Laterpress Weekly: January 15th, 2026 (Issue #171)

Nate's Notes:

In the almost four years I’ve been with Laterpress, I’ve talked with many authors. Some folks have their own websites, but many don’t. Of the subset of authors who’ve booked virtual meetings with me, I would say the majority of them did not have their own sites. Common reasons given for not having one include the cost, thinking it’s a major time commitment to set up or maintain, or believing it’s too difficult / technical a task to accomplish by yourself. Some folks didn’t think having their own site was necessary. Why not funnel readers to your Amazon author page, a Facebook page, or your primary social media account instead? While there’s nothing wrong with growing a presence on social media, you don’t own Facebook / TikTok / Amazon, etc. They have all the data on who your readers are, not you. They set the terms and conditions. They control the algorithms and discoverability. Do you want your entire online presence to exist at the whims of other companies, or would you like to have your own patch of digital real estate that you have far more control over? Something that exists to serve YOU first, not a giant corporation?

One of my personal author business tasks for Q1 of 2026 is to upgrade my branding to a higher level of professionalism. I’ve started with my website, as I found the old one was embarrassing to look at. It ran off Wordpress because I’d used them for blogs in the early 2000s and I recalled them being cheap and easy to work with. My memory was flawed. I’ve found modern Wordpress to be a convoluted nightmare of menus and unintuitive UI. Everything was difficult to set up or wouldn’t work as intended. I don’t recommend them. I spent two hours once trying to add a newsletter signup form without making any progress. Normally, I’m a patient person, but that experience pushed me past my limits and killed any interest I had left in working with Wordpress. So, the site sat live but effectively abandoned for more than a year.

Last week, I learned of Tertulia and the website building tools they offer authors. After less than 15 minutes playing with their demo site builder, I upgraded to a paid plan to make the site real. You can see my Tertulia-powered author site at the new and vastly improved NateGillick.com. I built the site in under two hours, with a significant chunk of that time involving moving my domain name over from Wordpress and finding the info I needed in their menus. Most authors starting from scratch can probably get a site up and running in under an hour. Seriously.

Before going further, I want to stress that this week’s Nate’s Notes is NOT sponsored content. Neither Laterpress as a company or myself as an individual have any relationship with them. They have no idea I'm writing this. I’m speaking to you as an author who invested my own money into this product to build myself a new site, and who wants to point fellow authors in the direction of something they might find helpful.

Tertulia is easy to work with because their sites are built from premade templates. Most of the work is already done, so authors only need to pick a template then fill in each page with their own information. The navigation bar on the left makes each section of your site easy to find and update. These sites cover all the basics an author site needs to have, including:

• Showing off your books, with links to buy them
• Information about you
• A newsletter signup form to capture email addresses
• A contact form
• Social media links

Optional but nice-to-have extras include an events page so readers can see opportunities to meet you in person, space to showcase reviews, a blog, and the ability to set up custom pages, though the options for those are pretty limited. Each element of the site can be disabled if you don’t want to display it, and their order can be rearranged.

Books can be added to your site manually, or imported by providing your ISBN or ASIN. Their system automatically adds buy links for the retailers it can find, but you can add more (I needed to add links for Books-A-Million and Walmart). I manually added my unfinished sequel, A Poisoned Web, and a buy link that takes people to Laterpress. (I chose to use the text “Read Online” for the link description to give readers a clearer picture of how they'd engage with the book when they get there, but you could put Laterpress / Patreon / Wattpad, etc. in there.) Tertulia supports our Custom Domains feature, so the series home still shows as planargates.nategillick.com after transitioning web hosts. I had to add the CNAME records to Tertulia manually, but, like everything else, this was 100x easier to do than it was with Wordpress.

Not only was it incredibly easy to set up a site, but they also feature analytics to show how much traffic you're bringing in, where it's coming from, and what folks are viewing. Here's my analytics page. This image was taken about 48 hours after the site went live:

To summarize, Tertulia for Authors:

PROS:

• Extremely easy to set up. I’d bet it takes most folks under an hour.
• Import book information by ISBN or ASIN
• Appearance optimized for both PC and mobile devices
• Comparable with our Custom Domains feature
• Can link to the Laterpress hosted version of your book by adding it as a retailer option
• Comes with a newsletter signup form to capture email addresses. (Even better, they have integrations with MailerLite. I set that up so whenever someone signs up on my site, they’re added to MailerLite and get my initial welcome email with no action needed on my part.)
• The analytics page shows how much traffic is coming in, where it’s coming from, and what people are clicking.
• They will verify your domain with Google Search Console, improving your SEO performance. (My site went live in the evening of Friday the 9th. On Tuesday the 13th I received email confirmation this was completed. Call it two business days.)

CONS:

• Not a ton of variety in their design templates, meaning author websites will all look pretty similar. That said, how many readers are jumping between author sites fast enough to notice? (And would they care if they did?)
• Your website will be perfectly clean, functional, and easy to navigate, but won't be as flashy or visually arresting as what can be achieved elsewhere.
• Custom pages are limited in what they can do, meaning you may still need to link to other external sources. There's not a simple way to set up something like a series wiki, fanart gallery, or social media feed.
• No ecommerce integration… yet. You can sell ebooks and serial fiction via Laterpress and link to the books on your site, but they don’t provide a storefront or have direct integrations with Shopify or other providers. You’d need to set up links or a custom page to direct readers to a separate storefront to sell signed books, audiobooks, or merch. It sounds like they’re working on this though and additional direct sales support is forthcoming.
• No way to set up a professional email address through them yet. I have author email nate@nategillick.com set up with another provider and was able to port it over, so you CAN have a branded email, but there's some additional setup needed.

