A website is an absolute must for authors. As soon as a reader finds a new author, the first thing they do is check their website.
Your website is your home on the internet. Your readers should always be able to find you there. It is the best way of connecting with your readers outside social media. They can find out what books you have written, which one is coming next, and how to contact you. If you are blogging, they can learn from your articles.
It is one location that you have complete control over.
Social media platforms can change their rules anytime (like Facebook has done a few times now), and you can lose your audience in a single day. But a website is your own real estate in the cyberworld.
Besides, social media content has a shelf life of a few minutes, whereas your books, articles, and announcements are always there.
Your website doesn’t need to be complicated; simple is often better. Three key areas to focus on when designing and building an author site are:
1) Your books. These should always be the main focus. It would help if you had your books displayed in a way that is easy to understand and navigate, especially with a series. Each book should include the cover, description, and purchase links. This is also a great place to highlight any awards or reviews to help sell your books.
2) Gaining newsletter subscribers. This should be your second focus. Offer something of value, such as a free copy of your book or a short course to entice readers to subscribe to your newsletter. It is better done through a landing page.
3) Your information. Readers want to know more about you, so include an ‘About’ section that showcases your personality, information about contacting you, and links to your social media accounts.
If you have had any experience building websites, you will know they could be a nightmare. You spend hours and hours solving technical issues which seem trivial but end up giving you sleepless nights.
But my biggest problem was to figure out what should an author’s website look like. Unfortunately, there is not enough information out there, and whatever is there was contradictory and didn’t address a lot of my requirements.
I went to website design companies specializing in building author websites, but they asked $5000–$6000. I was not prepared to invest that much money into the website. So I started looking for other options.
Luckily I came across a managed solution that had all I needed on my website. It is built by a thriller author Nick Stephenson and his team, and I am very happy with my new site.
According to Nick, an authors website should have seven essential components:
- Home Page
- About Page
- Books Page
- Call To Action
- Free Book Offer
- Invitation to Join Your Book Review Team
- Blog
Home Page
The Home page is the most visited page of an Author’s Website. Therefore, it must grab the readers’ attention while at the same time giving them enough information about you and your work.
You don’t need to write volumes about yourself or your books. Images work much better. Please check out my Home Page, and let me know whether or not it is inviting and gives you all the information you need.
About Page
About page is the second most important page on an Author’s site. It is where readers get to know you better. You should include here everything you want to share with them.
My About page has my photos, a bit of blurb about my writing history, and my second passion — sketches.
I
Books Page
Your “Books” page is the third-most visited page on your site. Most people will enter your site via the homepage. They would want to check out what other books you have written.
If you want to make direct sales of your books, you will do that from the Books page. For that reason, it is going to need most of the work.
You need to make sure you have a straightforward way to display your entire catalog. Each book should have a clear description and prominent “buy” buttons.
Free Book Offer
This is also the landing page where you offer a free book (or other goodies) so that readers get to know your writing style, and you start building your reader base so that you can announce your future books to them.
Invitation to Join Your Book Review Team
As you will be writing more books, you should build a review team to get to read your book first and provide you feedback. They are your beta readers as well as the ones most likely to give reviews on your book sales page.
Call For Action
You should have a call to action to join your newsletter at the end of each page.
Blog
Your blog is where you regularly publish to stay in touch with your readers. You can choose what you want to write there. I write articles primarily. I publish all my articles first on my blog and then on Medium, thus keeping the ownership of my intellectual property.
Final Words
My website still needs a lot of work, but I am happy where it is at the moment. I hope it is inviting and proving all the information my readers need.
I built it mostly myself, using a WordPress-based hosting service (nrdly.com) that has author-specific templates.
If you need any advice or have any questions regarding building or updating your website, ask them in the comments section. I am not an expert but I will try to answer them to the best of my knowledge.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — –
You can subscribe to my newsletter at A Whimsical Writer.
