Well you’re reading this on my author website, so my answer is an obvious yes. It can be time consuming and to the novice a little overwhelming, but a website is an essential asset for any author. In short, a good author website will:
- Give visitors a complete bibliography of your work
- Provide a space you control to promote and market your books
- Tie together your online presence
- Present a provable track record within the industry
- Show you’re a professional and take writing seriously
- Act as a portfolio for prospective agents and publishers
In this tech-savvy age, websites are the primary source readers find out about authors and their work. A website with good SEO (search engine optimisation) and carefully selected keywords and keyphrases can rocket your site to the top of a google search. And a website needn’t be pricey. A free provider popular among writers can be found at WordPess, and Squarespace is an affordable and elegant website service. There’re many more available.
Work it, baby!
So what’s in it for you? Many readers who have stumbled across your work and like it will google you. If you’re smart you can capitalise on this attention in any number of ways. A minimum of what they expect to find is a one–stop–shop list of your works, but what else can you give them? The most important thing—for you and for them—is to have an opt-in email list. People are forgetful. While they’re interested in your books, provide for them a simple way to be notified of forthcoming titles and you’ve likely bagged a future sale. And until you’re recognised as the shit-hot international superstar you are, newly published authors need to hand–sell every book.
What else, you ask? Besides telling people a little bit about yourself, a website is the best place to collect together any accolades and testimonials relating to you your writing. Newby authors; don’t worry. If you’re in it for the long haul and working your ass off to promote your work, these bragging rites will slowly build up. Reviews on amazon or other websites, literary magazine publications, positive tweets or posts: bundle them together and show the world the buzz you’re creating.
The bigger picture
Your website is central to your brand as a writer. It should be the hub to which your social media presences all point back to. If you’ve done your homework and set up your website as best you can, the clicks from Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Youtube, et all could turn curiosity traffic into sales. Sales are good.
I’ve saved possibly the most important reason to have an author website till last. Many self–publishing evangelists may cry foul of this one... A well crafted website is essential to an author hoping to attract a legacy publishing deal. If you want to be signed to a publishing house and have books on shelves in Waterstones and Barnes & Noble, you need a very good website. If you want to convince an agency you’re worth investing in, an author platform is essential. And your author website is the foundation on which your online presence – your author visibility – is most successfully built.
But whether you’re an indie self–publisher, a legacy chaser, or a hybrid author; the rules are the same. The bigger your online presence, the bigger the sales. A website can’t hurt, can it?
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