The Internet literally changed the course of Grayson's career, steering him towards print-on-demand publishing and his story-filled web page. Today, Grayson tells us how fledgling writers can use both these mediums to find more readers.
Welcome to the third installment of my interview with Grayson, part of my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...
Jason Boog:How did you build your webpage, and how do you use the web to interact with your readers? What are your favorite writing websites to visit?
Richard Grayson:
For the website, I have to thank the Authors Guild. As with Backinprint.com, this program costs me very little and gives me a simple template to create and update my pages. For just six dollars a month, the Guild handles domain name registration and provides me with a sitebuilder program...
But my page not particularly elegant and I haven’t played with the site enough even to take advantage of the features it’s got. I have posted links to all the stories I’ve published in various webzines and websites, interviews, newspaper articles and reviews and other odds and ends.
My site is pretty static, unlike a blog, and to post reviews of my books, I’ve started to use my MySpace blog more. My web page serves its purpose, which is to give me a little home on the Internet. A lot of people have discovered me from the site.
Up-and-coming young writers would probably want something more dynamic and better-designed, assuming they can afford it.
I subscribe to more litblogs than I can actually read carefully, so I’ll just list a baker’s dozen that I’ve gone to for a while and which have interesting individual voices, intelligent commentary and good news links: Maud Newton, Moorish Girl, Return of the Reluctant, Syntax of Things, Elegant Variation, Bookslut, Galleycat, Litkicks, Conversational Reading, Pete Lit, The Millions, Grumpy Old Bookman and Buzz, Balls & Hype.
Off the top of my head, I could easily list another thirteen superior blogs, including this one.
When I started submitting to webzines, I used Laura Hird’s LitMag Central a lot to find places to send my stuff to. Places for Writers has a Canadian bent but its calls for submissions page is also helpful.
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