We are working on a site right now for a suspense author. She says she supposes it could be considered romantic suspense because there is romance in it, but she really drags her characters through it. It’s really quite psychological, she says.
During the Discovery phase she cited other authors in her field. This is standard procedure. We certainly aren’t looking to copy any of these sites, but it’s important to get a sense of what the audience will be expecting and what they are used to. So I did some serious surfing, and discovered some serious seriousness.
Much in the same way that balloons seem to accompany almost all kid-related sites, and cloying flowers tend to pepper a lot of romance author sites (none of ours, natch), a lot of suspense authors seem to feel that if it ain’t black with reversed out text, it ain’t suspense.
My take is that the current online feeling of Romantic Suspense is a little exhausting. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it isn’t a very welcoming thing – you know, Hi welcome to my site. Let me stress you out. For me as a designer, this doesn’t work. Few people want to have their adrenaline jacked up when surfing the web. When reading a book it creates a gripping feeling and this is good. But much the same way we don’t make a borderline-porn site look for a writer of erotica, we likewise can’t be too literal when designing for a suspense theme. Covers are quite adept at conveying these specifics. We are certainly not ignoring subgenre considerations, but we are approaching this in a somewhat different way. Keep your eyes out for our upcoming new launches.
Because whatever the site, we feel it must be welcoming.
RELATED POSTS:
