Your Images Before Uploading Them
Now, there are plugins which will crunch your images. But CompressJPG does a fine job and it takes up no space on your site. Also, CompressJPG is utterly free, whereas compression plugins have limits.
Compressing does not hurt clarity and it does not resize anything; it just makes the images fewer MB or KB than they were.
If you crop, resize, and compress your images, it will make a difference.
You Have Pages With Low Text to HTML Ratios
Er, what?
Text to HTML ratio means that you have a certain number of characters devoted to content, and a certain other number of characters devoted to all the HTML used to render those characters and also prettify your site.
SiteGuru has an excellent free (and it seems to be unlimited!) tester. Just pop in the URL you want to check, and click the button that says Test. A ratio of 20% content versus 80% HTML is good. Anything below that for content is not so good.
How do you fix this? Either remove HTML (which is what you do when you use a lighter theme) or write more verbal content or both. In particular, if you have an image anywhere but the featured image, it is going to use HTML to render. Taking out that image will help your ratio.
But keep in mind: ratio is just a rule of thumb. It is not a factor in SEO or AIO (artificial intelligence optimization).
Now, I do not want you to have a boring, flat site. But at the same time, if the image is superfluous, then nix it. And, of course, do the above. Crop, compress, and resize, if you really want to keep it.
Oh, Yeah, There is a Fourth Way to Easily Improve Website Speed: Don’t Get All Plug-In Happy
Plugins add HTML. Some of them even add HTML to every single page, even if you cannot really see them or what they are supposed to be doing. Think about what you need, and determine if you can get away with less.
And, just like with WordPress themes, look for plugins that are lighter and/or faster.
There is more than one plugin for creating a newsletter, for example. If they are all more or less fulfilling your needs, then pick the one which gets the job done with the least amount of HTML.
Oh, and talk to your hosting provider about whatever is being served on every page. Sometimes, there is code left over from old plugins. The hosting provider can help you ditch that extra, unnecessary code (which is bogging down your site!) without breaking anything.
Website Speed and Some Fast Takeaways
Check site website speed regularly, and check HTML ratios as well. Both will help you to not only speed up your site but write better and go into more depth.
Congratulations! You are now creating, designing, adding to, and using your site in a way that is designed to best serve the most important person of all—you your ideal customer.
Set this site as a preferred source
Want More of Writer Website Development?
If my posts on author website development resonate with you, then please be sure to check out my other articles about how to create a writer website.
Whether you re just starting out or are updating an older author website, writer website user experience design is something you must consider.
How Writer Website User Experience Design Can Help or Hurt You
Do yourself an enormous favor, and Google the placement office at your alma mater. If you did not go to college, then any local college or university will do. The name might be something like career development.
I am a ridiculous overachiever and have the oddest resume you are ever going to see. So, I have three alma maters, heh. To illustrate my point, I will look at them in turn (but what does this have to do with writer website design, I hear you cry. Trust me, you will see).
Boston University
The BU Center for Career Development has of course changed a lot since I graduated. Which was before a lot of people were born, 1983. Heh.
Colors are bold and it is pretty easy to find stuff. BU also knows their audience. It is a large university, over 100 years old, and has a variety of schools.
Just appealing to undergraduates would alienate alumni returning to look for work. Still, there is no doubt that undergraduates are the main focus. If I wanted to look for work via BU, I would probably go straight to their alumni association. Yet there is no link or suggestion to do that.
Rather, I am just left to founder.
Well, that kinda stinks.
I would give BU a 3/5. What is there is very easy to read and navigable. But they are utterly neglecting a good chunk of their audience, and not even giving us an escape hatch.
Widener Law School (Delaware Campus)
The Widener Career Development Office has a rather different focus, as there are no undergraduates. There are certainly undergrads at Widener, but they are not at the law school.
And, the jobs the Widener office is going to send people to will inevitably either be private practice, JAG Corps (the military), or something academic.
