PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE REVIEW THIS SITE: http://www.kb-thomas.com/

Author K.B. Thomas announces "The Fabric of Desire":

My friend just completed writing a terrific new novel, and she's pitching it to agents and publishers. I created this site so they'll find her if they "Google" her pen-name.

I wanted to keep the site especially simple, because ultimately she may take over its maintenance.

I'm working on a new background that'll look more like a tapestry fragment (and less like a painting). The image of Judith in a sixteenth century tapestry is related to her novel's plot. Any suggestions?

ANY and ALL comments will be gratefully appreciated. SEO tips for the keyword K.B. Thomas would be especially great!

I think it pretty well does all you want.

A few points:

I'm not sure if Google treats '<H1 class="header1"> the same as <H1> tags. Why not just change h1 in the stylesheet rather than make a new class?

Also you could add title attributes to your links and make the link anchor for sample pages from '(click here for an excerpt)' to 'The Fabric of Desire excerpt'

For me the opening page lacks a strap line or explanation of what the site is about - something like 'Comtemporary American Writer'/ 'The Works of American Novelist' as a headline/explanation.

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Paul Bilton design services ~ Sites not Sights

Thanks Paul - great suggestions!

I took your advice straight away, and redefined the CSS h1 and h2 definitions directly. (On another website I used different sized headers from page to page. The site was huge and I wanted to use just one style sheet. I'm pretty sure definitions like <H1 class="header1"> are legit, but it's simpler the way you suggested.)

Per your suggestions, I also added title attributes to the sample links, and I made the link anchor read like this... Excerpt: "The Fabric of Desire"

I'm still trying to come up with a strap line, and hopefully a way to make it fit in the too-small space I made for text.

Anyone remember how to use a header (e.g. <h1>) and override the automatic linebreak that follows it?

I would have the Excerpt: "The Fabric of Desire" link open in a new window so visitors aren't directed away from the main page.

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Munky Online Web Design & SEO | SEO Analysis Tool | Web Design & SEO Tutorials

Hey MuNKy, I appreciate your suggestion!

I've been sleeping on it, and I've decided against implementing it here. If the excerpt were on someone else's site (e.g. if I linked to one of the magazines who've published K.B. Thomas short stories,) then I'd TOTALLY agree with you. In this case, however, it's not really an "outbound link". The new window would annoy some people, sortof like a pop-up. (Essentially, it disables the "back" button and forces people to close a new window instead.)

While I was thinking about it, I learned how to use target="_blank" (instead of Javascript) to open a new window. I'll save that for next time. Thanks again!

At first glance it seems that the site is some what sideways. Don't know why. I think it has to do with the picture frame.

Other than that it looks good. Very intersting concept.

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Thanks webhost1 - I really appreciate it!

Sideways? I'm not sure what's causing the illusion, but hopefully it'll go away when I get the 2nd-gen border done (with a wavy edge, more obviously like a tapestry vs. a picture frame.)

Check it out!!! Last night K.B.Thomas sent me a brand new short story to upload. It's a whole different genre. (Historical fiction.) It tells what happened to Captain Cook after his unfortunate death.

(If you're curious, see "The Heart, The Hands" on the Short Fiction page.)

I plan to continue adding more content, and to have one matching picture for each piece in the short fiction section. The picture that's there now goes with "I Was The Queen of Hollywood".

What would you do to make this site look more professional? Got any SEO suggestions?

Would it appeal to you if you were a literary agent?

padding: 0,0,0,0;
or
padding bottom: 0px;

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Paul Bilton design services ~ Sites not Sights

You might consider having her name clickable. Take you back to the main page. Just a thought.

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Thanks guys! Making the name "K.B. Thomas" a text-link back to the home page was an easy improvement. (Why didn't I think of that!) I made it bold-face at the same time. Those two changes shouldn't hurt in terms of SEO, eh?

But last night I made a BIGGER change too. I applied an onMouseOver image-swap trick to the K.B. Thomas Short Fiction page. Now when you scroll over the list of downloadable short stories you'll see associated images.

What do you think: does it work for you? What should I work on next?

One last thing: on the home page I talked the author into letting me remove the term "women's fiction" and add the made-up term "art-history mystery". (I think that's just more accurate. I'd compare the novel to works by Dashiell Hammett or Graham Greene...) Anyone care to speculate on whether that change is good marketing?

Great addition.

On the clickable name/logo you might see if you can make this as a pic instead of text. You would get rid of the underline part which does not look that great I think at the top of a page. Just make sure that you put an alt part with her name in it.

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I like that you are using css for the layout. Clean coding.

My only suggestion is to bump up the colors on that background image. (http://www.kb-thomas.com/Tapestry-Border.gif) It looks a little too pixelated for my taste. Do you have the original image for that tapestry? I might be able to do some magic on it and maintain the colors while also reducing the file to an acceptable size.

Rich

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Me

Hey Rich - Thanks for the review!

I like CSS a lot! I still need to make a few tweaks though, because I just noticed how messed-up the site looks on Netscape 4.7...

And thanks for volunteering to help with the background - it's given me fits! If I show it less pixilated, it looks more like a wooden picture frame. Besides, its design isn't really appropriate for the period and quality of the tapestries that're in the novel. Are you curious to see one of the ACTUAL tapestries? Here's one: Judith with the Head of Holofernes

To me, this tapestry seemed too elaborate for a webpage background, so I decided to create a fake tapestry in Photoshop. The home page shows the first draft, but I'm working on a totally new fake tapestry now. Hopefully it'll look more "real" when it's done. I think the border needs more colors and a wavy edge, and maybe a "drop shadow".

Or maybe there shouldn't be a border at all... just a torn edge emphasizing the idea of a tapestry "fragment"?

That tapestry reminds me when I went to Europe and visited the musesums. Got a lot of pics from those. Don't have a clue as to where they are. Guess I will now have to find them just to see what I saw.

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The only thing that I can think of is the text font. The border and picture chosen is quite Gothic in style, this coupled with the fact that the novel is billed as an "art-history" novel (conjuring up images of ages past) doesn't quite fit in with the current text. You may therefore want to choose a font that stays in keeping with the rest of the style of the front page. Obviously this is a small point and you don’t want to detract from the overall readability of the front page but it might make the page more stylistically similar! Apart from this minor point the site achieves what you wanted and is nice and informative!!

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Thanks ATK! You're totally right about Arial - it doesn't suit our theme at all, but I feel like none of the other "web-safe" fonts are any better. (With a name like "Trebuchet", you'd think a font would look like it came from the renaissance!) Embedding fonts isn't too elegant... but I think I have another solution!

First let me show you this mockup! It's a preview of the second-generation border and background.

So, what do you guys think? It's not even close to finished yet, but just in terms of colors and "look" is it a step in the right direction? What would make it better?

Back to your question about fonts. I'm thinking I might leave the body copy in a boring web-safe font, but add the book title (The Fabric of Desire) and author name (K.B. Thomas) in a highly stylized typeface to make the whole thing look more like the cover of a paperback (i.e. sort-of like you cracked open a paperback and smashed it down onto a table so you could see back and front covers side-by-side.) What do you think?

Your new border really looks good. I think this one is better than the other and will go with this page.

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Thanks webhost1 - I appreciate it!

Hey everyone - I forgot to mention it earlier but I'm heading out of town and won't be responsive for about two weeks... but I'm still interested to hear any comments I can get.

I'll respond, and I'll try to review your pages, when I get back!

The new border and picture are way better than the original, really suits the site.