If you decide to check out Tertulia, consider using my invite link. If you decide to make your own site, both of us get a free month of service.

It feels really good to have a site that is clean, easy to navigate, simple to update, and accomplishes everything an author site needs to accomplish at a price I can justify at this stage in my author career. My purpose in describing my experience this week is to hopefully inspire a few of you without sites to make one this year. Research your options, define your budget, and go for it! Creating a website doesn’t have to be time consuming, technical / difficult, or expensive. (There are, of course, cheaper options, but Tertulia's pricing compares favorably to options like GoDaddy, Wix, or Squarespace, though those have ecommerce options Tertulia currently lacks.) I’m highly satisfied with how painless the whole process was, which is why I think they're worth a look.

Interesting News and Stories from Around the Publishing World:

​There is no competition - Viewing other authors as competition, or worse, as adversaries, is a mindset that will inevitably lead to bitterness and dissatisfaction. In an article that feels half business, half mindset, Russell Nohelty outlines a host of different tactics authors can take to position their work as a unique experience readers will want. It’s about playing your own game and being the best version of yourself, not chasing trends or letting others set the terms for how you should succeed. I love his concept of “soul resonance selling” – creating work that resonates with your core reader so deeply that the people hungry for your work will find you and hold on tight. It’s why I started my author bio on my site with a mission statement about the experience I want to give readers, before moving on to objective details of my life.

There is some tough love in here. Russell writes, “Right now, too many businesses are selling their work like a charity drive, making customers feel like the only reason they should give you their money is out of pity, obligation, or some vague moral duty. Guilt might work once, but it doesn’t build a career. Customers don’t owe you a living. If the entire backbone of your sales funnel is “support me because I’m small and scrappy,” then you’ve already lost.”

Instead of this, he recommends drawing three overlapping circles, finding the connection between what gives you joy, what makes your customers lean in, and gaps in your market / niche. When you know this, you can craft a marketing plan that resonates with you, your readers, and show your unique angle, leading to sales.

The end of the article breaks everything down in a visual format that’s easy to understand.

​Meet Nate Gillick, Author and Laterpress Marketing & Community Lead - Podcast interviews are fun! I sat down with author Pierre Durand for a casual, hour-long chat. We discussed the mission behind Laterpress’s founding, the biggest challenge we had early on, why fantasy and romance are such popular genres, and more. When discussing my book, we talked about some of the challenges involved in writing fantasy and how I addressed them, as well as some thoughts on planning a series. I talk about the rules I had to obey during my creative writing courses in college, and how I broke them (and got away with it). For fantasy authors who haven't published yet, I offer advice on how to get started. We end with me reading the first page of my book.

This podcast episode is available through Spotify, Google, Apple, and YouTube. This bold link goes to YouTube.

​New sophisticated publishing scam targets struggling authors on Amazon - Rod Raglin details another scam targeting authors. This one gives the appearance of coming from Amazon, specifically targeting authors with books with under 10 reviews. The scam claims such titles “may face reduced visibility or listing restriction.” Action is needed to “maintain uninterrupted marketplace access.” The action, of course, comes in the form of hiring a “Certified Visibility Specialist.” That job title sounds suspicious enough. Wary but deciding to investigate further, Rod asked for a connection. The person he exchanged messages with represented themselves as a woman from California. But when time came to make payment, he was supposed to bank transfer funds to a Nigerian bank account under a male name. When he balked at that, they asked for crypto. His account is another example of predatory behavior to keep an eye out for.

​The Difficulty of Writing Difficult Scenes - Some scenes are more difficult to write than others. If a moment in time is particularly traumatic for a character, or potentially triggers for readers, additional care may be required to do the scene justice. In this article for Writer’s Digest, Tonja Matney Reynolds offers nine different techniques that can help show what happens without overwriting the event or making it seem like details exist only for shock value. A few examples include increasing narrative distance, poetic over literal language, humor as a coping mechanism, or planting seeds to make a dark moment feel inevitable, so it comes as less of a shock when we get there.

​The Indie Author's Guide to Spending Money - Kristin McTiernan has served as an editor for authors for more than 15 years. In that time, she’s seen many of us want to spend money on things that make no sense for where we’re at in our careers. Sometimes, the act of spending money on the pursuit of an author career is ego / identity driven. It can provide the feeling of progress, like you’re taking action and making an effort, without actually doing any work. In this video, Kristin breaks down different levels of author career, based on income, and offers advice on what kinds and amounts of spending are reasonable for each. This is practical, no-nonsense advice. I always advocate for spending within your means. Don’t jeopardize your household finances, please.

This Week's Featured Story:

Traveller, by Amit Arya

Sashin, an ordinary man leading a busy life, embarks on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery when a psychic reading reveals an untapped ability to astral travel and the lingering remnants of a potential past life. Drawn into the metaphysical world, Sashin delves into hidden realms of consciousness, uncovering his ties to an ancient conflict involving dark forces.

Each journey brings new revelations—a lost friend’s redemption, cryptic warnings in the Akashic library, and fragments of lifetimes long forgotten. As Sashin’s spiritual awakening deepens, his earthly life grows equally intricate, with the enchanting Alexis, cryptic guides, and unsettling truths from those closest to him.

The stakes rise when Sashin’s journey leads him to Egypt, where sacred temples, ancient scrolls, and transformative encounters await. With the support of allies from both physical and metaphysical worlds, Sashin must uncover the truth of his existence, protect the ones he loves, and embrace his destiny.

For readers drawn to spiritual exploration, gripping mysteries, and fast-paced action, The Traveller offers a captivating blend of ancient wisdom, modern-day struggles, and a battle against forces beyond the visible world. Will Sashin unravel the secrets of his past in time to shape his future?

Meme of the Week: