I decided to give Norn Publishing a makeover just in time for spring. Let’s rewind a bit. Apart from a link to Norn Publishing on this blog, I haven’t tried to promote the Norn Publishing site at all. I always funnel people to Rymellan Fiction. The (old) content at Norn Publishing was mainly there as a placeholder, something I quickly threw together in case anyone happened to type the Norn Publishing URL into their browser. I didn’t want them to see “under construction.”
The Norn Publishing URL is present on the copyright page and back cover of my book, but I didn’t think anyone would visit. If I’ve just finished a biography or memoir about someone interesting and I want to find out more about that person, I’ll search for them online. Otherwise, I rarely go to the publisher’s site when I’ve bought or finished a book. It turns out that some people do, so perhaps I’m in the minority.
I decided last night that Norn Publishing needed a revamp, not only because people are visiting, but because Rymellan 1: Disobedience Means Death won’t be my only book. By this time next year, I’ll already have a second book out or be very close to releasing one. I also want a single place to announce things like giveaways and Norn Publishing news. I could do it here, but I thought it made more sense to announce publisher-type stuff at the publisher site.
With that in mind, I sat down today after lunch and gave the site a makeover. I was done by dinner. I love WordPress! The previous content was static HTML. I decided to go with WordPress because you can put together a site very quickly, search engines like blog pages and posts, and it won’t be difficult to expand the site when I have more books out there. I had to tweak the theme a bit, but the changes were easy to make.
I spent quite a bit of time choosing the theme. I didn’t want anything fancy. I wanted to project professional, and I wanted a clean look. Too many themes are too busy, with too much information running up and down the sides and the content crammed into the middle. Sometimes I go to a site with so much jammed together that just looking at it tires me out, so I leave. I go somewhere that makes my head hurt less.
Rymellan Fiction is, and will remain, a static HTML site for that very reason. Since people spend a significant amount of time reading when they’re at the site, it’s important that the story pages show only the story text, header, and a way to navigate. I spent a considerable amount of time at one point searching for a prettier, static CSS template, but without exception, everything I looked at (and I looked at hundreds) was too busy. So I stuck with what I had; it has what’s called high utility for the predominant task. As it was, when I first put the site together, I had to change the template so that the navigational bar would run horizontally across the top, rather than vertically down the left.
Anyway, check out the new Norn Publishing look. If you have a strong opinion about it, good or bad, let me know.
I burned the Norn Publishing News feed with feedburner. While I was signed into feedburner, I decided to burn this blog’s feed too. So you can now receive posts by email, if you like. If you’d previously subscribed to the default feed, it should still work, but you might want to resubscribe to the feedburner feed (say that five times fast!) using the subscribe choices on the sidebar.
Have a great weekend!
