Prevent Link Rot
in your Published Work

by Barbara J. Feldman

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Prevent Link Rot in Your Published Work

Tell a colleague about "Prevent Link Rot"
link rot (lîngk rôt) n.
The natural decay of web links as the sites they're connected to change or die.

Attention Authors and Publishers

Do you reference websites in your books, e-books, articles or other published work? If so, then you know the frustration of having those addresses go south after you've distributed thousands of copies. Webmasters have the luxury of changing URLs on their site whenever a link goes bad. But books, e-books, and articles are NOT under your control once they have been published. Whether you publish electronically or on paper, if keeping your URLs working is important to you, then read on.

Today I had my assistant link check an e-book that I've been selling for just four months. I was absolutely flabbergasted when he returned a list of fourteen rotten URLs. Of those fourteen, eleven had new addresses, and three had disappeared forever. Now I have the expense of creating a new edition of the e-book and distributing it, but all those original copies will never be as valuable as I intended them to be.

As I was working on posting all the corrections to my errata page, the solution dawned on me. And the next edition of my e-book is going to be much more valuable, both to my readers and to me. Because the URLs will be practically evergreen. Here's how.

The solution to link rot is three fold:

1) First you need to use a redirect script that gives you control of all your published URLs (more on this later.)

2) Then you need to regularly check your links, so you can update the rotten ones. If you are not committed to checking your links periodically, then you may as well not bother with the first step.

3) And lastly, you will need to update your behind-the-scenes URLs, so that your readers will continue to be able to reach the sites they want.

How it Works