An Author Website is Your Ultimate Marketing Tool: Here’s Why
In this digital age having a website is a must for authors who want to build their online presence, promote their books, and reach a larger audience. What many authors don’t realize is that an author website can be their ultimate marketing tool. In this article, An Author Website is Your Ultimate Marketing Tool: Here’s Why, we’ll take a look at the key elements of an effective author website. We will cover the benefits of having an author website, what to include in an author website, and tips for designing an effective author website. So, if you’re an author who is ready to take your career to the next level, let’s get started.
Benefits Of Having An Author Website
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Having A Home Base For Your Author Platform
Having an author website gives you a home base for your author platform. Websites provide a secure, permanent platform where you can publish content like blog posts, videos, audio podcasts, and more. It is a stable space to publish all your upcoming events and news releases about your upcoming books. A website is an author's home base/hub that all the other social media can funnel readers to.
An author platform includes everything that you do both online and offline to promote and create awareness about who you are, your brand, and your books. It is how you connect with and build your audience. That way, when it is time for you to announce that your next book is ready for pre-orders, you have raving fans who are excited and can't wait to purchase your novel.
If you would like to learn more about author platforms check out our blog post: What is an Author Platform and Why Do Writers Need One?
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Websites Help Authors Build A Professional Online Presence
Author websites are useful in helping authors build up their credentials as a professional writer. Having an author website is a sign to publishers and readers that this author is serious about building a career as an author and is not just a hobbyist. Author websites take money and time to create so it is a great way of showing people that you are serious about your writing career.
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Increases Chance Of Being Discovered Online By New Readers
Having an author website is a fantastic way to boost your visibility and reach as an author. The more blog posts you write and the more website pages that you create on your site can help increase the number of people discovering your website and help you as an author expand your audience. The more eyes on your website the more likely you are to have people purchases your books.
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Author Websites Allow Authors To Control The Look Of Their Brand
People are visual and can tell a lot about an author by the look and feel of their website. Authors can create their website to reflect who they are as an author/their author brand. A reader coming to your website can make a decision on whether to buy your book or not based on how well they connect to an author's brand.
For example, if a reader that wants to read a sweet romance goes on a website and the tone of the site is dark and suspenseful feeling the reader might bounce to a different author's website that reflects what they are looking for. Whatever genre you write, you will want to make sure that your website reflects that.
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Ability To Sell Books And Merchandise Directly
Having your own author website gives you the ability to sell books and merchandise directly to your readers without any middleman. When selling books through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online distributors, they take a cut of your profits. By selling Ebooks directly through your website you can make 100% of your profits. You can set up payment software plugins where you can accept credit cards and have the book delivered to your readers immediately after payment. You can also create fun merch stores selling products with quotes and sayings from your books on them to bring in additional revenue. Having more ways of bringing in money is a massive help to authors who want to make writing their full-time job.
Example:
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Websites Offer A Way For Authors To Directly Communicate With Their Readers
Social media platforms rise in popularity and then fall. Changing algorithms block people from organically seeing your posts. By having your own author website, you are no longer being ruled by the changing algorithm currents for people to see your posts. Having a website, blog, and email newsletter is the best way to share information with your readers.
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Website Tools Give Authors A Chance To Collect Analytics And Data
Website tools give authors the opportunity to learn more about their readers and create content that resonates with their audience. Using analytics and the data available to them through their author websites can help writers better understand what content brings in more traffic. Authors can then create more content that is effective in bringing readers to their site. Website analytics can help authors keep track of what content is helping them get more email subscribers and what pages help them sell more books.
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Author Sites Open Up More Opportunities For Media Coverage And Interviews
Having an author site can open up more opportunities for media coverage and interviews. When you have your own website, you can provide the press with a good look at what you do as an author. At a glance, they can read your professional biography and get a preview of your published books. This can make it easier for journalists and editors to decide whether you’re a good fit for the types of pieces they’re looking for, resulting in more coverage and ultimately increased exposure for your books.
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Having An Author Website With A Blog Is A Great Way To Network With Other Writers
Another benefit of having an author website is that you gain the ability to easily network with other authors. You can feature other authors on your blog, conduct interviews, and then they can return the favor and feature you on their blogs. Just the fact that you have an author website opens up so many more opportunities to help you grow your audience and expand your reach.
What To Include On Your Author Website
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Books Page
On your author website, you will want to make sure that you have a book page for your books. When first starting, it is okay to have all your books with their book descriptions on one page but as you publish more books it will be best to give each individual book its own book page with one overall book page that links to each book.
Examples below of a multi book page that links to a single book page.
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Author Bio
Every author website needs an author bio that bloggers and people interviewing you about your books can grab. It is good to have on your author's website both a longer bio and a short bio so interviewers can choose which one they would like to use. In some blog interviews, there is room for a longer author bio while in other instances, especially when multiple authors are being interviewed in a blog post, the shorter bio is used. Long and short bios are also used in numerous other ways from podcasts, press releases, and much more.
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Author Headshots
On your author website, it is good to have a variety of different headshots on your media or press kit page. Having a selection of different vertical and horizontal images gives interviewers options on what images to use of you in their blog posts or articles. It is also a good idea to include black-and-white headshot options in the selection for newspapers and print articles where they may not want a color image. Its good to make sure that your headshots have at least a 300dpi resolution so they are nice and clear. It is easy for people to scale down a larger image compared to downloading one that is too small and pixelated.