There may be a few government agency jobs sprinkled in there. Also, because it is a regional type of school, jobs will most likely be in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey.
There may be a few in Maryland or New York. And if there are any federal jobs, then they will most likely be in DC. But if you want to work in Indiana, you are out of luck.
Notice anything else?
The font is larger than it was for BU, and it is a serif font, whereas BU was sans serif.
Widener knows their audience is older, certainly at least about 20 years old (more likely to be closer to 25 at the youngest), whereas BU may have some audience members as young as 16.
Also, Widener probably figures most people will read their site on a laptop or desktop. At BU? Tablets or phones.
I would give Widener a 2/5. While it does account for user age and perhaps sensibilities, I did not see any way to get to any jobs! You have to click on students before you get to any place with jobs. If you click on alumni, the message is about mentoring and recruiting.
Hence the assumption is, you have already graduated so, you do not need to look for work. Would that it were so easy, Widener.
Quinnipiac University
The QU Career Development Office is a lot more image-heavy. It is another sans-serif site, and the font is smaller, like for BU. There is not a lot of information on the front page, but that is by design.
Rather, you scroll down and you are given a choice of six schools and their College of Arts and Sciences. You can go straight to the appropriate placement office from there. But once there, there is not a lot beyond telling you to contact the director.
While there are listings to tell you where people have landed, you have no names or contact info. So, knowing someone ended up at Apple, for example, is lovely. But, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
As an alum, I had to back out of the CDO and go to the home page for QU, click on alumni and then on career development, and then, finally, job postings.
And then I had to choose QUCC or an external link that ended up not working. Not a good look, QU.
I would give QU a 3.5/5. Triaging people by school was smart, but there was no accommodation for us older folks who might have less than stellar eyesight.
Writer Website User Experience Design is About Accommodations
For all three schools, the web developers did a decent job with functionality. Nothing was slow. Yet there were places where all three could improve.
Hiding what the readership was looking for was a problem for all three schools. Seriously, when I go to a placement office, I want to see jobs. At the barest absolute minimum, there should have been a way to sign up for notifications or to get into the system.
And that information should have been front and center. It was a use case that all three schools missed entirely, the concept of an alum out of work or a student over the summer, who just wanted to look for a job. No talk of careers or callings or majors.
Just. A. Job.
What really irks me is that these schools all have good budgets. So, why didn’t they do any better?
The Writer Website User Experience Design on YOUR Author Website
Most of us indie writer types do not have access to any sort of a meaningful budget. And, if we do, it is likely better spent on cover designs, editor services, and paying for hosting, or for swag and accommodations for events.
So, you are probably not going to be doing any sort of user experience testing. But that does not mean you cannot perform some thought experiments. Come with me, if you will.
Buyer Personae
Who is your ideal reader? Who buys your stuff? And, if you are not selling yet, who do you think would buy it? This is beyond your family, close friends, and fellow authors doing trades.
Name this person, and give them a face. Give them demographics. Here is mine.
Meet Amy Shapiro
Amy Shapiro is a science fiction fan who is older than the standard college crowd but still somewhat identifies with them (she is between 35 and 70 years old). She is college-educated and probably has three or fewer children, if any. She is either married or in a long-term relationship. Her sexuality is more likely to be straight but she might be bi.
Amy is Jewish although not strict and does not keep kosher. But she does see that depictions of people just like her tend to be one-dimensional.
Where are the Jews in space?
Amy loves sci fi but she still finds it hard to see herself on the page or the screen. After a certain age, women fall off a cliff in Hollywood, Sigourney Weaver and Carrie Fisher notwithstanding.
She also wants something unique and different, and is willing to read a number of different kinds of plots.
Amy is comfortable with some sex scenes, even explicit, if they are not purely gratuitous. The same is true of violence, but gore makes her squeamish.
This image (from Wikipedia, so it is under a creative commons license and therefore okay to use) is of actress Alicia Silverstone, a nice Jewish gal who was born in 1976 and fits the model perfectly.
