Hi, everyone. We're glad you're here. This is the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. Get ready to have your world rocked. As we dive into the wild and sometimes wacky world of self-publishing. We are three fabulous bestselling authors. I'm your host, Kimberly Todd with my best friends.

K. C. Luck

and Jamey Moody. 

Join us as we discuss the joys of writing, challenges of self-publishing, and anything else that tickles our fancy. 

Hey there, and welcome to episode 49 of the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. I'm Kimberly Todd, I'm here with my fabulous friends, KC Luck and Jamey Moody. Today we're talking about author websites, but before we start, how was your week, KC?

I had a good week and a bad week. 

Oh, oh, oh, oh,

I'm watching baseball. Okay. I watch major league

Oh.

Baseball.

I thought were Dodger.

I am a Dodger fan, but I'm also a Seattle Mariners fan, because that's my dad's team. And I have a funny feeling by the time this airs, it'll be a sad night in Seattle because they are not playing very well, and it's down to the final game of the seven game series against the Blue Jays tonight, and they've been very flat. They've been getting their butts kicked. The last five games. Yeah.

I saw end of that game yesterday and knew that the Toronto had taken it to game seven. So they played tonight in Toronto.

In Toronto. So.

And Toronto's the higher seed, I think.

They are the highest seat and they're playing really well. 

Not 

that matters. Yeah.

So I have a funny feeling that it'll be a sad night in Seattle by the time this comes out, but I will be watching, I will be watching, and I hate to say it, but when they came back to win the game, to push it out to Toronto again, I actually put my slipper on my head. I don't know if you've seen the rally hats that people do to try to make the team play better. You've never seen this. Okay.

Yeah, I've seen rally hats, but you put a slipper on your head.

Yeah, well some people in the crowd were putting their shoes on their head.

No.

Yes. So I put my slipper on my head and then the guy hit a grand slam. So guess what I'll be doing tonight.

Oh, my God. 

I'll be wearing my, on my head.

Heck yeah.

I think you should take a picture of that.

I might have to if they win because of it.

Oh, wow.

Other than that, I had a birthday. I had my 57th birthday, which we talked about already in the past. But I need to shout out to my good friend Cheryl, she's my birthday, twinnie. So we have the birthday on the same day. 

Happy birthday, Cheryl. I hope yours was good.

Yeah, we, shoot emails back and forth and do all that. So, yeah, so a shout out to her for birthday wishes. And of course the book came out and that's done better than I expected, so that's a win as well.

All right! 

Cool. Cool. Let's see. I actually have stuff that did happen since our last recording. I went to the Texas State Fair and got to eat some delectable treats. But the thing that my niece and I did first, that really was the most fun is, State Farm, and if you saw my post you'll see it. But State Farm had this booth, you know, trying to sell you insurance or just wanting to give you a quote or whatever.

But they would take your picture and they had these little bobbleheads, so they would take your picture and they would stick it on that bobblehead. So you had own bobblehead and you got to choose what you wanted your bobble head to be. And so of course I chose a superhero. I mean, come on. 

No kidding.

Which superhero?

Just me. It would be Jamey.

Oh, ok. I thought it 

would be like 

Wonder Woman. 

A big "J" on your chest or...

It's like blue and red and you're doing that stance where you've got your arms back, you know, and your chest out and then my little face is right there on the head part. But it was so much fun. and then, my niece decided to do a princess. 'cause she said, I'm a princess at everything.

My kids know it, my husband knows it and all this. So it was really funny. And one of the guys, when he was putting it all together, said, so you're the superhero that, saves the princess. I said, you got it man. He could tell lesbian right here, Owl, hootie hoo! So pretty funny.

That should be on the chest. Owl. 

Yeah, that's what should be on there. 

Yeah, an owl.

So then, this past weekend I had, my class reunion and, you know, I always have, mixed emotions about that because you're like, oh, do I wanna go, But then when you get there, it's like so much fun. And I have to say that, the women always seem to age better than the men. I'm just gonna put it out there because that certainly happened with my group. Yeah. The women all look so much better than the men. 

I would rather have someone stick knitting needles in my eyes before I will go to a high school reunion.

Really, really? You just, but I tell you, I think a lot of people have that. But then once you get there, I'm telling you it was so much fun.

I would never go to mine because there was only seven people in my graduating class and I know what all of them are doing, and it'd be so boring.