Examples:
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Media/Press Kit
A media kit page, also known as a press kit page, is essential for authors. This page has lots of important information about you that interviewers will need. This is one centralized location that you can share with people who are doing book reviews or author interviews on you. Whether that interview is on a Blog, TV, Radio, Podcast, or in the Newspaper, having a media kit is a one-stop shop where the interviewers can grab your headshot, latest book cover, and either your long or short bio. It is easy to just send people a link to your media kit page. Every time you have a book release or a book signing or interview it helps to already have the information available.
Click to see a Media Kit Page Example: https://darlenepanzera.com/media/
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Blog Page
Having a blog page on an author's website is a must. You need a space to interview other authors and post your own content to keep your audience updated. Blog pages are a great way to keep adding fresh content to your site to attract new readers to your site. Blog posts are huge for helping grow website traffic. Having consistent blogs helps build brand authority which in turn also helps your website rank better in search engines so that you are easy to find.
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Contact Page
Contact pages are another crucial part of author websites. You will want a contact page for people who wish to collaborate with you, interview you, or want to send you a nice message about how much they loved your books. As a writer, you are a business professional and people need a way to reach you. A quick way for people to get in touch is through your website's contact page.
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Events Page
Having an events page on your author website makes it really simple for readers to find out when your next event is. You can have a calendar or just a list of when you have upcoming speaking engagements, book signings, book launch parties, or other book events that you are doing. This page on your website can have the fun details of your events and you can link to this page from your email newsletter.
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Newsletter Sign-up Page or Popup
On your author website, you will want a newsletter signup page, email signup pop-up, or both. An email newsletter signup page is an invaluable tool to help authors grow their email lists. Emails are one of the best ways for authors to reach their readers and let their audience know when upcoming book releases and other events are happening. Having an email newsletter signup pop-up, or page makes it simple for readers to signup to stay connected.
You may want to check out our other blog posts:
Tips For Designing An Effective Author Website
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Create A Self-Hosted WordPress Website
A self-hosted WordPress site is built using the WordPress content management system also known as (CMS). A self-hosted WordPress site is hosted on private servers by a hosting provider of your choosing. We recommend Bluehost. You purchase your own domain name and hosting provider and have full control over every aspect of your website. You can upload different themes and plugins to your site and can fully customize your site. With a self-hosted WordPress site, you have full control of the look and feel of your website and have the ability to monetize your website with ads, stores, sponsorships, and numerous other methods.
This self-hosted WordPress site uses WordPress.org open source software where you create your own site, which you should not confuse with WordPress.com. Many authors make the mistake of typing in WordPress.com and starting a site there. This is a mistake. WordPress.com is a service that helps you build your site but you do not have full control over everything and it is completely different from a self-hosted WordPress site using the wordpress.org software.
It is best to create a self-hosted site by purchasing your own hosting and domain name. Create your site through the hosting C-Panel. For example, on Bluehost, there is a big Install WordPress button where you can start creating your self-hosted site after you have purchased your domain name and hosting.
Domain names are often your first and last name, pen name, or have the word Author or Writer attached.
Examples:
http://FirstnameLastname.com or http://AuthorFirstnameLastname.com
Example:
Darlene Panzera's Website domain name is just her first and last name. https://darlenepanzera.com
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Design Your Website So It Is Simple And Easy To Navigate
Try to keep the design of your website as simple as possible. All too often authors try to create a website that is a little too fancy and they end up making their website hard for the reader to navigate. Having too many bright colors or weird layouts can confuse readers and make them leave the page. Look at other professional website designs on the web and try to pick a clean simple design that fits your author brand but is still easy for the viewer to navigate around.
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Get A Professional Logo And Only Use High Quality Images On Your Site
Your author website reflects you as an author. Having a cheap-looking logo that looks like it was made in photoshop by a middle schooler is not the way to go. It is worth the money to invest in a professional graphic designer who can create a logo that you can use on all your marketing materials and your website.
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Learn SEO And Try To Write Meta Descriptions And Titles For Each Page
Another tip for creating an effective author website is to learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is how you help get people to find your website in the first place. On each blog post and blog page there are sections where you can enter the metadata for what text you want to show up on Google search for that page. You can enter your keywords and your featured image. You can enter Alt text, descriptions, and titles for your images. There are so many behind-the-scenes tools that you can use on your website to help your website become more searchable on the internet.
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Check And Make Sure That Your Website Looks Good On Mobile
In studies done based on data collected in 2021, about 55.73% of worldwide website traffic is from mobile devices while 40.68% is from desktop devices. If you design your website only to look good for desktop devices in this day and age you are missing out on over half of your potential viewers. Having a website that looks great on both phones and computers is critical to helping you sell more books.
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Keep Your Website Updated With Fresh Content
A great way of keeping your website updated with fresh content is by having a blog. By blogging regularly on your website you get content to share on social media and it is a way of keeping your website fresh in the algorithms.
We hope that this article An Author Website is Your Ultimate Marketing Tool: Here’s Why helps motivate you to get started on creating your own author website.
If you have any questions or would like to leave a comment below, we would love to hear from you!
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Samantha Panzera is an adventurous travel blogger, graphic designer, and multi-media business entrepreneur who uses the experience she’s gained over the years to teach aspiring writers the skills they need to build an author platform and take their careers to the next level.