Use Cases Help Your Writer Website User Experience Design Straighten Up and Fly Right
I alluded to this already, but now is the time to get more specific. A use case is essentially how you think a person will use a particular product or service.
Of course, people who buy books intend to eventually read them. So, I am not talking about use cases for books. Rather, I mean use cases for your writer website.
Writer Website User Experience Design — Appropriate Use Cases
Why do people go to author websites?
What do they want to accomplish? What can they get there and nowhere else, online or off?
I believe the following use cases exist for my site. Most of them probably do for yours (or will) as well:
1. Customers who want to buy my books 2. Fellow indie writers (just like you!) who want to discuss and learn about the craft 3. Fans looking to personally connect to me 4. People who want to learn about using social media and some web design (mostly intersects with #2, but not 100%)
Buyers
This is a group who, I will be first to admit, I am not serving well. But they are the easiest to serve. They need links to buy, a shopping cart, ways to pay, and a means to check out and go home (figuratively) happy.
Craft Discussers
These are people I serve with posts like this, but also posts about inspiration, plotting, editing, and beta reading.
Fans (hi!)
For fans, the more personal ways I serve them are with self-reviews and progress reports. They want to know what I am working on, and I like to think they want to know how I feel about that as well.
Social Media/Web Design Students
Posts just like these serve this group. So do a lot of the book reviews I have done over the years. I have read a ton of books on social media, etc. These folks want to know if those reads are worthwhile.
Takeaways for Writer Website User Experience Design
I know Amy is a buyer/fan, or at least I would like her to become one if not both. To better serve her, I need to set up sales, a thing I have not done yet.
Here are takeaways for you:
1. Consider your ideal reader/customer and how you can appeal to them 2. Why do you believe they are coming to your author website? Offer them what they want and need 3. Take the time to determine who your ideal buyer persona really, really is (yes, I am repeating myself, but it is that important)
Who’s your Amy?
Set this site as a preferred source
Want More of Writer Website Development?
If my posts on author website development and writer website UX design resonate with you, then be sure to check out my other articles about how to create a writer website.
No matter how much you may be used to using a laptop or a desktop computer to go to websites, that does not mean your website visitors will do the same. You have got to take mobile design into consideration.
Good Mobile Design is Imperative Because Phones are Everywhere
It is not just that they are everywhere. It is that so many people use their phones to surf the internet.
Statista says, in 2020, the number of mobile phone search users in the United States was 211 million. And, in 2020, according to the US Census, there were 311 million people in America. Note: the census data is for April 1, 2020, which is around when Covid started to really hit.
But you say there are (or at least were) 100 million people not using cell phones for search. Yep.
But there are very young children and very old folks in that group of 100 million. There are people who are comatose, and people who do not understand how to use a cell phone.
Plus there are folks who do not have cell phones at all, and people who would use a phone for search but do not want to use data on a limited plan.
So, they are not all die-hards who are digging their heels in and refusing to use their phones for search.
Oh, and consider that there are parts of the world where phones are a lot more popular than computers. Lots of Asia is like that. If your readers are there, then you really need to be working on mobile design for your author website.
But it is More Than Just Search
What happens after you find something online? On occasion, you might take note of it or bookmark a page. But the vast majority of the time, you go to that site.
But what if your site looks awful? And not just in a design way. Rather, in an unusable way.
To be fair, this article from Search Engine Journal is from 2013. I would hope most of the offenders would have pulled their socks up by now.
But the image below is not just of a lousy mobile design experience. It is also, it would appear, a site which has not been updated since (a conservative estimate here) 1987.
Search Engine Journal example of bad mobile design – please, make the pain stop!
That is … pretty dang terrible.
It All Goes Together in a Great, Big Design Stew
So, the metaphor (or is it a simile?) sounded better in my head, okay?
Yet the principle is still there. That is, that a writer website has got to have good overall design and navigation.
But it also needs to provide a good user experience.
And it also must serve mobile search well.
