Ten Tools to Make Your Author Website a Success
By: Guy New York
Tags: Authors, Writing, Self Publishing, Web Development, Writers

Almost exactly a year ago I decided that I had to get serious about my author site. I’d written three dozen books (a broad term in the world of erotica, I know) and close to a thousand short stories, but my site was outdated to say the least. And on a phone or tablet, it was a shitshow.

While I enjoy social media, it wasn’t necessarily driving the traffic I needed to make sales. I needed a home base, something that was mine, and something that I could feel proud of sharing.

It was a lot of work to set the damn thing up. There is no way around that, whether you’re doing it yourself or hiring someone else, it’s going to take time and work. But if you build it right the first time, you’ll have a far easier job going forward.

After a year’s work (I also wrote a few more novels and some other things in there, so don’t stress too much) I have stories with pictures up in eight different categories. I have my books broken out into specific genres, and I’m selling bundles and packages directly to my readers without having to go through the big retailers. I can easily add stories, posts, and new books without too much work, and lo and behold it’s starting to work!

While not bringing in millions of viewers, I’m building an audience all the same, and there were a few tools and tricks that helped me do it.

Here’s a list of the things I highly recommend:

Wordpress is the way to go. You probably know this, but aside from ease of use, there is literally a plugin for anything you could want to do. It gives you a huge amount of control without too much hassle and if you need help there are thousands of freelancers who know it like the back of their hand. (As a note I use the Divi theme from Elegant Themes and I love it) Sell books directly to your readers. While I don’t want to be in the business of packing up print books and attaching mailing labels, selling e-books is a no-brainer. Mostly because you get 100% of the royalties, which is pretty damn nice. I use SendOwl, which allows me to make nice and simple purchase pages, all of which goes through Paypal. I get paid instantly, and my readers can get exactly what they want. Photos are a necessity. In the last few years a couple of free stock photos sites (as in truly, 100% free) have popped up and they’ve become invaluable. Unsplash.com and Pexels.com both have a huge amount of images which are flirty, sexy and fun without being over the top cheesy. The quality of work is remarkable. Amazon Previews. From any given book page on Amazon, you can get a shortcode to let people preview your book via your own site. In the right-hand bottom corner, under the purchase information is an Embed button. Click it for your book, then choose Embed on your site and you’re ready to go. You can cut and paste the code into a WordPress page or post and voila! The cover will appear with buttons to lead your readers preview and also purchase your books. If you have an Amazon affiliate code, it will also insert that for you. Email lists are essential. I’m particularly bad about doing this, but that doesn’t mean you should be also. If you don’t want to have a pop-up window, display the signup clearly and often. If you offer a free book or story, you’ll get a hell of a lot more signups. Group books together. Even if you don’t have giant bundles on Amazon, you can easily put three, four, or five books into one zip file and let users buy them all via SendOwl. It lets you offer a discount while still making a bigger profit than via retailers. Have three books in a series? Sell them all at once for less than their combined price. Have six books in on genre? Do the same thing. Make it easy to buy! Whatever you do, make sure people can easily buy your books. Whether it’s links to Amazon at the top and bottom of each book page or your own download buttons, there is nothing more frustrating to a visitor than wanting to buy your book and not knowing how. Don’t make them guess. Make generous use of your reviews. If people have said nice things about your books, then make it damn obvious. Make it big and bold, and make it very clear which book it’s about and where the review came from. It’s always better to have someone else sell your books for you than to do it yourself. Free content is your friend. While I don’t think you should give your books away, excerpts, short stories, and full chapters are a great way to fill your blog, improve SEO, and get folks interested in what you have to say. If you’re a writer, chances are you have a ton of stuff lying around not being utilized as a sales tool. And finally, be yourself. We all love to feel like we know the artists we like, whether it’s an actor, a musician or a writer. So add some personality to your site. Sure, people are largely there for your writing, but they want to know who you are too. While you don’t need to share your breakfast every morning, a strong sense of self can go a long way.

Now that it’s all up and chugging along it’s still a lot of work, and as writers, we mostly want to be writing. But we all have downtime, and at least for me shifting my brain into “updating mode” is a nice break from “creative mode.”

Keep things interesting, change things up, and have fun. It should not be your focus as a writer, but if you put the hard work into it, I suspect you’ll find it pays off.

You can see my effort over at www.guynewyork.com