Author Websites

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You should have an author website if you are an author. You are in the business of selling books and you need to promote your books. A website can help with this. Don't rely solely on social media and your publisher. A website with a good domain name gives you a destination that is yours. You can tell people about it at signings and conventions. You can send people to it from your social media accounts. It can also be used in promotions, printed bookmarks, flyers, etc.

How you design your author website and what it contains will depend on the type of books you write. However, there are certain components that are consistent with all types of author websites that readers will be looking for, such as an author bio and a list of your books.

A great way to decide what your author website needs is to look at the websites of authors that write books similar to yours. Your author website will need similar components but not necessarily all of them. You might also decide to have some features on your website that you don't see on the websites of your fellow competing authors.

Essential Components

The most basic needs of an author website are information about the author and information about the author's books.

Optional Components Website Maintenance

An important thing to keep in mind with an author website is the concept of website maintenance. Any website feature you add that requires new content will ultimately become a demand on your time. The more stuff you have on your site that you have to update the more work it will require. If you are paying people to update your site it will be more expensive the more maintenance it requires. Even if you are paying people you still have to keep an eye on it and approve or assist with at least some of the content creation for the site.