Yeah, that would be. Well, I was gonna say, I'm in a small town, so there wasn't probably a hundred thirty, a hundred thirty-five in my graduating class, but, when I got there, I'd been there for a little while and I know one of the guys that I grew up with is gay, and I was like, where's Stan, why isn't Stan here? I need some, gay representation here, you know, with me. But I was looking around and I think I may be the only gay person. Me and him, that I know of in my class, which seems odd to me. You know. 

 This is what's funny is you gotta understand that I went to kindergarten with some of these people. We've known each other since we were four. And it's like when you see 'em, you just pick right up where, you know, the last time you saw them, it's kind of cool. 'cause I just wonder, how common that is nowadays, you know? So anyway, but they were like, oh, you're gay enough for all of us.

All, we need is you. Or whatever. And I was like, yeah, I wonder how many of y'all voted for Trump. I can see two or three Democrats in here, you know? And I'm going, oh well, whatever. But anyway, it was a good time. So that's what I've been up to State fair and reunion and I wrote a little bit on a book. So...

Nice. Well, I am excited. I've been working on a project that I just love and I'm having so much fun doing it and I have to be covert about it 'cause it's something different. But I'm enjoying it. I'm working diligently on that. And this past weekend, my dad had a big birthday party, so we all went home. It was a huge crowd because we're Italian, so there was like, I don't know, 20 something people around the dinner table. 

I bet it was loud, wasn't it? If you had 20 people around the dinner table.

Yes. And It's always loud. It's Italians. I mean, we all talk over each other, so...Oh, that's fun. Happy birthday to your dad. All these birthdays.

Yeah. So did we get any texts this week?

We got, three texts. Actually, first we had got one from CeeJay who goes to websites to get more information about authors backlog, if they can, find out a place to sign up for the mailing list. That was kind of the theme for all of them actually, is people trying to get more information and also newsletter signups.

 Michelle, who's one of our newer listeners, goes there to see if they can purchase books directly, which is something we'll touch on. As we go through what you should probably do with your website, which I don't do. And also just again to read things that are more than you might find on good reads in other places. The bios. 

And then of course Cheryl, good old Cheryl writes, she read a great book and then she went to my website and found out more about me. So there you go.

Nice. 

Oh, that is nice. We had an email from Cheryl that was talking about websites too. She said, I went to your website, meaning mine, Jamey, because I was chatting with KC and I happened to mention that I was thinking about reading a book by you. She said she knew you and that you were a great writer, and the rest is history.

So thank you, KC. But she said not to leave Kimberly out. But I read her book and went to her website because of the podcast. So there you go. Uhhuh. 

Nice. 

Any Insta, Kimberly?

Kit wrote in and she has her book launching in January, and she was really stressed out about the cover and all that type of thing.

And said, you know what? I'm not gonna stress out about this anymore. I'm gonna just take Jamey's quote and go with it. 

I think what you were saying at the time, if I recall, is that you know, you've done everything you can. You got a great cover. You've got a great blurb. And then you just have to cover your eyes and push the button. 

Mm-hmm. Yes, that's true. 

You just gotta click the motherfucker and let it go.

Yeah. 

Look at this motherfucker. I did it. Yeah.

And then Minischa wrote a email to me and she was talking about the book piracy, and she does agree with us that she thinks it's stealing if you get a free book. And she doesn't consider having your book pirated a form of advertising.

You know how he tried to put a positive spin on it, but I agree. She's like, because basically they're getting it for free. So it's not advertising. It's still the same thing, piracy. So thanks for writing in, Minischa. So this week we're talking about author websites. Jamey, you wanna start us off?

Well, I want to start us off by saying that we are a little biased to BookBub when it comes to websites because, they just have a great program right now that is user-friendly. And, that's what KC and I both use. Kimberly, you've got a website with them too, don't you, with BookBub? 

Yeah, both of my websites are with BookBub too.

Yeah. So, websites, they're a great thing. You need one and it needs to look professional. That's the reason I changed in the first place.

It's just so user friendly and it looks good. 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Yeah, totally. They have a nice interface. They make it so that you just, upload your book to their BookBub database in general, and then they will help you pull that into your website and it looks very slick. It's very, very user friendly. They do a lot of the backend stuff. And the nice thing is, I noticed I went and tested this 'cause I wanted to put it in the podcast if it worked, is that I'd Googled myself to see if that website would come up. Because with my old website I had to put in all kinds of keywords and make sure you could find it on Google and stuff like that. So I thought, well, I wonder if that's all set up with BookBub. And lo and behold, it was the very first link that showed up.

So yes, you wanna make a good website and you wanna have it so that when people search for you, that is what pops up first on the list. And that's some weird, who knows how this got here reference to you as an author.

