This is a nuts and bolts page.

The purpose of this page is to let your reader purchase your book online immediately
OR
get information so that they can purchase it locally.

Here’s the info I like to include on my page “About the Book.”

* A picture of your book’s cover
* Your book’s title
* The author’s name (yours) and illustrator’s name (if any) with a link to your author’s main website
* The publisher’s name and a link to your book’s catalog page at the publishing house
* The ISBN number of your book
* A link to Amazon or your own “BUY NOW” link to purchase it from your site.

Here are several of my “About the Book” pages for you to compare:
Frederick Douglass for Kids
America’s Black Founders
D is for Drinking Gourd

America’s Black Founders
A Kid’s Guide to African American History
D is for Drinking Gourd

When creating your own author’s page, keep several things in mind.
#1 People like editors, agents, and publishers love to look at your author’s page and find out more about you.
#2 People like teachers, librarians, and event coordinators love to look at your author’s page and SHARE it with their students or with the people they’re inviting to come see you speak.
#3 Customers who might buy your book love to look at your author’s page to see if they might want to spend the money on your book and even perhaps buy other books you’ve written as well.
#4 Bloggers who might review your book or interview you or post an article about you love to read your author’s page and get info from it to put on their own sites.

So…the author’s page is very important!

Here are some ingredients I like to include on mine:
* a photograph of me
* a personal bit about me that I think the audience of my book might be interested in
* a blurb about my professional career and credits as a writer
* a link to my main website, the hub where they can find other links to my blog, etc.
* a link to an online interview where they can find out more about me (If you don’t yet have one, just ask a writer friend to interview you on her blog, and do the same for her!)

It’s January, and time to think ahead…about any upcoming books of yours that will be published in 2012.

If you have a new book coming out this year, it’s important for you to start thinking about submitting your book for awards.

I learned this lesson the hard way.

One of my earliest books was published in October one year.
It came out in October. Hip hip hooray!
Then we got reports of some great sales in November/December. Hip hip hooray!
Then I thought…wow…maybe I should submit this book for awards cause people really seem to like it.

WRONG!

To my shock I discovered that if my book came out in 2009, the deadlines for all the awards were in 2009, even if my book came out in October!!!! Yikes!

So I’m getting ready to start my submissions for awards for my newest book, even though it won’t be published in June. To find out more about how you can make sure your book gets submitted where you want it to be, check out my guest post at Karen Cioffi’s fantastic site for writers!

Here are the most important ones I recommend to add to your book’s site:
Home Page (we discussed this in previous posts)
About the Author
About the Book
Reviews
Teachers and Librarians
Awards (if your book has won any)

You can see what each of these pages looks like in my site for my book D is for Drinking Gourd.

Of course, you can add as many pages to your site that you want that you feel relate to your book. But these are the basic I try to include on each of my book’s sites.

I’ll be discussing what key components to include on each of these pages in upcoming posts.

TIP #1: For several of my books, I had to cut lots of text during the revision process. It’s a normal part of editing. The positive side of that? I took most of the chunks and put the material directly on the website I was building for that book!

TIP #2: When your book is under contract and ready to be edited by your project editor, ask if you can include a link to your book’s website in the back of your book! I got the courage to ask my publisher this, and guess what?! They said “YES!” So in my new forthcoming book for Frederick Douglass, in the back it lists my website as a good resource for online material about the book. So now, while I’m waiting for the book to be released in June, 2012, I’m busy making that website chock-full of interesting information.

Instead of listing each one of my books as its own page, however, I grouped my books into different categories. You can add pages whichever way you want to make your site more user-friendly and accomplish the purpose and goals you have.

Some of the pages I added include:
4 Teachers
4 Christians
4 Writers

Once again, I made sure this site has a practical page added where someone can find out more information about me and my life as an author. It’s called About the Author. This is also where I link to some of my other sites. Always be sure to include this page on your site if you want to market yourself as an author rather than just your books.

In my most recent posts during December, we were talking about building the home page for your website. Let me know if you have any questions about that.

In this post I’d like to focus on adding other pages to your website. If you’re building a website to market yourself as an author, you can add a different page for each major theme that relates to the book or writing project you’re representing on your site. You can see what I mean by looking at my website One Hour Each Day.

