It also de-emphasizes the blog aspect of the site, since I do less of it.  More and more, I apply the time that I have to the work-in-progress and other writing duties.  I think it’s “putting the platform before the publishing” to spend too much time on blog entries and not enough on outlining, drafting, and revising.  The same goes for social media.

Of course, now that I’ve relegated the blog to an interior page of the site, I blog.  It must be that I feel the pressure less.

The fact is that writing something long (like the WIP) has accompanying longish periods where, were I to blog about it, I’d say the same thing from day to day, week to week, and even month to month.

Enough of that.  Time to write.

As I awaited word from the editor at Simon & Schuster regarding my mighty tome, I decided to create what is today called an online platform, but at the time was just a web site, when blogs didn’t exist.  It wasn’t something I was doing just for fun, although I did enjoy it.  Creating a web site was one of things that I had said I would do in my proposal as part of my promotion and marketing plan.

To that end, I acquired my domain name, selected an ISP to host it, and created a small site called TattooSymbol.com that crowed about the upcoming publication, although I had no release date.  There was some information about the book, some information about me, and some information about Greg (who did the illustrations for the book, in case you’ve missed the previous posts).  I gave a couple of examples of tattoo definitions and then left it at that until the book got close to release.  Initially, I coded all of the HTML by hand, switched to an entirely PHP driven site when it started to get unwieldy, then switched to GoLive and all of its tools for updating a large site, and now I use Dreamweaver.  I also select and prepare all of the images myself.

That web site has gone through a few major morphs, but it somehow attracted attention from the start.  I did nothing in terms of publicizing it, nor have I ever, but it’s about tattoos, and that’s just a really popular topic, especially on the web. Today, it gets about 7,000 unique visitors every day, over half-a-million page views per month, and I still add fresh content there on a regular basis.  In fact, 15% of the visitors there are returnees.

Today, I call the fledgling TerisaGreen.com site my online platform.  Using WordPress, the Atahualpa theme, and several plug-ins, I was able to easily incorporate all kinds of cool features, including a blog and comments.  At its heart, the TattooSymbol.com web site is for people who are considering getting a tattoo.  My intent for the TerisaGreen.com web site, however, is to make a dialogue possible, about all sorts of topics – including how to get a book published.  So, let’s get back to that topic.

In month twenty-seven of my effort to get a book published, after creating a web site and traveling steadily if laboriously down the road to a real live book, there finally came a bump.  I received dire news from my editor at Simon & Schuster.

Next post:  Step 10.  Working With The Publisher