Thank God for WordPress
No, seriously, they do not pay me. I just think they are pretty dang awesome.
You can accomplish the overall design (of any sort) of a WordPress site through the use of themes.
A theme can make your site pop, or it can make it look odd if you pick a theme that does not handle your kind of site well.
Fortunately, WordPress does their best to separate the wheat from the chaff. And, themes are searchable.
So, search for a theme that is mobile-friendly.
You can run the search either within WordPress or on Google or Bing.
These are the terms you should use for your search:
light mobile friendly WordPress themes free
Light means minimal html or other code. In this instance, it does not mean light in color.
You may or may not want to add the word responsive to that search.
The problem is not finding one of these themes. It is in choosing the one that you believe will serve your needs the best. WordPress absolutely spoils you for choice.
Clickable Elements and Google Search Console and Mobile Design
Er, what?
I have seen this problem before, and on more than one website. Google Search Console is owned by Google and it is how (with notifications that can hit your email) it tells you if there are problems with your website. This includes problems in its mobile design.
One issue I have seen before is “clickable elements too close together”. Putting a bunch of anchored links close together on a post can potentially do that.
Take note of these errors if you see them, and work to fix them. Sometimes that means moving an image or a link.
But if it persists, you may want to shift to another mobile-friendly theme. And do the designer a favor and tell them! They may have a workaround you can use.
Takeaways for Writer Website Mobile Design
Here are three takeaways on author website mobile design:
1. More people than ever before are using their phones to surf the internet, search, and buy things—things like your books
2. WordPress has a ton of mobile friendly themes. If you do not like one, you can always try another of over a hundred (thousand?) others 3. Google thinks Mobile First and will ding you if your site is not good for cell phone use. So, fix any usability issues as soon as possible after you learn of them
Set this site as a preferred source
Want More of Writer Website Development?
If my posts on author website development and mobile design resonate with you, then please be sure to check out my other articles about how to create a writer website.
If you are going to have an author website, you should probably be looking at writer website design. Do not leave it all to chance (like, er, some of us did, cough, cough).
Writer Website Design Can Help or Hurt You
Without getting into user experience (which will be the subject of a different blog post), there are definitely things you can do with writer website design that can help you.
Or hurt you.
And I will also write about designing for mobile in yet another blog post, so I will try not to get into that here too much, either.
So, rather, it is time to cover what is essentially writer website organization.
Location, Location, Location
Have you ever gone to a website (and it does not have to be for an author) and looked for something, and it just plain was not there? And it was not that it was absent—which of course can happen to anyone in any site. Instead, it was just in some odd place.
It is a little like finding salsa in the Italian foods section of your local supermarket.
Hey, I am so glad I found you, oh little jar of delicious salsa. But why aren’t you with your friends, the taco shells?
Consider your book(s) and your blog posts, whether they are written (or even posted), or not. When you have had a blog for a while, you may need to add some menu navigation to the front page.
And so, for sake of argument, what if you write both horror and stuff for kids?
Er, do not confuse the two.
You might call one menu The Spooky Nook, whereas you might call the other one Happy Books for Happy Tots. And never mind that it would likely be better if these were in two separate websites.
With WordPress, you would do this with categories, and with placing the menus where you feel they work the best.
Obviously, you make sure your horror goes to the former menu while your kiddie stuff goes to the latter.
But what about things that are in the middle? Or maybe they do not really fit either?
First off, not everything must be in a drop-down menu format. So long as a blog post is accessible somehow, through a link on some other page, you are good. The easiest way to make certain of that is to use tags.
Tags are for Aggregation. They Also Work as a Kind of Sneak Preview
Every time you make a tag, WordPress (and I believe Blogger may do this as well) will create a page. And, perhaps somewhere, a developer gets their wings.
But the idea behind tags is not to make a million of them for every occasion. Unlike with some other things, such as blog content (with exceptions), reusing is just fine. In fact, it is downright necessary.
