Your Author Website
On Fridays, Write Publish Sell features guest posts from the members of the Write Publish Sell group. Please join us for tons of great advice and information!
Today, we’re pleased to have Patricia Talavera sharing the five things every author needs to have on an author website.
5 Things You Need to Have on Your Author Website
By Patricia Talavera
I’ve spent a lot of time googling author websites. Partly because I’m a website designer and it’s a part of my research. And partly because I’d love to publish a book within a year so it doesn’t hurt to start getting some ideas for when the time comes.
Based on what I’ve seen, here are the must-haves for an author website:
1. About Section
This section is a good chance to let people know about you, people are on your site because they want to know more about you. Show off your personality and give them a peek behind the scenes. Why do you write what you do? Why did you become an author? If you have any relevant credentials you can include them here too.
This section doesn’t have to be super long, check out http://danbrown.com/#author-section. Just think about what you would want to see on your favorite author’s page and go from there.
2. Your Books
You want people to buy your books right? Make it easy for them by including links on your website. If you sell your books on an external site like Amazon you can still include a link to the page so you can direct your visitors to the right place. Amazon even provides images you can use, as you can see here: http://authortaroth.com/. She included a couple of images of her books then in the next section, she includes a link to the Amazon page.
3. Reviews
Do you have people who are constantly raving about your work? Ask them for permission to use their reviews on your website. Positive reviews will go a long way towards helping you make the sale.
4. Bonuses and Extras
Give people a reason to keep coming back to your website. Provide sneak peeks to your upcoming books, share videos of a recent event, or run a contest. You can even collect e-mail addresses so you can send newsletters and build relationships with your community.
5. Contact information
Make it easy to get in touch with you. Are you on Facebook or Instagram? Include the link so people can follow your account. You can also just use a generic contact form, submissions can be sent to directly your e-mail.
So now we’ve got the 5 must haves for your author website. Not sure what that looks like? Here’s a one-page author website we put together using the Divi theme by Elegant Themes:
Have questions about setting up your own one-page site? Enroll in our course for just $17! Get all the details here.
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