web-site suggestions??

[Dave Zeltserman]

I'm filling out my publisher's questionaire, and there's a request for me to list 10 web-sites that would be useful for targeting readership to my book. The book (Small Crimes) is a tough, fast-paced crime-noir novel. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

[Christa M. Miller]

There's David Montgomery's Crime Fiction Dossier (http://www.crimefictionblog.com/), though I'm not sure if he does what you're looking for. And Mystery Ink (http://www.mysteryinkonline.com/), which does do interviews.

[Ali]

Hi -

Thanks for kind words gang about Shots, which is a labour of love -

www.shotsmag.co.uk

Shots has been going for many years as a print publication, but in 2000 when I agreed to Join Mike Stotter [Editor], we went web based, and in that year we had a total of 3,000 hits in 12 months.

Today in 2007 we get >18,000 page hits per day / which equates to >3,000 unique I.P Address' hiting the site which means the average person views six-pages on the site on his / her visit - as we have a stack of information, reviews, short fiction, interviews, photoshoots, news, the shotsblog et. al. and are updating every few days.

I have to thank our webmasters - My old school friend Grog [Tony Roberts] - who I've known since we were 6 years old, and grew up together, studied together etc - he studied Computing as well as Gary Cane - who is my IT Engineer [at my day job / business and part of his job is to help out at Shots] and is also very talented too. Between them they do the advertising, Flash Macro's, news pages, reviews, etc etc - we make very little money at the site / most goes on paying for the bandwidth, which since the site is now so damned popular - costs more and more.

And of course we bung the webmasters a few quid when we can. Shots is really a labour of love - and rule [1] is that we only promote books we like -

But we can put a banner advert at relatively low cost, and the money helps keep the site going. Basically Mike and I have paid for the site out of our own pockets, as well as the mileage and cost of attending events like Harrogate, Thrillerfest, B'Con etc have always been paid personally by us as have all maintenance and incidentals like fuel, railfare, airfare etc

Gary and Grog have got all the links, flags and rankings, - So try and put an author name in Google, and Shots will appear pretty high on the ranking order - especially as we have a huge slug of material in the archives, and now we are the UK's most popular resource for Crime and Thriller fiction but that also means that >60% of the hits originate outside of the UK.....and I mean from ALL OVER THE WORLD, a lot from the US incidentally -

Our webmaster Gary BTW just did Nick Stone's website which went up last week or so :-

www.nickstone.co.uk

However I would indicate that many others that I enjoy as webzines -

www.crimetime.co.uk
www.crimesquad.co.uk
www.therapsheet.blogspot.com
www.deadlypleasures.com
www.crimespreemag.com
www.januarymagazine.com
http://www.mysteryreaders.org
www.booksnbytes.com

And Spinetinger, MysteryInk, have been mentioned and they are great - Sandra and David work like we do at Shots, pro-bono because we like the genre, natch - I mean't love the genre as do The Clan Jordan at Crimespree, Jeff at Rap Sheet, Lyn at MysteryFile, Janet at Mystery Readers, George / Larry et al at DP, Kate at Mystery Scene, Maddy at 4-MA, Linda at Jan Mag

All of us have 'Day-Jobs' at Shots [which pays and subsidises our efforts promoting the genre] - I have to say at times it is hard balancing this enthusiasm, with my own paid-work [day job}, as well as my own writing [on non-fiction as I contribute to various books about crime / thrillers], my own fiction, Judging, reading and reviewing books, lscouting for publishers.

Luckily I have a very understanding wife and kids [but even they get a little irritated when the most they see of me is a side profile of my face buried in a book on the PC], and I can manage with 5 to 6 hours sleep a night.

But I am very proud of my colleagues who have made Shots Ezine what it is today, and our plan is to continue to support as many writers as we can both the big guns as well as the new ones.

And thanks for the kind words - makes it worthwhile

Ali

[Sandra Ruttan]

I can manage with 5 to 6 hours sleep a night.

Oh God, if I could I'd be a lot less grumpy. Especially when someone's talking in my ear at 11 pm and has the alarm set for 5.

[Kevin Wignall]

One more that no one else has mentioned. It's not updated as often as a regular site but can I point people to the superb resource that is http://www.crimeculture.com/
It's essentially the web presence of the Crime Fiction course run by Lee Horsley in the English Department of Lancaster University. One of the few places in the academic world where you'll get essays on Noir.

[Patricia Abbott]

How about Back Story by M.J. Rose and I think Julia Buckley has an interview site. Also Steve Allan does interviews. And what about the podcasts from Behind the Black Mask. They really give an author a long time to talk about his work. I would imagine a lot of people would be interested in talking about both the novel and Hardluck Stories.

[Bethany K. Warner]

If you want to do an interview that'd work for me. I'm a report that does a weekly Q&A with authors in the paper and on a blog. Check it out... bkwriter.blogspot.com and look for the Author Answers posts.
The local library here tends to feature the books/authors I interview, so...

[Dave Zeltserman]

I'd like to thank everyone who replied to this--both online and off. This is all very useful, and all kind of eye-opening as to what I need to gear myself up to do.

--Dave