If your tags are visible in your theme, they will be clickable links. A site visitor will click on one, say, called children‘s books. If you are using the identical tag for all twenty (we can dream, now, eh?) of your children’s books, they will see everything you have on offer.
And, they might see something in your back catalog that they did not know about before. And may want to buy it.
But if the tag only points to one book, and another tag, called kids’ books, points to one different book, and another tag, preschoolers’ books, only points to a third book, do you see the problem here?
Your visitor has to go through three separate screens. For twenty books done up this way, you guessed it, they are now saddled with having to go through twenty screens. Which is silly.
Is using synonyms good? It probably is, because you are accounting for more than one type of search. The preschoolers’ books tag, in particular, is really good, because that’s a well-defined subset of children. Someone looking for a book for a teenager will know not to click there.
But how do you fit in synonyms without making visitors jump through too many hoops?
Tags are Your Friend but They are not Your Bestie
The simple solution is: use more than one tag. But at the same time, do not go overboard. There is no need to dig through a thesaurus, hunting for obscure synonyms so you can make yet more tags.
But do some research, and that means pulling up Google and trying it out for yourself.
When you search for children’s books, how many hits do you get? Beyond the ads, what are the first three results? Now do the same for kids’ books. The day I first wrote this blog post, I found children’s books (no quotes or anything) got me 884 million results.
But kids’ books got me 10.9 billion hits.
While the top three results were in slightly different orders, they overlapped. These sites are using both. You should, too.
But a search for the much more obscure striplings’ books got me books by author Scott Stripling. Not even close.
For a book on the kiddie side devoted to dinosaurs and easy to read, you might tag it something like:
Depending on the focus of the second book, you might also tag it legal or mental health, etc.
But You Just Said Tags Are not Your Bestie
I sure did. What I mean by this is: getting too granular is not helpful because it will not aggregate. Hence the book on dinosaurs just gets a dinosaurs tag and not a stegosaurus tag. That is, unless you have enough books on the stegosaurus where it would justify it.
Being too tag-happy does not look good. It just looks amateurish and spammy.
Use a half-dozen rule of thumb.
Therefore,
• No more than 6 tags per post and † If you have 6 usages or planned usages for a tag, great! Otherwise, do not make a new tag. But see below
Exceptions are of the Devil and We Had Better Deal With Them Now
A meaningful exception to the 6 usage rule is when a topic is so exceptionally unique that you cannot use another, similar tag as a replacement.
Case in point: the 50 states. Try as you may, putting the tag for Oklahoma on a blog post about Idaho is just weird and unnecessarily confusing. Or, you can avoid the issue entirely and just create a tag called America or USA or US states, something like that.
I would also say that a very long book (as in, over 100k words, edited) can get a few extra tags if it’s justified.
Tags can probably look like (I have not checked mine, but they are likely to be close to this):
Real Hub of the Universe, Victorian era, science fiction, Victorian sci fi, Ceilidh O’Malley, Jake Radford, Devon Grace
I may not need the two extra names at the end (they are also significant characters, but it is Ceilidh’s POV all the way).
Easy, useful, and no overkill.
Odds and Ends for Writer Website Design
WordPress does this beautifully but, if you are not using it, you should consider this.
Make sure all navigation is where the visitor would expect it to be. For example, settings and accounts tend to be in an upper corner. Putting them in the middle of a page is just asking for them to be ignored and unseen. Yes, even though they are quite literally front and center.
Keep buttons, etc. consistent and use naming conventions. For our children’s author example, boys’ books and girls’ books and nonbinary books go together. But books for boys (assuming the other two stay the same) is not consistent.
If a website visitor finds your site via your nonbinary books page (or tag or category), they will reasonably guess that reading material for boys will be called something like boys’ books.
They are a lot less likely to guess books for boys. You should, though, be using both terms on the page. But you only need the one tag like that.
Consistency and naming conventions will make your life easier, too. You only have to dream up the general concept one time.
Takeaways for Writer Website Design
Of course, there are many, many more things I could say about this. But here are three quick takeaways on the topic of writer website design:
• Do some research to find out which words people are using when searching for books and a site just like yours. Use those words as keyword phrases (covered in my SEO blog posts), blog titles, and category and tag names
† Keep in mind a rule of 6 for the number of tags per post and the number of times a concept repeats on your site before you create a tag for it. But be mindful of some exceptions • Consistency and naming conventions will save you and your readers time
Set this site as a preferred source
Want More of Writer Website Development?
If my post on website design resonates with you, then please be sure to check out my other articles about how to create a writer website.
Even if you are not a litigious sort of person, you will still do well to concern yourself with writer website copyright. Just because you, personally, do not go searching for plagiarism and copyright violations, does not mean that they would never find you.
Writer Website Copyright: The Basics
If any of this looks familiar, it is because I have other posts on copyright. And, let’s face it. It really has not changed that much. But it does bear repeating all the same.
Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S.Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works.
Per Section 106 of the Copyright Act of 1967, a copyright holder can:
† reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords • prepare derivative works based upon the work † distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending • perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works † display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work • perform the work publicly (in the case of sound recordings) by means of a digital audio transmission
Hence copyright holders have any number of rights in their own works. Can they allow others to use them? You betcha! We call that a license.
In general, for works created on or after January 1, 1978, the term of copyright is the life of the author plus seventy years after the author’s death. If the work is a joint work with multiple authors, the term lasts for seventy years after the last surviving author’s death.
I will not go into works created before January 1, 1978 (you can check out the pamphlet for that). Since 1978 is about five decades ago, many currently living authors do not have anything that old.
Er, What?
What does this mean? Well, the short answer is that you generally do better to publish your work! After all, you cannot expect anyone to guard against copying it if they do not know it exists.
The other important takeaway: you do not need to assert copyright or mail it yourself or anything like that. Does it help to register your work? Absolutely! And you will need to register if you want to bring or defend a lawsuit. But mailing it to yourself is silly. Seriously.
Infringement and Writer Website Copyright
We are artists and that means we are copyright holders, even if we never assert our rights and never file with the copyright office. According to American copyright law, you own it if you made it. You do not have to mail it yourself.
Here, however, I will only talk about American law. If you assert copyright in another country, the law will most likely differ. Furthermore, if you have any questions, ask me in the comments section. I will try to research and answer you in a timely fashion.
But do not expect me to do the huge amount of research a hired lawyer would. Nope. I am not doing that much free work for you, sorry, not sorry.
Or ask a copyright attorney. This area, like many areas of the law, has nuances and there can be changes. This blog is no substitute for good advice from an experienced lawyer. If you think you need to protect your rights, then do so properly. And that means hiring an attorney.
Yes, you will need to actually pay that person.
Details
The American Bar Association explains it better. It publishes a Young Lawyers series to help newly minted lawyers understand the nuances of complex sections of practice. So, the ABA explains:
An action for copyright infringement may arise where a third party violates one or more of the exclusive rights granted to copyright owners. To establish infringement, the plaintiff must prove: “(1) ownership of a valid copyright, and (2) copying of constituent elements of the work that are original.”
Ownership of a valid copyright consists of: “(1) originality in the author; (2) copyrightability of the subject matter; (3) a national point of attachment of the work, such as to permit a claim of copyright; (4) compliance with applicable statutory formalities; and (5) (if the plaintiff is not the author) a transfer of rights or other relationship between the author and the plaintiff so as to constitute the plaintiff as the valid copyright claimant.” A copyright registration certificate from the Copyright Office serves as prima facie evidence of elements (1) through (4). If the defendant rebuts the plaintiff’s prima facie evidence, then the above elements of valid copyright ownership become essential to the plaintiff’s case.
What Does that all Mean?
So what is the ABA is saying? Registration with the US Copyright office is necessary to successfully bring an infringement claim.
If you think your work might be infringed upon, if you feel it is a danger and you are concerned about it, then get some peace of mind and register it with the US Copyright Office.
Are There Any Writer Website Copyright Exceptions? Or Any Copyright Exceptions?
I am so glad you asked.
Purdue University offers a terrific and very readable summary of the main known exceptions to copyright infringement claims.
Fair Use
For the fair use defense, Purdue outlines four basic factors:
Purpose and Character
Some specific use cases favor fair use. These include nonprofit, educational, and personal uses. Plus there are those which represent a potential tipping point.
These include teaching, research, scholarship, criticism, commentary, and news reporting. And there are those which favor needing permission. These include commercial, entertainment, and for-profit uses.
Hence, a nonprofit’s research is more likely to be fair use than a for-profit enterprise’s commercial use. Hence the for-profit business should seek the copyright holder’s permission.
Nature of Work
To favor fair use, it should be a fact and/or published. But to favor needing permission, it should be a fiction and/or unpublished.
E. g. It is more likely to be fair use if you repeat a published fact about dinosaurs. Whereas you more likely need permission for an unpublished novel about vampires.
Amount
Small and insignificant bits of copying are more likely to be fair use than large ones representing the heart of a work. As a result, those are more likely to require permission.
Hence, if I copy the character of Millicent Bulstrode, then the character is minor and small. But this does not necessarily mean JK Rowling would not sue me. Still, copying Hermione Granger is another matter entirely.
Market Effect
You are more likely to be in the fair use realm if:
† Licensing/permissions are unavailable or there is no major impact, • There is limited/restricted access to the work, or † The user or institution owns a legal copy.
But it is different if there is a major impact, or licensing/permissions are readily available. Or the work has worldwide availability, or there is repeated or long-term use. Then the scale slides to requiring permission.
Profit and sales are not an element to this cause of action. Although selling the copied article, particularly multiple instances of it, can place the act into the ‘requires permission’ camp.
Face to Face Instruction
According to Purdue,
The traditional classroom or face-to-face instruction is when the instructor and the students of a nonprofit educational institution are in a place devoted to instruction and the teaching and learning take place at the same time. In this setting all performances and displays of a work are allowed.
Requirements:
• All materials must be legally acquired. † Teaching activities must take place in a classroom or a similar place devoted to instruction.
Exceptions: Virtual Instruction
Like face-to-face instruction allowance, virtual instruction generally gets a pass, per Purdue University. However, there are some specifics. For example, the class must be a regular offering in the curriculum.
What About Parody and Writer Website Copyright?
The American Bar Association notes the United States Supreme Court treats parody and satire separately. But the ABA feels it’s a distinction without much of a difference. Both are mockery. But satire is often more like commentary than outright mimicry.
For the ABA, and particularly when a work has both elements, the difference matters less. Although copyright holders might be more likely to license satire rather than parody. This is because parody is pretty much a knockoff by definition.
Commentary generally falls under fair use. That commentary can be amusing or not, satirical or not. Copying generally isn’t fair use. But amusement and exaggeration blurs that line.
The best advice I can give you is: do not make your work into a copyright test case.
In other words: be original!
Writer Website Copyright: Takeaways
Beyond protecting your own work and trying not to get into your own copyright hot water, there is the matter of someone out and out pirating your stuff. This happens with annoying regularity.
DMCA takedown notices can be semi-effective, but determined thieves likely will not care about your rights.
A few ways to protect yourself include using PDFs for review copies or beta reader copies, and not Word docs or Google docs. With those, copying is still possible, although you need software to do it.
If you are published through a publisher (traditional or hybrid), talk to their legal department about what they do, and how you can potentially help them. But if it is just you, you may want to resign yourself to the fact that it can turn into just so much Whack-a-Mole.
Give pirates and infringers no quarter. But at the same time, do not let them run your life so much that you have no time to write.
Set this site as a preferred source
Want More of Writer Website Development?
If my post on website copyright resonates with you, then please be sure to check out my other blog posts about how to create a writer website.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
