Upgrade Your Site with a Favicon

Every Saturday, I read Jane Friedman’s Electric Speed newsletter. One recent newsletter featured a piece on generating a favicon for your website. It explained that favicons are those tiny icons that appear on browser tabs. 

Below is the favicon for WOW! Women on Writing. Not only does it appear on your browser tab, you can also find it in your search history and in search results. It makes WOW! and the Muffin easy to find amid all the other tabs, sites, and searches that we writers visit on a regular basis. 

As I read the piece in Electric Speed, I was a little envious. I’ve always wanted a favicon although I didn’t know what it was called until that very moment. But did I want it badly enough to take the time to figure it out? The answer was yes and it was helped by the fact that it was wildly easy to do.

I started with Friedman's newsletter and the link she provided to Real Favicon Generator. This site will help you see if your blog or site can support a favicon. It will also help you generate the JPG file of the image. 

The Saturday that I was reading this, my site had the WordPress logo. That's fine for WordPress but not so fine for me. There are a lot of WordPress blogs and blending into the pack wasn’t going to do me any good. 

But what to use? This is the step that is going to take a bit of time. Yes, you can just choose a piece of clip art, but you don’t want to use something random. You want to use something that will immediately make people think of you. If you write mysteries that are solved by a Sherlock Holmes-style sleuth, you might use a magnifying glass. If you write romance novels, you might use a heart. 

Fortunately, I have a logo. It is my nickname set against an oblong background (see below). You might not realize it by looking at the favicons in your browser, but the image is square. My image was rectangular, longer than it is tall. Real Favicon Generator will fix that for you, expanding the image. I fixed it using Photoshop by expanding the canvas size. 

I wasn’t altogether certain how to add this to my site once I had it, so I did a quick Google search. That led me to “How to Add a Favicon to Your WordPress Blog.” Honestly, let other people do the heavy lifting by figuring things out whenever you can. If you have a WordPress site, click through.  If not?  Google is your friend.

In less than 20 minutes, I had sized my image and uploaded my favicon. My site and my blog will now stand out among the WordPress blogs that don’t have a unique image. It isn’t something that you have to do but it is something you might seriously consider. It adds just a bit more professionalism to your site and makes you just a bit easier to find. It’s small but it can help make you and your work more visible, which isn’t a bad thing in a crowded marketplace. 

--SueBE

Sue Bradford Edwards' is the author of over 35 books for young readers.  To find out more about her writing, visit her site and blog, One Writer's Journey.

The next session of her new course, Pitching, Querying and Submitting Your Work will begin on November 6, 2022).  Coping with rejection is one of the topics she will cover in this course.

Sue is also the instructor for  Research: Prepping to Write Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults (next session begins November 6, 2022) and Writing Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults (next session begins November 6, 2022). 

Read More »

Leave a Comment brand, branding, favicon, icon. website, professionalism, wow!

Genre and Author Brand

Back when I was new to the field, a seasoned children’s writer told me she didn’t try to determine what type of book her story would be. She simply wrote the story. Then she would figure out what it was. She had learned this lesson as she drafted an early reader that turned into a chapter book at the advice of her critique group. She later rewrote it as a picture book. When she sold the book, it was once again an early reader.

Sometimes you just have to tell the story. In the end, perhaps with help, you’ll figure out what it is.

When I tell people, especially writers, this story, I watch them panic. “If you write more than one type of book, how will your readers find you?”

How indeed? Given the fact that most of my readers are zoomers (Generation Z) or younger, I have confidence that they’ll Google me.

Oh, wait. I can still hear the die hards in the group calling out. “You can’t brand yourself if you write in more than one genre! It doesn’t work that way.”

But it does. Just this week, I listened to an episode of Literaticast. In this podcast, agent Jennifer Laughrin of Andrea Brown Literary Agency interviews children’s publishing professionals. Episode 39 featured author Kate Messner.  One of the things that Kate discussed is that she writes a wide variety of children’s books including nonfiction, picture books, and middle grade novels. What then is her brand? 

Jennifer explained that an author’s brand is whatever readers think of when they think of her. She followed by asking Kate what she thinks her brand is. Kate answered curiosity and courage. For her part, Jennifer identified Kate’s brand as being able to make difficult topics accessible to young readers and always writing with heart and courage. With two answers that agree so closely, I think it is safe to say this is her brand.

What does this mean for your writing career? If you normally write women’s fiction but your current novel is nudging into mystery territory, learn all about red herrings and write that mystery. If you are a nonfiction writer who has found an event that you can best write about in fiction, start outlining your story.

Write what calls to you and your brand will create itself. Maybe you write fiction and essays that shock and awe. Or you could be someone who pens mysteries and romances that titillate. Write what only you can write and your writing will create your brand.

For my part, I’ll continue to write about ancient cultures and evolution, headline topics and social justice. To do so, I’ll comb through history, eye witness accounts, court documents and the latest science to tell young readers the facts as we know them.

--SueBE

To find out more about Sue Bradford Edwards' writing, visit her blog, One Writer's Journey.  Sue is also the instructor for  Research: Prepping to Write Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults. The next session begins  March 2nd, 2020. 

Read More »

5 comments brand, genre, podcast, Sue Bradford Edwards