By Don Carlos Lee Gibson Jr, Marietta, OH
The Decision That Felt Backward
When I started writing my book, I had no website. No landing page. No author platform. Just a manuscript taking shape and a lot of people telling me I needed to wait until it was finished before I went public with anything.
I did the opposite. I built the website first.
That decision felt strange at the time, but it turned out to be one of the smartest moves I made. Not because it helped me sell more copies (the book is not even out yet), but because it changed how I wrote, how I thought about my audience, and how I showed up to the work every single day.
A Website Forces You to Name What You Are Actually Doing
Writing a book in private is easy to postpone. You can revise forever, question every chapter, and convince yourself it is not ready. But once you put a website live and tell people you are writing something, you have made a commitment. Not to a publisher or an agent. To yourself, and to the people who might actually read it.
Building https://doncarlosleegibsonauthor.com/ meant I had to answer questions I had been avoiding. What is this book about? Who is it for? Why does it matter? Those are not marketing questions. They are clarity questions. If I could not answer them on a single page, I did not understand my own work well enough yet.
The website became a forcing function. It made me stop circling and start deciding.
It Created Accountability Before I Had a Deadline
I did not have a contract or a publishing date when I launched the site. But the moment it went live, I had accountability. People started asking me how the book was coming. Friends shared the link. A few strangers reached out to say they were looking forward to it.
That kind of early momentum is not pressure. It is fuel. It reminded me that this project mattered to someone other than me, and it kept me moving forward when the work felt slow or stuck.
It Let Me Test Ideas in Real Time
A book is a one-way conversation until it is published. A website is not. I could post a short preview, share a thought that did not make it into a chapter, or explain why I wrote about a particular topic. The feedback I got, even if it was just a comment or a message, helped me see what was landing and what needed more work.
I also used the site to clarify my voice. Writing for the web is different than writing for the page, but both require the same thing: you have to sound like yourself. The website gave me a place to practice that without overthinking it.
It Gave Me a Place to Direct People
Before I had the site, when someone asked me what I was working on, I would say “a book” and the conversation would end there. Now I can send them to one URL and they can see what it is about, sign up for updates if they want, and decide for themselves if it is something they care about.
That small shift made a big difference. It turned abstract interest into something tangible. It also saved me from having to explain the same thing over and over. The website did that work for me.
It Separated the Writing From the Waiting
Publishing takes time. Even after the manuscript is done, there are months of editing, design, production, and logistics. I did not want to finish writing and then sit in limbo for half a year with nothing to do.
The website gave me something to build while I waited. I could keep the project alive, stay connected to the work, and make progress on the author side of things even when the book itself was out of my hands.
What I Would Tell Someone Starting Out
If you are writing something and wondering when to go public, my advice is simple: do it sooner than feels comfortable. You do not need a finished manuscript. You do not need a book cover or a release date. You just need a clear sense of what you are doing and why it matters.
A website does not have to be complicated. Mine is not. But it is mine, and it represents the work I am putting into the world. That alone made it worth building early.
The book will be ready when it is ready. In the meantime, the website is doing exactly what I needed it to do: keeping me honest, keeping me moving, and giving people a reason to care before the first copy ever ships.