Web Strategies For Writers (Part 02)

The Essentials

Here are three vastly oversimplified and quite possibly flawed (but useful) metaphors describing important historical phases of the web and our conceptions of it. They'll provide a context for the discussion of Web Strategy For Writers which follows.

The Web As Digital Library

In the early days, the Internet was just a place to store information. In fact, it was created as a means for physicists and other academics to share research.

The Web As Digital Clone

Eventually, the world wide web and the web browser came along. Shortly after, businesses figured out that the web is a bunch of wires connecting computers owned by the businesses to computers owned by their customers. Many processes that used to require face-to-face interaction, or long delays waiting for customer input (retail, billing, banking, etcetera) were made to run online.

Individuals also realized that they could replicate certain functions of daily life on the web: posting resumes, sending letters via e-mail, selling a used car, yada-yada. (Seinfeld was still airing new episodes back then.)

Still, as revolutionary as this phase of the web's development was, most content was still static, and most communication was one-to-one, or one-to-many, with very little interaction among participants.

Only recently has the web's true identity and potential started to emerge.

The Web As Virtual Society

Today, the web has started to exhibit all the characteristics of a parallel universe an actual community. In particular, interaction among citizens of this community is no longer limited to one-to-one (e- mail), or one-to-many (static homepage) exchanges. Nor are artificial limits on the structure and content of communication imposed (as often) by a centralized authority standing between participants in an online interaction. Now, the web is allowing masses of people to have conversations with each other, whenever and however they want.

Today's web is starting to look less like a digital Swiss army knife, and more like a virtual society, replete with virtual economies, virtual culture, and casual encounters virtual friends.

Everything that works offline, also works online. It just works faster, more efficiently, and on a potentially larger population (if it was meant to work at all).

So you know more about web strategy already than you may even realize. It's a matter of translating what you already know about the way the world works--about how growing a writing career works--into a web-equivalent schema. This isn't really that difficult.

Think back to when you were still a kid, and you first heard the phrase: time is money. Today, this abstraction makes perfect sense to you. But if you're like me, the first time I heard that it took me awhile to get my head around. It wasn't until much later in life, until after I'd heard similar phrases, like: money is choice, and money is whatever you want it to be, that I fully understood money as simply an abstraction of value--one which members of society have agreed to use as their standard currency of exchange (it's not the only standard, of course, but is by far the most common).

On the web, the standard currency of value exchange is the link. More on links in a bit. For now, behold the ultimate truth:

You Get What You Want By Giving Others What They Want...

(What do writers want?)

 

1. We want to write the best books we can.
   
   As in, duh.
   
   
2. We want to be read by as many people in our intended audience as possible.
   
   I emphasize "intended audience" for a reason. Traditionally, we tend to think of our audience only in terms of genre. Granted, this is still more useful than defining our audience as "people who read books," which is much too broad, but really, genre simply defines our potential audience. it misses two additional views of what may define a member of an audience:
   
   a) Our audience can also be defined by multiple "tribes" / social networks sharing identifiable traits and communication preferences of their own.
   
   The better we can cater to the needs and preferences of each tribe, the more they'll appreciate it. Being nice to people and respecting their needs is simply the right thing to do.
   
   b) Mediums offer a channel to reach specific tribes and individuals comprising our audience.
   
   I'm not talking about having a séance. I'm talking about the different formats your work can appear in. Different tribes will appreciate different formats.
   
   
3. The third thing writers want is, ideally, to make a career out of our writing (or at least some extra scratch).
   
   Right now, (multiple) book deals with print publishers represent the most common (and still exceedingly rare) way authors of fiction make a career of sharing their work with readers. As long as readers enjoy reading books printed on paper, this path is likely to remain viable, though the business models publishers adopt to turn a profit and pay writers will continue to evolve. These business models need not concern us here.
   

 

OK, so what do readers want when they go online?

Excluding task or work-related activities, they want:

1.   Information

The satisfaction of curiosity is such a powerful lure that it changed the course of mammalian evolution. Unlike the saber-toothed tiger, which only had one life and is now extinct, modern felines have nine lives, enabling them to get the answers they seek and still live long enough to reproduce.

Google built a business worth many billions of dollars by satisfying curiosity on the web, or about $158 per visitor eyeball.

2.   Entertainment

And speaking of cats, people also go online to be entertained.

 

Which is good for writers, because we know how to entertain people, too (though competition with cats is heating up).