Yeah. And I think as time has gone on with more self-published authors, they're going out there and making it easier to do this. 'cause I know when I started, I went with Wix and I had built a website with them before, but, gosh, after switching over to BookBub, it just seems so hard, and BookBub was so easy. You know? Is what I experienced.

Yeah.

Yeah, I use Wix and WordPress with Bluehost hosting, and both of those were challenging and just too much and BookBub's way easier.

Mm-hmm. I did use iPage for my address hosting, and then I used Weebly as my interface to create the website. So just to make sure that's clear to people, if you're not going with BookBub, is that you would have a place that hosts your address and then you'd have an interface on top like WordPress, like Kimberly said, where you'd actually design the website.

So it's kind of a two piece setup, and then you have to do all the design yourself, or you can hire someone. I know a lot of people hire people to do their websites because it is tricky. It's not that easy. And that's why we're all three talking about how nice it's to use BookBub because it's does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, including something that's very important to have on your website.

And that is a link to your newsletter so that people can subscribe to your newsletter. And also, BookBub allows you to put in a reader magnet. So it's actually pretty, uh, one-stop shop.

Of course you have to include your author bio so that people can find out more about you. A lot of times if someone hears about, a new author, they might go to your website to learn more about what you like, what type of books you write, and if you align with things that they're interested in.They'll probably dive deeper into more about you and what you do and what your writing process is and things like that.

Yeah, it's more than you can see on Amazon. So Amazon gives you a place to put a small bio and it shows up on your page when people click on the little link that's, your name on the book listing. It gives you a lot more character limit. I can't remember even how long it is, but I have quite a bit on there.

I talk about, how I came to writing and how it's my inspiration and how it makes me feel fulfilled, and I have all that on this much longer bio on my website than you would find elsewhere.

Yeah. And the thing that I like too is, a horror website compared to a romance website, they're gonna look a lot different.

You need to keep that in mind if your provider doesn't have templates or things like that, that you can choose from, so that you can make your website specific to your genre.

And even if you write, several different genres, you can have something that maybe, captures all of them.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, your fonts matter, so you wanna really think about your fonts and the visuals that you're gonna use and how it relates to your brand. But I think we talked about that in the branding episode.

Mm-hmm.

There's a few things you don't wanna do, and that's also what's nice about using this BookBub website builder, is that they don't have a ton of popups. So one thing I have noticed, I've gone to some websites and you get popups happening and weird stuff's going on in the background, and I'm worried about a virus.

So I just jump outta there as fast as I can. So you don't wanna have a bunch of popups and you don't wanna have dead links. That's another one is if you're gonna build your own website, you need to make sure that you check your links all the time and don't have them go off into, la la land where there's no actual information.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. You want to check it every now and then because you need to check your links to make sure that they're still, active and correct. But you also wanna refresh it. For example, on mine, I think right now I've got one book. when you open it up, there's one book right there, my current release.

But then immediately below it you'll see a little bio about me and then a place to go and see all the other books. And sometimes I change that. Maybe I want one of my series to be the headliner. So there'll be a series there. So you've got choices. You can decide which that you want to, spotlight at the time.

And I think you should go back from time to time and change things up just a little bit, just to freshen it up to make sure it's current, is the best way I guess to put it. 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And also you can make a page to have your bonus content. So sometimes you might give away a bonus chapter or something like that, at the end of one of your books, and you can make that available to people if you want. 

Mm-hmm. 

Yep. Another don't, is, don't put too much information on there about your personal life. So I don't put my phone number on there. 'cause heaven forbid I have a phone call and text from my people, like, oh my God. 

I don't like how you ended that book! 

I know exactly. You're just horrible. You're right. These horrible stories. I'm like, oh, okay. Thank you. I get enough of that with email. I don't need to have you actually reach and tell me that directly. So. So, yeah, don't put personal information. It's just basically the same with social media. Don't put pictures of your kids and stuff on there if you don't really, really, really, really want your readers to know about it. Because this is a site that's available. Everything on the internet is available to anyone who wants to search for you, and so you gotta make good choices when it comes to your content.

Yeah, you want it to look professional.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, and unfortunately there are folks out there that will try to take little tidbits like that and find out more about you that you don't necessarily want them to know about. So. 

Mm-hmm. 

That does occasionally happen. 

Mm-hmm. 

So you have to be, you know...

Mm-hmm. Of course, they have figured out from my website that I am a lesbian.

What? 

Shut up! 

What the fuck? 

