Where's your website?

Eloy Bleifuss Prados weighs in on the single most important querying tool way too many of you aren't using (yet).

[I’m traveling for work this week, so I’ve given the reins to Eloy, who is 100% correct about all of the below. MY KINGDOM FOR AN EASY WAY TO FIND ALL OF YOUR EMAILS. -ASL]

Whether I’m at a writers’ conference or just chatting with an aspiring author at a party, there’s one piece of advice I always make a point to say. It’s not “show, don’t tell.” It isn’t “write every day.” In fact, it has nothing to do with craft, revision, or even querying. No: this is something you can do in the space of a single afternoon.

It’s get a website.

A tough truth you don’t see in a lot of writing guides is this: many (most?) agents sign more new clients via proactive scouting than they do via their submissions inbox. As in: you don’t come to them; they come to you.

This is less true for acquiring editors at publishing houses—I would say most of the time, they’re acquiring agented submissions. Nevertheless, editors do a great deal of proactive scouting as well.

That’s why it’s essential to have a website. Make things easy for any agent or editor who stumbles across your writing; give them a fast and simple way to contact you. Build a website and put an email address on there.

A website is useful for all working writers—freelancers, staff writers, copywriters—but it’s crucial for anyone who even theoretically wants to write a book some day, especially if they’re actively publishing reported pieces, short stories, or essays in outlets big and small.

Just because you have a website doesn’t mean you’re going to have a dozen agents or editors knocking on your door every month. You might not hear from anybody. But without a website, you’re making discovery much more difficult. I wish agents had endless time in the day to go full Nancy Drew in order to track down each and every person whose work they admire, but we just don’t.

OK, so what do I actually put on my website?

Keep it simple. Very simple. My favorite websites have maybe two or three separate tabs and a lot of negative space. Clean, uncluttered, easy to navigate.

Keep it smart as well, though. Certain choices in how you welcome email, for example, can make a big difference in the quantity and quality of incoming messages you get.

Here’s what I’d put on there: