Let’s just start by saying this – HAVING AN AUTHOR WEBSITE IS CRUCIAL NOWADAYS!
Your author's website is important, serious, urgent, essential, and necessary! Your author's website can build your path up to success or down to failure!
So, let’s dive deep into the author's website creation and the purposes it has.
For your author website, it is paramount to include information about you – who you are, what you write, the name of your book or books. Literally, you can put anything you like on your author's website.
However - you can post some pictures and give a little bit more info about yourself – things like education, personal and professional achievements as well, but remember that you have to keep the reader engaged. Saying too much, being too explicit might serve you bad and the reader will just skip all of that information and might even exit your website. Bear in mind that your website is your book sales marketing – it has to grab attention, advertise, and most important to sell your book. It is always a good idea to start with the author’s biography, which means that you can share your work experience and education, some previously published works, for example, and a bit of information about you, personally.
Actually, it would be best if you consider having all of the following points we are going to go through.
These days, most people use their mobile phones or tablets to browse the internet, that’s why it is very important if your author's website is mobile-friendly and well-organized. Moreover, if your author's website is mobile-friendly and responsive, it will resize its layout to fit the device screen, making it pleasant and easy for visitors to search on your website.
Having said that, the next thing that comes in a row is the contact page. You should consider a contact page where you can place your contact information, making it easy for the visitors to get in touch with you. An easy-to-navigate contact page will encourage people to contact you and share their impressions or leave you feedback. You can choose to design your contact page by creating a contact form, which would be easy and simple to fill up by the visitors. Asking for too much information and details might frustrate people and they will just leave the page quickly. Remember to keep it clear and smooth to fill, because this is the right way to establish a relationship between you as an author and your reader.
The next step you should take is creating a book page – you can choose yourself which design would work best for you. For example, if you have written more than one book - you can list all of them on one page, adding a link to each title individually. And what is more important is that each book should have its own page where you can put a description, subtitle, publisher, book cover, and some book reviews. Of course, don’t forget to promote your books by mentioning the retailers that sell your books and the links to them, or even your agent’s contact information. Make it easy for the reader - one click only for the visitors to purchase your book straightaway.
Another thing that would be beneficial to add is social media links. You can always include a button “Follow me” somewhere on the page – at the top or at the bottom, because it should be accessible to readers, encouraging people to follow you. The more followers you have, the more traffic you will drive to your books and website.
Having listed all of the essential points a good author website should involve, we can now discuss some of the optional features.
To start with you can consider having a blog published on your website. You can share your experience about writing your first book or novel, sharing some tips about publishing your book – you can discuss anything that you like or are interested in.
Another thing that is worth considering is the newsletters - this is just another marketing tool that you can apply. You can use newsletters to share valuable information or planned sales – anything that can gain interest, but just keep it mostly about you or your novels. Also - purchasing a domain name will help your website to look more professional. Visitors will value the time and efforts you spend on your website.
To sum up – just keep it simple and clear with well-organized content. Constantly add and update the content on the website and this will guarantee you regular and loyal visitors.
We at BooksShelf offer Author Website Creation - please Contact Us for more information.