No, I don't want you to redesign my website.

Most importantly, this is my website, not yours. Get your own and design it your way. I started coding at age 14 and used to build websites from blank text files. I used to work as a website designer in my 20s. I understand the concept of SEO, meta tags, and search rankings. If people are actually searching for me, I am very easily found due to decades of press coverage and self-promotion. I don't need your services. It will only benefit your wallet, not mine.

Secondly, your sales pitch is inaccurate. It won't help me sell more books. In 14 years I have tried numerous design tricks to get my website to sell more books. I put my book covers on the sidebar with direct buying links. Most people are ignoring the book ads and just reading the free content.

Back in 2013 I had a Twitter account that I would schedule hourly tweets linking to various retailers. One person responded to me saying, "This isn't the way to sell books. Put free poems on your website." I tried it, but that tactic has never lead to a book sale. I'm guessing this person just wanted to read my poems without paying for a book.

I continued this practice while I was poet laureate, often sharing my occasional poetry on my blog first. This practice, however, makes your work ineligible for most anthologies and journals because they often want first publication rights. When I started seriously submitting regularly to anthologies, I naturally stopped blogging my brand new poems. I've had to wait years in some cases to even be able to perform a certain poem while waiting on publication.

In 2020 since I wasn't able to go perform because of the pandemic, I filled my blog with weekly scheduled posts featuring 10 sample poems from each title, thus allowing about 10% of each book to be read for free. Underneath every poem were links to all the major retailers who sell my paperback books and ebooks.

These blog posts were automatically shared on all the major social media sites. As a result one of my poems from Unity Day was copied without my permission and used in an online education curriculum in a foreign country. Several of my poems were copy/pasted directly on Facebook posts and other websites. None of these reposts included links to my books or website. Some didn't even credit me as author. I removed the blog posts.

I've tried out two different popular book landing page plugins. It certainly drew people to my website, but never translated into book sales. These pages included book cover graphics, had direct links to online retailers, quotes from reviews, free sample poems, and Kindle previews. Early on I would even build landing pages for anthologies that I am in even though I wouldn't get a cut of those royalties. The number of anthologies soon ballooned so much that it was dwarfing my own books, so I deleted those pages.

I bought the premium version of MyBookTable in 2020 only for it to crash my website in 2024 when WordPress updated, making the paid version unusable. Then my security plugin warned me that it makes websites vulnerable to hacking, so I uninstalled it. I'm slowly working on rebuilding new book landing pages from scratch, but it's a tedious process. Right now the easiest way is just to search for me on your favorite retailer's website.

The truth is that you cannot force people to buy your books. The posts that get the most traction for me are posts that teach other poets how to do something useful like find calls for submission to anthologies, for example. Early on I had a book called Quick & Easy Formatting for Kindle which practically sold itself because most people would rather become a successful writer than support someone else. Most people aren't interested in buying a poetry book to compensate me for what they read in my blog posts, nor utilize the online tip jar that used to pop up on my website back when I posted free poems.

When you haven't dealt with fame, you have rose-colored glasses that make you think just because you've heard of someone, they must be raking in the cash. The mental pedestal couldn't be further from the truth. They see publishing as a potential get rich quick scheme without being aware of the financial realities most indie authors face. Most people are in it for themselves. They see successful writers and want to know how it's done, but they don't want to put in the work to actually get there. There are no shortcuts.

So what works? What worked for me was going offline and performing at open mics, gaining attention and respect in my local community. People who like poetry started buying my books when they got to know me and heard my poems live. Charisma, personal connection, and the opportunity for an autograph was more likely to influence someone to impulsively buy a poetry book than any website redesign. Of course, that has its own costs and downsides, too, and there's only so much performing one person can do. Even rock stars take breaks.

This is why when I receive these unsolicited emails about web design, I just say no. This is why my website communications policy explicitly states that I am not interested in whatever you're selling. This website has been around since 2012 when I launched it as poetryebook.com. It has gone through countless redesigns. At first it only had purchase information about Tea & Sprockets and little else.

Now I am a former poet laureate with a poem on the moon who has performed nearly 500 times, is internationally published in 100 anthologies, and has 24 books available for sale that are widely distributed around the world. There's a lot more content on my site than most people bother to check out, especially if they're only here for ten seconds to scrape my email address and send out what amounts to an AI generated cold call.

If people want your web design services, they will come to you. They will look up what professional web designer is in their local area that they can work with closely to design and build their website, or they will take the time to learn how to do it themselves. There's no need to harass other website owners, criticizing them for not designing according to your vision when it's not your website. Insulting your potential customers certainly won't persuade them to buy from you.