Top companies that offer author website design services say that promoting your book with an author’s website is a robust marketing strategy that gives the desired results in a short time. The only catch is that you need to know how exactly you are going to promote your book on your website. Makes sense? Let’s proceed to learn more about how the promotion of a book through an author’s website works.
The first thing you should know about an author’s website is that it is the author’s platform where lie the roots of an online presence. Your author’s website is the place where people come to learn more about you and your books. This is why it is such an opportune forum for presenting yourself and the books you have written, are writing, or will write, in the best light. An author’s website is also a great way to establish yourself as not merely a person, but a brand.
By the end of this blog, we aim to have persuaded you of why you need author website development if you are an author. Other people aside from authors for whom an author’s website will be beneficial are publishers, editors, copy editors, ghostwriters, and many more. The idea is simple if you wish to be acclaimed for your book or multiple books, an author’s website can make it happen, and that’s what makes it so necessary.
While you can still carry on your branding and promotional activities on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. an author’s website is a more sophisticated and dedicated approach to it. Here, you will have entire control over the editorial and design. It is up to you if you take this opportunity and learn to make the most of it, or simply sit back and watch it pass.
The Basics of Creating an Author’s Website
The most crucial and basic part of creating an author website is the message your visitors get when they arrive at your website. The first impression your visitors have of your website is the most important. Ensure that they can easily figure out the first things about you and your book.
As long as the first impression is accurate and good, you can be sure that your visitors are going to stay and that the website you have created is a success. You can do this by giving your website a few test runs and getting reviews from people who don’t know your work or you.
The Parts of Your Website:
An author’s website needs to be well-organized so that the visitors don’t get lost while trying to figure out about you and your book. This is why we have listed the parts that the information on your author’s website can be divided into and the information you must include, to give your website a more organized and much cleaner look.
1. About You:
The first thing you need for your website is an author bio, it is preferable and recommended that you write two of these. The two author bios that are recommended to be included in an author website are a long author bio and a short one. You can use the short bio for your home page so your visitors can get a concise overview of you. For the long bio, you can attach a link to it at the end of your short bio.
The long bio will be more extensive and you can make it more personal about you and your writing. The aim is to convince the media and potential readers and portray yourself as a great writer.
2. Excerpts, Reviews, and Book Info:
For each of your books, you should write a short and long description, including the reviews. One of the best practices for this is to create a page that has a list of all of your books per the genre or series, with the book reviews, and a link to the respective excerpts from each book. This gives your website a look of finishing and makes researching easier for the editors and reviewers.
3. Selling Mode: Direct or Booksellers:
The main goal of marketing through your website is to earn sales for your books. While selling directly seems more appealing as it lets you keep a large percentage of the selling price, it is more tiring, time-consuming, and effort-demanding. Imagine using time and effort on taking orders, packaging, and shipping them, when you could use that time on planning, writing, and marketing your next book.
For your books, consider selling them through online retailers like Amazon, by including links to the page on your website. These online retailers are trusted, have a wide reach, and people feel ensured buying from them.
4. Mailing List:
It is important to have a mailing list for sending out newsletters to potential or existing readers. People who sign up for your newsletter must be interested in your work as an author, which means they are going to want to buy your books and learn more about you.
If you are not already sending out newsletters, collect email addresses through your website for later, they will be useful when you finally decide to send out newsletters.
5. Blogs:
Blogs are an amazing way to keep the content on your website fresh and new. It will allow for your website to be updated daily, to present visitors with new content every time, and get indexed by the search engines. The more often your website is updated, the more you will be favored by search engines like Google and Bing.
6. Social Media Links:
Include buttons like “Follow Me” that are linked to your official social media pages. It serves to inform the visitors of your presence on these websites and you might get click-throughs and earn followers and friends on your social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Press Page: The press page on your website should include photographs of yourself, the covers of your books, and any possible media coverage. You can also include testimonials of your books and review quotes. These will help gain the attention of the media and reviewers.
7. Contacts Page:
When you have created your website, you also want people to contact you, people like reviewers, agents, media, publicists, and others who provide opportunities. On the contacts page of your website, include your phone number, email address, etc. at which these people can contact you.
Parting Words
An author website is one of the best and most opportune strategies to market a book or an author is through an author website. You can also utilize the benefits of social media marketing by linking your website with your social media accounts and pages. Just like a lot of people avail ghostwriting services for writing their books, you can also avail of an author website design service, like Webookx so you can focus better on writing your book.
FAQs
There are multiple ways to market an author, i.e. creating an official blog or website, using social media and hashtags, getting reviews, and increasing the author’s online presence to spread the word about them.
One of the most common ways authors market themselves is through social media. Becoming active on social media like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, and creating content that is specific for each platform, i.e. book trailers, book reviews, memes, etc.
Authors utilize websites for multiple purposes like grammar checks, self-publishing, assistance with writer’s block, promotion, hiring ghostwriters, etc. Some websites used for these purposes are Grammarly, Amazon KDP, The Write Life, LinkedIn, Fiverr, and many others.
Gwen Fisher
Your Personal eBook Writers! We Add Words to Your Story To Make Your Book Have An Impact Unlike Any Other