What are the most effective professional (personal) websites for writers you've seen?

March 1, 2010 8:18 AM

What are the most effective professional (personal) websites for writers you've seen?

Effective here means serving the needs of people who want to: read their book, hire the writer freelance, get information on their other projects, contact the writer, get to the writer's blog and twitter.

I quite like merlinmann.com, and I suspect the site is effective, it's clean, easily read by the busy, and points at his work. Are there other effective examples you can think of? Thanks!

posted by artlung to media & arts (9 answers total)

I find Scalzi's to be ruthlessly efficient. Notice the right-hand column under "Administrivia."
posted by Zed at 8:26 AM on March 1, 2010 [1 favorite]

Merlin's is very nice. I think this site is clean and effective. (I'm pleased with mine, too.)
posted by veggieboy at 8:28 AM on March 1, 2010

Penelope Trunk's blog. She effectively markets herself as a blogger, book author, newspaper columnist, founder of a social-networking website, Twitterer, sage, etc. (I don't know if she's technically a "freelance" writer, but her site as a whole seems to be the kind of thing you're looking for.)
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:33 AM on March 1, 2010

Clive James, the Australian author and broadcaster, has a very good site at http://www.clivejames.com/
posted by davemack at 9:43 AM on March 1, 2010

I am going to second Zed in recommending Scalzi's website, but with the caveat that since I have been following it I haven't bought any of his books because they are (to me) so blatantly autobiographical.

The fact remains that his being a very popular blogger has very undoubtedly been a boon for his writing career.
posted by BobbyDigital at 10:05 AM on March 1, 2010

John August has the Platonic ideal of a screenwriter's website.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 10:22 AM on March 1, 2010

I was just looking for good author sites today - here's some I bookmarked with the first one (peter maass) being my favorite by far of the bunch:
peter maass
kurt anderson
john burnham schwartz
jhumpa lahiri
posted by bonsai forest at 4:15 PM on March 1, 2010

This has been very very helpful. Thank you all SO MUCH.
posted by artlung at 6:27 PM on March 1, 2010

Inspired by your suggestions, I ended up with this redesign and restructure of Leahpeah.com. I wrote a bit about the background of this project here.
posted by artlung at 6:45 PM on April 21, 2010