Before You Launch Your Author Website: How to Avoid Long-Term Mistakes

author website

As I’ve written repeatedly in the past, an author website is a long-term investment in your publishing career. It should be something you own and control, and that grows with you from title to title. To accomplish that, here are three ways to avoid long-term pain and suffering if you’re preparing to establish your first author website.

1. Buy a domain based on your author name, not your book title.

Let’s assume you plan to write more than one title during your career. You don’t want to be in the position of either creating an entirely new website when your next book releases, or entirely redesigning your site because it’s focused on just one title.

Authors build brand equity with each new title they release. A website built on your author name helps develop name recognition with readers and the industry—as well as search engines!

Possible exceptions

Sometimes an author releases a book that’s meant to become a recognizable brand unto itself. Pottermore is an example of that—although keep in mind that series didn’t have its own website until quite late in the game.

Other times, an author or publisher wants to develop a unique online experience of the book. Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon has its own site here—it offers special functionality and interactivity that would be hard to incorporate into your average author site. (But note that the author site is not replaced by a book-specific site. Here’s Andrew Solomon’s author site.)

Honestly, though, few books benefit from this type of treatment or even merit it. It takes tremendous marketing effort to see a book-based website take off; if you’re not planning to invest years in it, focus on launching or improving your author website instead.

2. If you’re not going to blog, choose the right platform or theme, and modify your settings accordingly.

Wordpress Reading Settings

Two of the most popular and free website-building platforms for authors (Blogger and WordPress) tend to put blogging front and center. But most authors either aren’t actively blogging and/or shouldn’t focus their homepage on blog posts.

The good news is that it’s easy to modify WordPress site settings to disappear the blog altogether. (Go to Reading Settings, and under Posts page, choose —Select— if you won’t be blogging.) Also, you can look for a theme that makes it easy to build a beautiful homepage focused on your books.

I don’t recommend using Blogger for author websites unless you intend to be very blogging focused.

3. Install Google Analytics and Use Google Search Console From the Start

Google Analytics tracks and reports your website traffic. The tool is free and only requires that you have a Google account in order to get started. It’s best to install it from the very beginning even if you don’t see a need for it; Google Analytics starts tracking on the day it’s installed and can’t be applied retroactively. Most authors, once they’re a couple years in, want and can benefit from the data that Google Analytics offers.

Something not done as often, but that’s also valuable, is registering/claiming your site through Google Search Console. You can connect Google Search Console and Google Analytics for improved reporting. While Google Search Console is more advanced than what most authors will be able to understand, it still offers functionality you’ll want over the long term. In the short term, use it to send you alerts when Google has problems properly indexing/accessing your site for search purposes.


For those of you who’ve dealt with website maintenance for a long time: What do you wish you knew from the start? Anything you’d like a “do over” on? Let us know in the comments.

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[…] 3 ways to avoid long-term pain and suffering if you're preparing to launch your first author website.  […]

CMSmith

Thanks for this helpful post. What information does Google Analytics provide that WordPress stats don’t?

CMSmith

Thanks.

Alexis

I want to add – make sure you are going to be happy with and adore your domain name for years to come. This can be tough (because who knows what will happen in the future) and likely makes just going with your author name the safest bet. Why is this important?

Because changing your name later is a painful and expensive process. I’m in the midst of doing this (necessary and unavoidable) to the tune of hundreds of dollars (for technical support, 301 redirects, graphic design) and likely a ~20% short-run drop in Google traffic (time will tell). As I said – painful.

So consider that you’re making a decision you will have to live with for a long time!

Jeff Emmerson (@Beyond_ADHD)

I’m sure glad that my wife happens to own a digital marketing agency right about now! Great basic advice, Jane! Thank you.

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[…] Before You Launch Your Author Website (Jane Friedman) An author website is a long-term investment in your publishing career. It should be something you own and control, and that grows with you from title to title. To accomplish that, publishing consultant Jane Friedman provides three ways to avoid long-term pain and suffering if you’re preparing to establish your first author website. […]

Michael W. Perry

Good advice but for one glitch. Some of us are juggling so much what with writing, editing and publishing, we resent the burden of managing a website even with the benefits of WordPress, which I have tried. We want something less less taxing on our tired minds.

There is good news for those of us who’ve grown weary of learning yet more technology, at least if your publishing side includes using Adobe’s Creative Cloud.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud has had Behance from Day One and that makes it easy-peasy for those using their apps to post illustrations of what they’ve created online as their portfolio. Here’s mine:

http://inklingbooks.prosite.com

It might be intended for illustrators and photographers, but it adapts quite well to books.

