Will a holding-pattern website scare away agents?

[jamiehall]

I've heard on various agent blogs that, when agents become interested in possibly representing you, they'll often look at your website.

My question is this:

I took down my author home page in September because the whole site had been basically one big advertisement for my vanity-published book, and since I got out of vanity publishing I didn't want an author website like that.

I replaced my huge website with a little story about how I got out of vanity publishing and indicated that I was going to bring back a new, big website that was totally different from the old one.

I've still got a bunch of other websites (whence most of my visitors come) up and running, just not my author home page.

Is an agent who is seriously thinking about me going to be scared away by a placeholder website? Will it leave a bad impression or look like I'm being unprofessional? Should I wait to query agents until I can get the new website up and running?

[Will Lavender]

I don't think it will make a bit of difference as long as you've written a good book. A website that generates a lot of hits might be useful to an agent, but I don't think having an unfinished one/not having one at all will hurt you as long as you have a product that the agent wants. I didn't have a website and the question never came up.