What do you look for in a website?

I take your point. I need a website.

The next question - what to put on it.

So, just supposing you're wandering the internet, in a random fashion, what makes to stop to look at a website? What is genuinely interesting, and what is filling pages for the sake of it?

I know what I look for. If it is someone who genuinely interests me, I'll flick through the 'about me' page - just to see if they are telling me how wonderful they are or if they can come across as flawed like the rest of us. I might look at what they write, what they read. If they travel I drool over photos.

I don't care about exercise regimes/diets/strange health ideas. I don't care what car they drive/house they live in, or even when they prune the roses. I'm not good anyone telling me what to do.

But I want to make my site welcoming for everyone. It is not simply a reflection of my whims and fancies, but a place that responds to those of anyone who might drop by.

So I'll tell you of the ideas I've had, and I've be grateful if anyone can chip in with others:

• I probably need an 'about me'. It will all seem too random otherwise.
• A page of travel photos, which I can change from time to time - just to whet the appetite of anyone wondering if he or she should follow in my footsteps. 
• A sample chapter - the first - from the book. With a link for anyone who wants to buy it - yes, people have been buying it!
• A page of travelling thoughts - things I learned along the way that I wish I'd known before I left, but didn't seem relevant for the book. Such as how to manage one's washing (walk on it in the shower). (Except the time I arrived at a hostel in New Zealand with a rucksack of filthy clothes which I had saved for their machine. I slipped into the only skirt and shirt that weren't walking on their own, put the rest in to wash, and then went to breakfast. I've often wondered what the energetic young people alongside me would have thought if they'd known the wrinkly in the corner had no pants on.)

I think I'll keep my thoughts on the MA for this blog, because my ideas around that will evolve, and the blog seems a better vehicle for recording change than a webpage.

So - over to you. What do you look for in a webpage? 

The changing of minds.

A comment from Cat on my last post got me thinking. As I drafted my reply I realised that, in my transition from dreams of finding a traditional publisher to getting my self-publishing clothes on, I've had to reframe they way I think about this book.

Reframing - a phrase from my old days as a therapist. (Yes, a play therapist, with traumatised children. It feels like another life now). It means the process of changing one's thinking, generally from a somewhat negative approach to finding positives. For some children the prospect of two Christmases and birthdays begins to compensate for their parents no longer being together.

For me - it's been a slow, and often painful process, dragging myself towards a more positive view of self-publishing. I've been on the fringes of writing and publishing for several years, and watched opinions change. Ten years ago, self-publishing was (rightly?) called 'vanity publishing.' Writers unable to find a traditional home for their novels, with contracts and advances and royalties, could pay someone to do it for them.

Two things have changed: traditional publishing has been squeezed; it is unclear how many people still read, but fewer and fewer books make money - and making money is the function of any company. Which means the chance of any book making it to the shelves of Waterstones are slim. At the same time, print-on-demand (POD) services have made it easier for writers to produce books for themselves, with minimum costs, and with all the marketing opportunities the internet has to offer.

As a result, anyone can do it. And, while, the quality of much self-published material is little better than eel vomit (Nicola Morgan's term, in 'Write to be Published'), one can defend the right of any aspiring writer to take a manuscript and make it real. For, among the dross, there are gems. Dan Holloway (here) has shown how, with hard work and persistence, self-publishing can become an aspiration in its own right, by-passing any thought of traditional publishing. Just as there are gems in indie music, self-publishing is now unveiling wonderful books that would never emerged from their writers' dreams without the opportunities of POD.

I know all this. But in my head I've had to take an idealogical leap - from daring to dream of editors with big desks and fat wallets with their proofreaders and their typesetters and their marketing departments who would make my book look so wonderful everyone would buy it and people would look at me in the street, oh so you are Jo Carroll (tell me all writers have little dreams like that?) - to a recognition that self-publishing is not only valid, but an exciting and worthwhile road to travel.

Reframing. And yes, it has made my head hurt occasionally - but I've made it.

And - ps - if anyone can tell me how to reduce links to a nice tidy 'here', in red, for people to click on so I don't have long addresses, I'd be grateful.