Yet elsewhere we are told that building a platform involves specifically selling the author. Conflicting signals here.
Of those, only Preston and Child have a website. The others have blogs. Preston and Childs' website is a cluttered mess. It's colorful and animated, but it's too busy for my eye. But if that's what it takes...
They're mostly dead. The authors, that is.
From what I've seen and you've said, so far, with the small amount of time I've had to research it, I'm leaning more and more towards thinking that an author's personal website is not all that important in the larger scale of things. Mine was quite useful when I was entertaining. It's a necessity in that business, because clients can watch videos, read the kudos of other clients, and fans can buy your CDs and DVDs and keep up with your performance schedule. But for writing? I just don't know.
I did have fun building the Javascript for the moving panorama of book covers. I did it mainly because a Flash expert told me it couldn't be done in Javascript. That's not something people should tell me.
Looking around with google as I write this: Konrath's website is not very pretty. Bland, in fact.
http://www.jakonrath.com/ Do you think it's a good example of what an author should strive for?
Neither Hocking nor Locke have personal websites. Locke has a blog.
They all tweet their effin' brains out, though. Maybe that's the next thing I'll be asking about. Twitter and Facebook are like the world on the Jerry Springer show. I can't stand it.
I'll keep surfing. I sure appreciate your insight in these matters.