Author Website Basics

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AUTHOR WEBSITE BASICS

As you layout what you want on your website, the following pages should be considered. These pages should have as their goal to engage the public, encourage them to make a purchase, or take some action.


The opening page or home page is one of the most important pages on your site. This should have a picture of your book with a paragraph or two giving a book description. Depending on the space that you have, you can include reviews or show other books you’ve written.
Place a Buy Now button immediately under the book. There should also be a link to where the reader can ‘read more’ about the book or read ‘behind the scenes’ information or something about the author.



Author’s bio page or the ‘About the Author’ page or the ‘About Me’ page. At any rate…it is the page where you showcase yourself. If you don’t have a great picture of yourself…GET ONE. Nothing is worse than a poorly lit, out of focus picture that your Aunt Sue took while you were on vacation three years ago.
Be professional and resist putting up pictures that your particular readership wouldn’t appreciate or would be turned off by. Links to social media should appear on all of your pages. This way a reader can express their liking for your book or your web site page to the world or even to use them as a way of keeping in touch with what you’re doing.


Reviews/Media Page, this page needs to have a listing of reviews from various places. A good rule of thumb is to have reviews from all over the US (and abroad if possible). This shows a wide demographic interest in your work. Additionally, anyone who is interested in possibly interviewing you or having you as a featured speaker will come to this page to see what others have thought about you and to access your press kit.


Events Page, this is where you will list places or events that you will be appearing or attending in some fashion. These things may include, an on line interview or a hang out in Google Plus or a book signing or attending a conference. This page should not be made viewable until you actually have some events scheduled. Nothing is worse than viewing an events page only to find out that the author isn’t going anywhere or doing anything! Other events could include anything from workshops, to podcasts, to Twitter parties.


Blog, there are some that may say that a blog is not a basic requirement for an author’s website. However, the benefits outweigh the burden of keeping one going. If writing blog posts is not your thing, and you don’t want to spend the time creating them, this is one of the most out-sourceable projects you can do. Many fine writers exist who can create 25-50 articles on topics pertaining to anything, for as little as $5/article. Worth it if you want to save yourself time. Plan to post and update the blog content regularly. This will position you higher in the search engines, on the internet, content is King.





Contact Page. This seems like a no-brainer, but in reality, new authors leave this part out, put it in there. It is a simple page to create with just a few sentences explaining how people can contact you. Do yourself a favor and create an email address that doesn’t have the ‘gmail’, ‘hotmail’ or ‘yahoo’ extension. It is more professional to email someone at author@author.com