I do have a girlfriend and I am a lesbian, but, other than that, they don't need anything else about me.

Oh my God.

That's funny. Jamey, you were talking about, links and, I don't know if anyone ever uses Bitly or Book Linker, but sometimes they'll say to you, we've changed things. So, I'm going back to a bunch of my back matter and changing a couple of the links that I used to have in there because they're sending, people first to like some kind of landing page. 

It doesn't go directly to the book that I originally wanted. It stops at a landing page first for something else and then goes to your book. So I was like, I don't think so. ' cause I use the free version of those. So I think that's what it... 

Is that Book Linker? Is that what it's called?

I think it was one of those, yeah, either Book Linker or Bitly, I can't remember.

So... 

They changed how they do things or something. Yeah. 

Yeah. So you should, to your point, just double check your links all the time, make sure things are cool. 

Everywhere. Back of books, website, et cetera. 

Unfortunately. Yeah, you gotta check those links.

And another thing people do, I haven't, and I've been thinking about it, but it really depends on if you have enough ideas and content to share. But with the way social media could close down at any minute, and a lot of people kind of use, let's say Instagram or Facebook, like a blog, they'll not only put stuff about their book, you know, selling things, but they'll talk about their life or something else about their author brand. And a lot of people are saying, maybe you should consider doing a blog because a blog page on your website will stay there forever. So if something happens and you lose your account on Instagram or Facebook, you still have your content.

Plus with the way the algorithm is working, it will draw more attention to your website if your blog has, interesting, helpful posts that also include links to things. So just another idea to think about whether you wanna have a blog page on your website.

Yeah, I use Patreon for that. I have a blog on my Patreon page exactly for that in case social media suddenly goes up in flames or whatever reason, you know the,

I dunno exactly, in case, Facebook decides that KC luck doesn't really exist and they wanna, burn me at the stake.

So I decided to, of course, do Patreon and have a lot of stuff going through there and try to draw people to subscribe there so I have more control over it. And of course, there's. Always a newsletter. 

Smart.

Yeah. Definitely. Um, yeah, yeah. I'm smart. Definitely. So, so…

Because she keeps asking you people, tell me how you go to websites... 

Right. 

So I can change mine to that. 

Smart. Smart. 

Yes. So, one thing I wanted to caution on when we're, finishing this up is you can hire people to build your website for you and they can put a lot of time and money into it, and they can be worth every penny you spend on them.

And sometimes they can be very expensive, but there are people out there who will take your money and give you crap. So, just like getting a book designer or getting an editor or getting any of that stuff, you need to get referrals. You need to check out their work, and you need to make sure it's worth it.

Because I've heard horror stories about people who have dropped thousands of dollars on a website design and not been happy with how it turned out. So you have got to make sure you do your homework.

Mm-hmm. 

I know we have talked a lot about, uh, BookBub here because that's what we use, but I know other authors if you want to check these out, we can't recommend them because we haven't used them, but I know several use Squarespace and say that it's, pretty, friendly and, I just came across, an ad on Instagram that said for authors, Tertulia, T-E-R-T-U-L-I-A. If you want check that out. So it looked interesting.

I just thought of this, we'd be remiss not to say that there are people out there who have elaborate websites where they sell direct. So there, yes, there are some authors out there that I know have, set up their websites to make them more of a store, and I have not done that. I, at best will come up with a link that takes my readers to a third party store like Shopify, but I know these people actually have the whole process happening on their website.

Wow. 

Yeah, and you can, pay people to set up your Shopify store and things like that. Because we are in Kindle Unlimited, the only thing we could sell would be paperbacks. And I know some authors, offer their books in Kindle Unlimited, let's say when they release it for three months and then they take it out and sell it on their website. So that's also an option. It is just not something that I have done yet.

Yeah. Same.

And so websites can, be very helpful for that.

Mm-hmm. 

Okay, so next week we're gonna be talking about an update on keywords. KC, do we have a question of the week?

So keywords, we're doing a keywords update because keywords have changed so much and, I apologize if I asked this the last time we talked about keywords, but please tell us what keywords you use when you put in the search terms so that we can add them to our list.

Well, that's it for this week. Thanks for listening.

Thanks everyone. Talk to you next time.

Have a great week. Hootie hoo! 

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to reach out to us, you can contact us by email at contact@threelesbiansandapen.com with the number three spelled out or on Instagram, Facebook and X at three lesbians and a pen using the number three. And finally on our website at threelesbiansandapen.com, we look forward to hearing from you, see you next week.