3.   Social Connection

More and more, people are also going online to connect with others in a meaningful way. At first glance, this trend seems counterintuitive. After all, if someone's craving a little human interaction, wouldn't it make more sense to go somewhere in the meat-world where you can actually rub elbows with (and contract the flu from) living, breathing human beings?

Yes. But the advantage of interacting and connecting with people on the web is that, online, it's much easier to find people who are interested in the same things you are.

For readers of Science Fiction, for example, there are approximately 2.3 trillion forums, social networks, and / or fan fiction sites devoted to the genre, and unlike conventions, these online meeting places are available 24-7.

Go to a bar in search of people to talk to about the (alleged) homoerotic symbolism in Lord Of The Rings and you might discover just how utterly alone you are in the world, and then drink yourself into a alcoholic stupor of self loathing and unrequited hobbit love.

Google "Lord of the Rings Forum" and you'll get 15,400 results.

How do readers want content delivered?

Fast

McDonald's and Starbucks gave us the idea that instant gratification is possible.

Web sites like YouTube, Google, and Twitter have conditioned us to expect it.

How fast is fast?

In terms of page load, the research says less than 8 seconds, +/- 2 seconds. After that amount of time has elapsed, visitors to a web site tend not to stick around waiting for content to load.

I would argue that anything over 4 seconds is too long. Especially with the prevalence of broadband connections these days. As of last year, over fifty-percent of homes in America had either a DSL or cable modem.

But optimizing page load times isn't really the point when it comes to helping readers find what they're after online. I only mention it because, if a web site doesn't load quickly, everything else is for naught.

Speed is also about how long it takes a visitor to your web site to find the information they were looking for after they arrive. In a perfect world, the page a visitor to your site lands on contains exactly the information they want. Prevailing wisdom suggests every page should be accessible within no more than three clicks from every other page.

There's more to being fast online that I've touched on here, for sure, but for the sake speed, let's save a more in-depth discussion of the topic for later and move to the big:

Easy

No one wants to (consciously) work to be entertained. Kinda defeats the purpose, eh?

That said, people will work very hard to entertain themselves, or to satisfy their curiosity, or to make a good impression among the other members of the tribe.

If you've ever watched a gamer try and defeat the latest release of a popular video game before any of their friends do, then you'll witness a blister-producing bout of physical and mental labor.

So by "easy," what I really mean is frustration free. Others have used the term "frictionless."

Here's an example of not-so-easy [a humorous aside you may skip if desired]:

Ever read a fascinating blog post and wanted to leave a comment on it, only to discover that you had to "register" first? I frocking hate this process!

Inevitably, the registration form requires you to fill out a page-long questionnaire and reveal all kinds of personal info. Then, when you finally invent enough bogus bio to be allowed to hit the submit button, you're greeted with a screen that says to check your e-mail client for a message containing a link to confirm your registration.

Now you might have to actually launch MS Outlook. It takes about fifteen minutes to load, so you decide to make a cheese grilled sandwich while you're waiting for the e-mail. You eat the sandwich, watch a Seinfeld rerun, go pickup your dry cleaning, and get back to computer just in time to see that Outlook has downloaded 80% of your new mail from the server.

Since you left your browser window open (and it's a good thing you did, because you don't even remember what site you tried to leave a comment on), you figure you might as well click "refresh" and see what other people are saying about the post.

It's then you realize your entire PC has locked up and requires a reboot. You hit 'Ctrl-Alt- Delete' hoping to simply end the Outlook.exe process in the Task Manager and avoid a restart.

Nothing happens.

You take a deep breath. Scan your bookshelf for the title: DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF by Richard Carlson. Decide to add it to the pile on your nightstand.

You exhale (yes, you've been holding your breath--but not for as long as you've been grinding your teeth--you've been doing that since being asked to enter the name of your favorite pet on that goddamned registration form--which explains why your jaw is sore).

You hold down the power button until the computer is forced to submit and powers off.

Without the light from the monitor, it's now quite dark.

You get up to turn on a light. Trip over the power cord of your sleeping laptop and catch the bridge of your nose flush on the corner of your coffee table. Sure enough, it's broken. Hello emergency room.

Thank God for Vicodin.

Yummy.

You get back home and sit in front of the inert black screen of your laptop, gaping at your puffy visage reflecting off its glossy surface.

You power on the maniacal machine and launch Outlook again. This time it opens.

