You Don’t Need a Website…If You Don’t Want to Sell Books
When it’s so tough to squeeze writing and editing time into your already busy life, having to maintain a website, too, seems out of the question. Besides, there’s Amazon or the publisher. Let them handle the website stuff, you may think.
Well, you might want to think again. Here are some reasons why having your own website is so important:
Underscore Your Legitimacy
If a doctor handed you a scrap of notebook paper with her credentials written on it in crayon, would you let her operate on you? Of course not! When there are professional associations who evaluate doctors, a crayoned review hardly inspires confidence.
Having your own, up-to-date, website says that you are serious about your career as an author and intend to have readers take you seriously as well.
Provide Materials and Answers 24/7
Your website can also serve as a tool. Post a couple versions of your bio there, a short one and a longer one, for reporters, bloggers and event organizers to download. Information about your books with cover images can also be pre-written and made available. Whenever someone asks for a blurb, just send them the link. And don’t forget to have a contact page so interviewers can reach you.
You could also sell books from your site, but if don’t want to handle fulfillment yourself, you can link to the outside sales pages, emphasizing the ones that pay you the most.
Control Your Own Image
Amazon has its Author Central and Facebook has its About page, but you’re playing their game with their rules. On your own website, you can post whatever you want in whatever layout you want. No one will change the format on you without your permission or decide for you who gets to see it. It’s your game and your rules.
Interact with Your Readers
Social media certainly has a place in book marketing, but the format is intentionally transient. A website lets you provide richer content than social media platforms allow and lets you control the conversation better so you can build more meaningful relationships.
Build a Foundation
Over time, your website becomes a time capsule. In addition to promoting what events are coming up, you’ll have a list of the events you’ve already attended. You can also add photos and reviews of those events in blog posts, once again underlining the fact that you are a serious, in-demand author.
Because every page is about you and your books, your website will become the top result in search engines when someone googles you rather than that old news article with the truly horrible candid photo.
With a new book being uploaded on Amazon every five minutes, authors need all the help they can get to differentiate themselves. It doesn’t have to be complex or extensive, but as you can see, every writer should invest in a website and be the ruler of their own domain name.
Photo by Tara Winstead