Sites like Facebook already restrict how many of them see your messages without extra fees. These are no substitute for your author website, no matter how many followers you have there, because you do not control them. Your presence anywhere else on the web should funnel readers back to your website – Facebook pages, Amazon Author pages, Twitter and other secondary platforms. newsletters, business cards, book covers, flyers, social media. It should match the branding you use elsewhere, e.g. Consider components such as the header, colours, fonts, photos, publisher imprint, covers, taglines, etc. The actual template used (assuming WordPress) also matters, but it’s the images that people remember. That one-time cost is a trade-off for you acquiring the knowledge to do it yourself, and if they explain it well to you, you might become empowered to do your own support when the time comes.Īll the “look-and-feel” of an author website is determined by the brand imagery. The best help would be someone who sets you up in a standard environment like WordPress, instead of a custom-built one. If you don’t feel that you are capable of figuring out how to do this then call someone in to help you. Each lets me set up unique email addresses (e.g., ) that I forward to my single primary personal email for convenience. I own about a dozen websites, and the cost of hosting all of them is well under $100/year. I pay about $12/year for the HollowLands domain. There’s no reason for any of this to cost much. Big companies can afford to hire techies to write and maintain custom websites - you can’t. Your site should be maintained in industry-standard software (WordPress is a common choice with many lovely templates). You have to own and control its domain name (URL) which, if possible, then should match your author name. It is your fundamental platform, and it belongs to you, and you don’t want to ever lose control over it. It must be owned and controlled by the author. Your author website is the central point for all information about books & author. (There’ll be a link at the end to a much more detailed discussion on my own author website, with helpful instructions on how to do some of the things I’m suggesting.) Yet almost no-one builds their first Author website with that in mind and it can take quite a while for them to clarify what they’re doing with it. What is the point of an author website? To own and control all the information about your products so that you can tell readers what they want to know and turn them into fans who will buy your next book. I’ve also seen plenty of authors use social media sites as pseudo-websites. Over time, I have evolved some firm opinions about what should be on author websites, having seen too many that look gorgeous but miss the point, frustrating readers and potential buyers. Here she explains why, and offers her top tips on how to use yours to best effect. With so many opportunities to reach readers provided by social media, is it really worth going to the time, trouble, and expense of setting up and maintaining a dedicated author website? Not only is it worthwhile, it's crucial, says self-published US novelist Karen Myers.
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