You scan down the bolded subject headings of new and unread messages, willing yourself to ignore enticing invitations to invest in Nigerian oil fields, or to increase your "stamina." But to your dismay, you don't see the registration confirmation e-mail you've been waiting for..obviously, it's in the Junk Mail folder.

Yep. There it is. What a relief. You open it up, ignore the terms-of-use boilerplate nonsense. and click on the confirmation link.

Your web browser has the decency to automatically launch for you. The page is loading...strange, you think, it's taking a really darn long time to load. At least 15-seconds.

+/- 2.

And then: 404 Not Found.

But you're savvy. You check the address bar of the browser and notice a URL that seems to be chopped in half, far short of the length of the link you clicked on in the e-mail.

You go back to Outlook. Ah. Because the confirmation link URL was generated by a server-side program coded by a million monkeys, its length is roughly comparable to HAMLET. Fortunately, Outlook was 'intelligent' enough to automatically word-wrap the address to the next line, thus breaking the link.

No worries, you'll just have to go old school and cut-and-paste the link into the address bar of the browser manually. You highlight all three lines of the offending text, 'Ctrl-c' it, switch back to your browser window, and 'Ctrl-v' into the address bar. Hit enter.

What the !#%*

It seems that Outlook only allowed you to copy the first line of highlighted text. How silly of you, naive computer user. So you copy-and-paste each line of the URL individually into the browser (only having to start over twice because you accidentally hit 'Enter' before constructing the entire address.)

And finally you arrive. You have been confirmed. Yippee!

You now search the archives until you find a permalink back to the blog entry you wanted to post a comment on so many moons ago.

The page loads.

You read the "Welcome back, NoLife017" message in the upper right hand of the page and the acknowledgement of your presence pleases you in some small yet profound way.

You scroll down to the Comments section at the end of the post.

There's only one comment.

It's not yours.

It reads: Comments for this post have been closed by the administrator.

My point? Don't be difficult!

Free

People aren't likely to pay for any content posted online. Are there exceptions? Sure. But as a test for whether or not you're one of them, take a gander at www.jchutchins.net, and assess whether or not your site offers more value to people who visit than Hutch does? (Hint: his site is 100% free of charge.)

This might not be an easy reality to swallow for writers used to getting paid for their creative output. After all, how can make a career of giving away free stuff?

By the end of this series, you'll have an answer to that question. Maybe more than one.

Shareable

When you love something, you want to share it with others. Maybe not your spouse, but certainly a favorite song, a fine wine, or a good book.

The web can make sharing very, very easy--IF--content producers (and copyright holders) want to make it easy to share their work. Too many of them don't. And that's a problem.

It's a problem because the biggest threat to authors isn't piracy, it's obscurity (and yes I totally 'borrowed' that line from Cory Doctorow).

You know how most people decide to purchase a book by an author they've never heard before? It's a three-step process:

1. The title or cover catches their eye on the shelf of a bookstore.
2. They scan the jacket copy, and if it's intriguing enough, they flip to page one and sample a paragraph or two.
3. If the author in question is very lucky, the book browser happens to be shopping in a Barnes & Noble, and gets hooked enough on the first two paragraphs to continue sampling the story while they get a caffeine fix in the store cafe, where (Thoth willing), they manage to smudge the pages with grease from a gluten-free cranberry scone, and end up feeling too guilty to return the book to its shelf in such a defiled state. Hello cash register.

My point being, the best advertisement for a book is the book itself. People want to try before they buy. The more you let them try, the more likely they are to buy.

But we don't have to limit the concept of shareability to just books or e-books. It applies to everything posted online, right down to the lowly blog post about what you ate for dinner last night. If people enjoy it, they want to share it with others, and they'd prefer not commit a crime while doing so.

The easier content is to share, the more likely it is to spread. And the wider content spreads, the more valuable it becomes. Authors ought to be very familiar with this premise. Compared to, say, a doctor performing a life-saving open-heart surgery, the value provided in the latest Patterson novel is pretty unsubstantial… But it's not zero. Someone enjoyed the book. And if you sum a million other someone's small amount of satisfaction, the result is substantial value.

Malleable

Not only should digital content be easily shared, but it should be malleable. It needs to look good on whatever device the reader wants to view it on. It should be trivial to transform the content into a .pdf or a Word .doc or an .mp3, etcetera.

Even better: why not transform your work for the reader ahead of time?

OK, that's it for Part 02. In Part 03, which I'll be posting very soon (as in later this evening), I'll show you how to create the foundation of your writerly web strategy. Stay tuned.