Our chapter of the Maryland Writers Association learned a great deal about author websites from Nate Hoffelder during a recent meeting. (Visit his site. He offers a free author website checklist!)
Do you have an author website? Well, if you don’t now, you probably will. What I won’t address in this post are the behind-the-scenes parts of website, such as hosting and which content management system to use. To be honest, I’m still learning that!
Why Have an Author Website?
We know that having a good website can help boost your book sales—something we’re all interested in doing. I should mention here that as Nate spoke about website design and what should and shouldn’t be included in an author website, I sank lower and lower in my seat. But that means I can only get better!
Ingram—actually Ingram Spark, their self-publishing arm—talks about the basics of what should be in an author website. The first thing to think about, they say, is what should your domain name be for your author website? For many of us, it’s simply our names. That’s what mine is. Of course, that only makes sense if you can purchase a domain with your name. But if your name is Jennifer Smith, you may find that already gone. Ingram also suggests that an author bio on the site is a must. Another must, according to Ingram Spark, is an author bio, so people get to know you.
Give Me a List!
Nate Hoffelder’s checklist helped me a lot. He highlighted both the author bio and the homepage. He isn’t the only one to emphasize the homepage. Writer Platform says that people should know within seconds what you do and what you write on your homepage. Hoffelder agrees. He also mentions other essential elements of an author website, such as a contact page and way to collect email address for a mailing list. But he goes even deeper on the mailing list. He insists that authors should include a freebie on their site that rewards folks who sign up. I’ve taken this to heart with my collegeandparents site. I will soon be offering a short eBook for people who sign up. This will encourage them to come back to the site more often and connect readers to my site as well.
Sites are split about whether you should have a blog or not. Some believe it gives people a reason to come back to your site again and again. Others don’t disagree, but worry that unless the blog is updated regularly—monthly is a good minimum—it may not be worth it. One reason Ingram Spark pushes blogs is they can help boost SEO rankings, and they require authors to keep their websites updated and active. Writer Platform also says that an author website “needs to not just be, but also needs to perform and respond. In theory, the website is a kind of living entity focusing on your books and writing, rather than a static page that doesn’t draw in your visitors. This is another reason to consider adding a blog to a website.
What You Don’t Need
Another element that Ingram suggests you don’t need is a separate author website for every series you write. That would be like me having separate websites for the Flight of the Raven, Stephanie Hart and Mitchell Street book series. No thank you! Better yet, Jane Friedman says, you can have pages within your author website dedicated to each series—once you’ve got them going. That’s more economical, and each page can be designed a little differently if the theme or genres of the novels isn’t the same.
Making it Happen
Some of the fixes for an author website aren’t hard to come by. We can all put together 100-300 word bios, or the text for a homepage that tells people what we do. More difficult is to work on design and navigation. This is one of the reasons to hire someone like Nate or others who can help make your author website work to support your writing. Sure, there’s a investment involved, but if we want better book sales or more invitations to speak, it just might be worth it.
