You should know by now that I’m involved with several podcasts. Over at the Functional Nerds, I’m a co-host/producer, which means that I’m a part of every show, and I edit / produce every show. Over at SF Signal, I am the host for the panel episodes, the main interviewer, and I put the the shows together each week. For Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing, I take the files Mur creates and edit / produce them for her.
With SF Signal, I also book the guests. My pet peeve is author websites that don’t have a way to contact the author or their agent / publicist electronically. What’s even worse, is when the site has contact information that is wrong.
Let me explain. Went to a fairly well known author’s site, saw the contact link, clicked it, and was presented with a phone number and a message that said something along the lines of, “Leave me a voicemail”. Okay, different. Most people have a contact form, maybe an email address, links to Twitter, Facebook, etc.
So I call the number and it’s disconnected. You’re an author, you have a website where the only contact method is a phone number that is no longer in service. No blog link, no twitter, no facebook.
Seriously?
You’re a great author, your books are really popular, but you have no way on your site to connect with people. This means that I, as a podcast producer, must now move on to someone else. You’ve missed out on a marketing opportunity that costs you little to nothing (except time).
I visit another author’s site. This one has a decent looking site, much more modern versus the first. There are links to news, bibliography, biography – all the things you’d expect to see, all done very nicely. I click on contact, and am presented with a snail mail p.o. box.
Now I’m two for two. Two great authors, one mediocre site, one much more modern looking, easy to navigate site – no way to contact them electronically. No social media. No email.
On a third author’s site, I find a great looking site, tons of information, easy to navigate. I click the contact page and hallelujah- there’s an email address! I click it, my email ap pops up, I write a nice invitation email to be on the podcast, and hit send.
Less than a minute later, I get a permanent failure / bounce back. The email address is no good.
Sigh.
Seriously? Seriously?
COME ON!
~P
Don’t the authors have a comment section for their posts? Maybe you could leave comments? Honestly, I’ve never given this any thought! *off to check my webpage…*
A lot of the older sites are static html, not blogs – thus, they don’t have comment sections.
~P
I feel your pain. The way that I look at all of this is that there are plenty of authors who are connected and easy to contact, so that’s who I book. It is their loss.
In this modern media age, its not only rude, its *stupid* and counterproductive.
mari concurs!
Yeah, I’ve encountered that several times. Kind of annoying as it means I have to go back to researching who else to interview (I try to interview people with books coming out a particular month, so my options are already limited).
Must be nice not to need the money from sales that such appearances could generate.
Either that, or the wall they’ve put up is deliberate. I’ve run into this as well, but what surprises me more is when I can’t locate contact information for authors just starting out/off the beaten path.
On the other hand, seems like we’re in a time of transition. Authors have to make a choice regarding learning new skills (e.g., marketing/promotion, social networking, becoming more Web savvy) or not. That would be a challenging decision for many.
What Heather said. Also, you could try their agents. I agree, it might be deliberate if they’re well-established authors. My pet peeve is awful web site design. My eyes! My eyes!
So, you’re saying you hate my website, aren’t you? OMG!
~P
Did you try the Who is directory? I presume you could also try contacting the publisher and ask to get in touch with their editor/agent. But yeah, that sounds cumbersome, to say the least.