Please to answer some questions.
1) The cover. I plan to change the headline of the back blurb to red (or similar to the title on the front, though I may not stick with red). What do you think? Y/n/Ewww?
2) I intend to put a teaser from Rafe in the back of Taro’s book.
- Would you expect the first chapter or would a scene be good?
- Would you be put off by getting a scene from late in the book (as long as it was self-explanatory)?
- What would be most likely to make you want to read more–Rafe being Rafe, or a more dramatic scene?
- Specific suggestions welcome!
3) My site. What do you want to see on an author’s site? I’m planning an explanation of each universe, which will include a chronological order of books since I know it can be hard to get a series in the “right” order. 
I’ll have bits about me, and I’m thinking I’ll have some freebies, but I’m not sure about that. Should I put up bits and bobs, scenes rejected for story reasons, not quality? They are, for obvious reasons, not as polished as the rest. I do intend to write some short stories, but I’d intended to put them on the Turtleduck site.
4) And that leads me to–how much overlap should there be? I don’t want to stint on Turtleduck; that would be stupid. But there’s not much point in having a personal website if everything on it can be found somewhere else.
One of the things I remember from my time as a bookstore minion was one of my more experienced co-workers saying that publishers and booksellers never had the same ideas of what should be on the site. The things, from a bookseller’s perspective, that are probably most important to have:
* Books, in the order intended to be read (yay for you, for guessing this!), and information about the books. This one is always always ALWAYS a good thing.
* Information about appearances you’re making & your policy on appearances (…this one can probably wait)
* Some means of contacting you
As a reader, the following things interest me:
* Blogs/Twitter/other ways to find out more about the author’s life
* On a related note, biographical info
* Mini-essays, full-length essays, or other thinky things on the subject of writing (technical, creative, meta, whatever). They don’t have to be THE MOST SERIOUS THINGS EVER. (Sarah Rees Brennan writes some lovely ones which are both thinky and amusing. Unfortunately, the links to them on her website appear to be broken since the URL of said website changed. DO NOT DO THIS. If you do, mirror them so people can link to them as examples. Like so.)
* Some sort of teaser for the book. There are some books I ought to love but the prose drives me insane. Having a sample of the story lets me judge the voice enough to know, in some cases, that YES I WANT TO BUY THIS BOOK. (True fact: one of the books I currently own, which I bought as soon as it was out in stores despite it being an author I’d never heard of before, I got because the author posted the first chapter on her website and I loved it.)
Oh! And release dates. I knew I was forgetting something.
thank you!
I like the starry black better than the bright blue.
I don’t usually mind where in the book an excerpt comes from. (Hello there, awkward sentence!) I like the idea of using a D’Leo scene to get more of a Rafe-on-his-own flavor. I still haven’t reread Rafe to see if I had another scene I’d recommend. Sorry!
Kate has some excellent ideas about website content. I, uh, actually don’t go to the websites of too many authors. >_> One thing I have noticed that I do NOT like is when the author talks ONLY about their upcoming book, the release date, any book tour they may be doing, etc. (Not that I think you would do this. But there is one author whose books I love who I unfollowed on Twitter, unsubscribed from her e-mail list, and never go to her site because of this kind of thing.)
*GLOMP!*