On this particular site, I’m focusing on a manuscript I’m working on that covers a topic near and dear to my heart…spending time each day alone with God. You can see that the pages I’ve added organize my main idea into different subtopics.

Here are some of the pages I’ve added that are topic-related:
Conversations with God
Finding Time
A Beautiful Invitation

Other pages I’ve added, however, are more basic and universal. Make sure your site has these kind of pages to connect with your reader on a practical level. These pages give information about who you are as an author, your websites, and your contact information if you want to include it. I’ll be talking more about these pages in an upcoming post.

This website, One Hour Each Day, is an example of a site of mine that is still under construction. The first page looks like a blog (because I used to blog about this topic). But now I’m converting it into a website so that the posts will appear grouped together as page topics instead of posts. One of the last steps I’ll take will be to totally revamp the initial page which is currently full of posts and make it look like the Home Page of a website instead.

Today as we celebrate this special holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, let’s make it our goal to learn more about Dr. King as well as other African Americans.

Why?

Because African American history is part of every American’s history. Whether you are black or white, Asian or Mexican, if you live in the United States and call yourself an American, it’s important to learn the true, full history about the men and women who helped shape our country from the ground up.

One way you can do this is to read one of my books, Readers Theatre for African American History. You can also share it with your kids or grandkids. Geared for Grades 4-8, Readers Theatre for African American History features a collection of twenty scripts covering a comprehensive span of history from Africa before the transatlantic slave trade through current events in our nation.

In reading these scripts, kids will listen to storytellers from Africa and share the rich oral tradition about wealthy explorers who came to the Americas from Africa before Columbus. They’ll experience such events as Emancipation Day on the South Carolina Sea Islands, and the extraordinary 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert by Marian Anderson.

African American history is rich with opportunities for creative learning. This book brings them to life!

Exciting news!!! My newest book, WriteShop Junior Book D is hot off the press and available now for homeschooling families and classroom teachers to use to teach kids how to write.

It’s been an amazing journey to work on this project along with the super- talented creators of WriteShop (and my wonderful editors) Kim and Deb. Each and every lesson has been tested by dozens of dedicated homeschooling families and tweaked to perfection so that kids learn to write and love the learning experience!

WriteShop Junior Book D comes complete with awesome resources. Check out the following (Are these fun or what?!):

Grammar guides for kids to learn punctuation, sentence structure, and more!

Time-saver pack for moms to create sturdy spinners, game boards, and cards for funtastic learn-to-write activities.

Activity pack chock full of exciting journal pages, reproducibles, and posters for kids to use.

And of course, they’re all combined with the Teacher’s Guide (shown at the top of the page).

To learn more about the WriteShop program, including the first three books I wrote for Kindergarten through second grade, visit the home page of WriteShop today!

As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t posted anything on my blog for quite a while. For starters, I took a couple of weeks of vacation away from the computer over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

Once those joy-filled days of relaxation and fun had passed, I rolled up my sleeves and got busy, busy, busy tackling the last and final pages of a book deadline I’ve been working on since September.

And today, I’m happy to say that I finished that book and e-mailed it off to my editor. Hip hip hooray!!!!

A fun note to add is that while I was sitting at my computer preparing the 14 files to e-mail my editor today, I saw the UPS guy walk up my sidewalk and drop a package off at my door…

To my joy and delight, the proofs for my forthcoming book, FREDERICK DOUGLASS FOR KIDS, just arrived. Wahooooo!

It’s the first time I’ve seen the manuscript in its book form with the layout of pictures and design. Since I wrote it a year ago, it was all so fresh and so wonderful that I spent the next 2 hours or so looking through it and laughing and crying all at the same time.

So…what’s next? I get to read through the proofs with a fine-toothed comb and get all the error corrections (like mis-labeled picture or missing caption, etc.) back to my project editor by January 30.

Good thing I got my other deadline done today!

(And stay tuned, all those of you who have been following along here to learn more about designing your website. In a couple more days, I’ll get back to that topic and share some more exciting things you can do to help market yourself as an author along with your books.)

Merry Christmas!

I pray your holidays are filled with hope, peace, and joy. May you know the One who loves you and cares about you most of all, who gave His life so that you can live forever…Jesus Christ. We’re celebrating His birth during this season. He’s the reason for Christmas.