As we enter what we hope will be a final month-long push to make the IASD website worthy of our public and our membership, I’d like to cover a few topics.

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– 3D Covers
– Multi-genre authors
– Multi-genre books
– Menu and Sub-menus
– Live link IASD logo

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3D Covers

Ian is working hard to convert every cover. It is a long, drawn-out process which is made more difficult to achieve because Ian also has a job. Please trust that he is making progress at an incredible rate, given the circumstances.

It would be appreciated if there were no individual requests to tweak, add, or remove anything in this process. In a couple of weeks we (the admin), will be assessing where we are with our individual and collective targets. I’ve no doubt 3D covers will be a topic in our information gathering process.

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Menu

The main list of sub-menus was massive and it was necessary to make it smaller and easier to navigate. This is the reason why certain genre have been listed together.

Sub-Menus

Genre – 1, Genre – 2, Genre – 3, Genre – 4.

These menus are for the listing of books. For the time being we want to ensure every book appears in at least one category. If your book or books could be considered for more than one category, please be patient – we will get there with your co-operation.

We must first of all establish every book in at least one genre.

Author Contact – 1, Author Contact – 2, Author Contact – 3.

These menus are for the display of author contact details. Each of these sub-menus contains a variety of genre. At the end of Author Contact – 3 for example, there is a place for ‘Multi-Genre’ authors.

You should not be listed in ‘Multi-genre’ and any other category in the Author Contact menus. Further explanation of the terminology follows.

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Multi-genre Author versus Multi-genre Book

This is an area I’ve explained more than once, but I will do so again – because it’s important for all concerned to understand the difference.

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– Multi-genre authors – are those authors who write specific books or stories in different genres.
To be in this category, you must by definition have written more than one book or short story.

If you have written one book, or one story – you should not appear as multi-genre author.

Example: Books by Tom Benson. Genres: Thriller, Erotica, Sci-Fi, Poetry, Short Stories. Several titles – and each book has a distinct and different primary genre or theme.

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– Multi-genre books – are those books which could be posted in more than one genre.

Example: Books by Senan Gil Senan. Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Two titles – which although listed under their primary genre of ‘Sci-Fi’, they will also eventually be listed under ‘Suspense/Mystery/Thriller/Crime’, and possibly elsewhere.

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I’ve spent many hours of listing information provided to me, but I’ve discovered a few issues. I’d like your help to get them resolved. Having now explained this area again, I would ask that all members do two things for us:

1 – Make an honest judgement call.
– Are you (A), a multi-genre author?
– Are you (B), a single genre author, whose titles are multi-genre?

2 – Go through the Author Contact menus and see if you are listed accurately.
– If you are in the (A) category, your name should be in Author Contact – 3, listed under ‘Multi-Genre’.
– If you are in the (B) category, your name should appear in one single location in one of the three Author Contact menus – but not in Author Contact – 3, ‘Multi-Genre’.

If there is a discrepancy, or you’re unsure, please contact me.

As a stand-by measure I’ve added ‘Awaiting Classification’ to the Genre – 4 menu. If we have any authors who decide their work does not fit comfortably into one of the genres, then the authors and their titles will be listed under Awaiting Classification, until we establish another category.

Those authors’ contact details will be listed with their work, temporarily.

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Live link IASD logo

There has been a suggestion to have an IASD logo on the website which we could ‘copy and paste’ into our individual websites, blogs, etc. It’s an excellent idea which I believe would be popular.

The means of producing this is beyond me, although in the next few days I will make an effort to work it out.

If you have the skills and knowledge to set up this type of thing, please get in touch.

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I apologise if the udates sometimes feel as if they’re lapsing into lectures, but I’d rather not try to get facts across with too much humour, or the message will get lost.

We are aware of multiple covers of some titles in the gallery to the right. This is due to the covers being replicated in the original set-up of the site. With effect from January 2016, as the pace of maintenance slows, we will reduce the covers to show one of each.

Thank you for your ongoing patience. We have set a target of 31st December 2015, to get the site to a standard good enough for us to be posting and linking to it publicly.

FYI – our ‘follows’ have now gone over 1800, so we’ve gathered 30+ followers since we started the restructuring process. 😀

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