And now I'm a website designer.
- Diana Rosie
- Oct 9, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 12, 2020
As an author, there's a fair amount of self-publicity to do for both yourself and your books. And before you can really get stuck into promotions, giveaways and campaigns, you need somewhere for people to go. So, you need a website.
I started creating a website for my first book (I can't quite believe this) four years ago. The design was covered with lemons as the hardback cover features a lemon. It was busy and confused and I just didn't know what to do with it.
Life was a bit chaotic at the time and I couldn't do all the self-promotion that I wanted to, so I left it. As soon as book two was finished, I decided to throw myself back at the website design.
Then lockdown happened.
I helped our son learn how to tell the time and what a verb was. I taught our daughter to say 'cup' and 'chair'. I grew enormous onions and plaited them. I achieved absolutely nothing on the website front.
But now school is back (hurrah!) and my husband is able to do more childcare and I ran out of excuses. So, I looked up some of my favourite authors and explored their websites, I researched what really must and must not be in an author's site, I roamed around non-author's websites to decide what I liked about them and what ideas I could steal.
I knew I wanted it to be clean and clear, about books and a little bit about me. Of course the lemons were the first to go. Then I chose a white site and decided to put my name in an old rose pink. Apart from being one of my favourite colours, it's a subtle link with my surname.
And that's it. I used one of those clever websites that gives you a template and lets you fiddle around to get it how you want it. I think it's ok. It does what I wanted it to do.
But I have friends who are professional designers and I will not be asking them what they think of it.

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