Do You Need an Author Website?
Many authors don’t think they need a website because they think they should rely on social media, book venues such as Amazon, or their publishers. Relying on outside websites doesn’t help you build your audience, even though it may be bringing you some sales. In order to build your own personal audience you need to have your own website.
Your author website is your personal space on the internet.
You own your author website and it’s where you can engage and interact with your audience. It doesn’t matter if you have published traditionally or you’re an indie publisher, these days you need to be a part of your own book marketing. This gives your audience a place to find you, relate to you, and form a more trusting relationship with you, all of which increase their loyalty to you, and increases your sales.
Using social media platforms to advertise your book is great, but when you engage your audience on your own platform, you’ll see amazing results. As you consistently build your website content, relevant to your audience, you’ll create your own community and there’s nothing that increases sales more than a loyal, growing, community of fans in one place.
Your entire audience isn’t on Twitter, or Facebook, or any other social media platform.
In fact, there may be many would-be fans who won’t see you on any social media platform because they use it very little or not at all. I know it’s hard to imagine these days, but it’s true – not everyone is on social media. But, if you have your own website, you have a base where these people can still engage with you through email and your blog.
The basics you need for your author websites:
- an email newsletter
- a blog
- free downloads
- feedback from your audience
- links to sell your books
There are many other things you could add to your author website, depending on your genre, but these are the basics.
To read more about website marketing materials for children’s book authors READ HERE.
Now, you may look at that and think that maybe you don’t have time or that it’s too complicated, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, it is work and takes time, but ask yourself whether you want to be a full-time author or not. Is it the career you want? Then decide how much effort you want to put into it.
Setting up an author website is super easy and can be up and running in under an hour.
These are the things you need for that:
- a domain name – never use a free one
- hosting
- free WordPress installation
- a theme – can be free or paid
- a couple free WordPress plugins
That’s it – then you simply add pages from your WordPress administration account, start writing, and adding content.
Yes, there are a lot more things you can add later to spruce things up and get your visitors engaged and signed up for your email list, connect your social media accounts and such, but you can read about that more later.
As an author you need to have your own author website as a home base where your audience can engage with you and where you can grow an email list of your loyal fans, even if they aren’t on social media. This also makes it easier on you in some ways because then your audience is coming to you more rather than missing your tweets and posts in their social media feeds.
If you have any questions at all regarding domains, hosting, WordPress installation, WordPress use, plugins, or anything else regarding this post, please do not hesitate to contact me. I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions you may have!
Have an awesome day!
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