Brian Tanaka Consulting Services LLC

Websites For Writers

As a professional writer, you must have a professional website. Your readers, agents, and editors expect fresh content, well-presented. But until now you've had only two options: waste valuable writing time learning about the Web, or pay too much money for a custom website. I offer a better way.

I have over a decade of professional experience with some of the most famous technology companies in the world, and I will create a powerful web presence for you quickly and inexpensively. Contact me today, and we'll get the ball rolling! You'll be pleasantly surprised by how painless, fast, and affordable a world-class website can be.

My email address is brian at briantanaka dot com.

Common Questions from Writers

Below are answers to common questions about my Websites for Writers service.

Why should I, as a writer, have a website?
How Does It Work?
How Much Will It Cost?
How Long Will It Take?
How Do I Get Started?

Why Should I, as a writer, have a website?

An attractive website is an excellent, vital promotional tool for today's writers. Your loyal readers, publishers, and agents will use your website to discover timely and useful information about you and your work.

As Michael Larsen points out in How To Write a Book Proposal, you can use your website to:

Post your media kit...
Post your book's cover, the table of contents, and a chapter
Post a teacher's guide, if your book has the potential to be adopted for use in schools
Include a book club guide
Update your book and add new information to it
List your past and future media, speaking, and teaching appearances
Exchange reiprocal links...
Sell your book directly or through a link to an online bookstore that will pay you a commission on the sales your site generates
Give your readers the chance to share their experiences with your book and give you ideas for changes and additions, and what they want to read next
Post new articles to draw people back to your site
Provide a resource directory, the one from your book or one created for the Web site, that you keep up-to-date

How does it work?

It's very simple: we talk, and then I set up everything for you and help you get started. I'll describe the steps in more detail ahead, but for now, a little background...

Back in the 1990's, a writer would set up a custom website consisting of a half dozen pages, built from scratch. Then it would sit there, for months or even years -- never changing. Stagnant. Dead. Visitors would have very little reason to return, and the site would become just more litter on the shoulder of the information superhighway.

Today, the savvy writer sets up a blog as her primary website. Gone are the days of blogs as personal journals; blogs are now widely recognized as respectable avenues for high quality content. What's more, the freshness of periodically updated blogs brings visitors back frequently, and -- more importantly -- search engines like Google reward site freshness by ranking your site higher. If you tend to your blog like a garden, you will be rewarded with ever increasing visitorship.

Advantages include:

As mentioned above: blogs encourage frequently-returning visitors and good search engine ranking (read: Google).
Blogs are fast to set up. Because blog structure is well-defined, and because a plethora of designs for blogs exist, we can get you up and running in mere hours, whereas the old way requires many weeks at a minimum.
Blog systems not only allow you to easily post new articles, but they also allow you to manage ALL the pages of your website. That makes it easy for you to tend to all aspects of your site (eg. your book tour calendar, your media kit, links to your book on amazon, etc), and not have to wait for someone else to make changes for you.
Blogs promote themselves. Each time you post a new entry, the blogosphere is alerted, and readers will come by to visit. When they link to you, your blog gains more visibility.
Blogs allow your readers to participate via commenting, and a community spirit can grow around you and your work.

So where do I come in? I'm the one who will help you get EVERYTHING taken care of in an itsy bitsy fraction of the time you could on your own, and at a very affordable price. I will make the whole process simple and painless by doing the following steps:

Help you register your domain name (eg. www.yourname.com)
Find and obtain a home for your fancy new blog
Set up the blog
Work with you on site aesthetics
Teach you how to use the blog system
Make sure Google knows about you
Answer any and all questions you have for the life of your blog

How much will it cost?

If you've done any shopping around for website development services, I know you'll be pleasantly surprised by how affordable my prices are. Contact me at brian at briantanaka dot com and we'll work out the details.

How long will it take?

It can be as fast as a handful of hours, depending on your specific needs.

How do I get started?

Just send me an email. My address is brian at briantanaka dot com