1: How many hits does the site get per day?

2: How many hours do you spend on it per week, and does it ever take over, and interfere with your writing?

3: Can you briefly sum up why you think it has been important to have website, and exactly how it has benefited you?

4: Tell me how much input you have on the design of the site

5: How early in your writing career did you set it up?






1: How many hits does the site get per day?

My websites have a combined average of 2500 visits per day. If you count hits then it is around 50,000. This of course goes up significantly in July when the new book is released - almost double again.

2: How many hours do you spend on it per week, and does it ever take over, and interfere with your writing?

The ongoing maintenance carries on all year round, with news of the latest editions of my books, news and other snippets posted when required. This is conducted by my partner Mari and usually to e-mailed suggestions from browsers about something that is wrong, or unclear. Mari also works to update the older sections of website that were written when our HTML wasn't quite as good as it is now. There is a lot of website, so this is being tackled section by section.

We do, however, have a major annual addition to the site that happens in May-June, just before the run-up to my book tours, and in that time we will create a whole new set of pages that relate in some way to what is going on in the new book. We always have a 'Special Features' section, which is like its DVD namesake complete with a 'making of' wordamentary and deleted scenes. We also have an update on the postcard give-aways we distribute, and then a raft of extra silliness that hopefully augments the book, and is then permanently on the website - even someone coming late to the series will be able to access the parts of the site that appertain to the particular book they are writing. Nothing is ever deleted, so serious websplorers can delve back in time to the hidden corners of the site and discover oddments that even I've forgotten about.

But naturally, this is all secondary to my writing, which always takes priority.

3: Can you briefly sum up why you think it has been important to have website, and exactly how it has benefited you?

It's almost impossible to quantify whether the website has actually helped significantly as the only way to check would be to run my career again without it - clearly not possible. From the feedback we receive, it is definitely enjoyed, and some readers have even found their way to my books from the website. I think the safest view is that it never hurt sales and probably helped, but how much? Not really sure.

The most common way in which my website is used for gaining new readers is from e-mailed links between friends. Instead of a lengthy explanation as to why they might like my books, it's sometimes easier to send a link to 'The Seven Wonders of Swindon' or the 'How Hamlet are you?' pages with a 'If you think this stuff is funny you'll like the books..' sort of note.

I suppose it's also important to realise that my websites are just one part of a publicity strategy that I maintain independent of my publishers both here in the UK and in the US. I've always adhered to the notion that you have to give 120% on any project, and that the best person to help you is yourself - aside from the website we also run competitions, give away thousands of collectable postcards, judge writing competitions, go to schools and colleges at no charge and a whole heap of other publicity-related activities .

There is, I feel, a contract between an author and their readers - after all, they give me their hard-earned cash, and I have to entertain them - that's the deal. So the webpages are also a kind of 'after sales service' for readers who only see a new Fforde book every year, and might want some Fforde-based tomfoolery in between. I also see it as an extension of the books - allowing readers to dive back into that world for a little longer. I like the idea of being able to keep the world of my books alive even after the last page of the novel has been turned, and blurring the edges of what is fiction and what is real - pictures and 'official-looking' websites that appertain to come from the world within my books have a certain kind of gravitas and immediacy about them that lends itself well to reinforcing not only the make-believe, but also the reader-writer contract which will (hopefully!) induce people to keep on reading me year after year.

4: Tell me how much input you have on the design of the site

Everything; we do it all ourselves. Mari and I discuss the idea and look together, but ultimately I have the final say on the simplicity of the layout and how it all fits together, and Mari works the design a round that and makes all the coding work. I wanted the site to in some way represent the world that exists within my books and also to act as a way for me to explore this world as a character in itself. The design thus represents my way of playing around visually with the people and places that exist within my head - giving them a little more room and space to breathe. It's important, too, to maintain it ourselves so there is a direct connection with readers - any author website that it written by someone else (even under close supervision) has a certain distance to it, and inevitably corporatness would creep in, and I wanted to keep my websites clear of all that. I wanted to make them the genuine article, because people are smart and can tell very quickly if a site is pretending to be a direct link from the author, and I think this counts for something in this target-strategy-focus group-market-research world in which we find ourselves.

5: How early in your writing career did you set it up?

The website was set up to coincide with the publication of 'The Eyre Affair' in 2001. After we decided there would be a website, Mari and I discussed looking at other author's websites for inspiration but then thought: "Naaah!" and we just did our own thing, in the hope that something with a more personal signature would emerge. We learned the rudiments of HTML and Photoshop and then just waded in. The initial sites were quite rudimentary, but as we became more confident they changed over the years to give a good mix of usability and silliness, but still without any of the wizzo-fantastic bells and whistles that I just find tricksy and annoying on other sites. Pictures, text - keep it simple.







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