—-

Well, Adobe has just announced that Behance is being expanded to include more webpage-like features. It will be called Adobe Portfolio. It’ll be free, hosting and all, if you have any Creative Cloud plan. Here’s a review comparing it to the pricey but easy website hosting service Squarespace.

http://www.creativebloq.com/adobe/behance-takes-squarespace-new-portfolio-tool-101517091

And here’s the Adobe link.

https://www.myportfolio.com

Rest assured that, because it is Adobe, it will be beautiful. Adobe’s clients would tolerate no less. And it will display well on every size screen.

That isn’t all. Adobe already offers another benefit for those of us who create books that would benefit from reviews or from samples being sent to professors. I’ve got a series of such books that are primarily for nursing students and nurses. Adobe has a feature built into InDesign that lets me post a version of those books that’s virtually identical to the print version. Look at one example and estimate how long it took me to create it. Click on the right of the webpage and an arrow will let you page through the book.

https://indd.adobe.com/view/c1892142-ecf8-4621-a7a9-eee8f0ce19ab

Answer: It took me about a minute. It’s a simple export from InDesign that automatically sets up the hosting webpage. Promoting the book will cost nothing. All I need do is provide a professor or reviewer with that security-through-obsurity web address. And try to copy that page like someone who might want to steal your book. You can’t. It’s an image of the page not the text itself. Your hard work can be reviewed without being stolen. That makes publicity easy and cheap. You can even post a sample of the book there and include it on theAdobe Portfolio webpage for that book.

I’m not saying authors shouldn’t go with WordPress for their author site. But if they’re not interested in adding webmaster to their resume, there are other options.

–Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books

michaelforesterauthor

Very helpful advice – thank you

betsymiller2013

I found WordPress too difficult to set up (even the non-technical version) because it’s menus are so text based. I used Weebly (www.weebly.com), which has a more visual drag and drop UI for building a site. If cost is a consideration, for a basic author presence, you might be okay using a URL that’s hosted through someone else. I use http://betsymillerbooks.weebly.com, which is free because it includes “weebly” in the URL, but readers can and do find me and contact me. I could buy betsymiller.com, but I haven’t. My readers don’t cross over much because I mainly write nonfiction children’s health books, so parents buy only the title that applies to their child. I’m just starting to use a pen name for my speculative fiction writing, so I’ll be creating a separate author platform for that as well.

Jane Friedman

I hear from many non-techie writers that they like Weebly and Wix as website building platforms and hosts. However, I don’t like to recommend either—for too many reasons that I won’t go into here that are easy for people to dismiss when they feel WordPress is a headache.

I think the best alternative to WordPress is SquareSpace, but it does require a monthly fee. However, I think the fee is well worth it when you consider the quality, value, flexibility, and longevity of the platform you’re building on. I believe in being picky about the foundation and environment on which you build. Think 10 years out: will it still be there and adapting to your changing needs, your growing career, and/or the evolution of web design?

betsymiller2013

Hi Jane,
What I have now has been working for a number of years because I can manage it myself and it is free. My main income is from tech writing (work for hire). I’m somewhat technical in that I use an html editor and Adobe desktop publishing tools in my day job–but there’s something about WordPress that I really hate. My books are niche books, so it makes sense for me to watch my monthly costs. Mainly, my reader connections are through online support groups for the children’s health issues covered in my books. Most readers find my books when searching for topics and from word of mouth, because each is the only trade paperback available for the children’s health topic that it covers (hip dysplasia, clubfoot, and Perthes). I have a children’s picture book in development for preschoolers about a bunny who loves to hop and wears a foot brace at night, and a YA novel about a teen who loves to dance and needs hip surgery, and I’ll begin co-authoring another non-fiction children’s health book next year. I’m making my best effort to write the fiction titles to have general appeal (will try to grow beyond the niche). As each fiction title goes live, I’ll revisit my website and see if it’s time to invest in upgrading it. I’ve started using a pen name for my speculative fiction stories, which are fantasy/horror and completely unrelated to children’s health.I realize from a marketing perspective, what I’m doing is not very strategic, but I write the way I read–in lots of different genres. 🙂

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[…] web is a valuable tool for marketing, but it is also fraught with pitfalls. Jane Friedman shows 3 ways to avoid long-term problems with your author website, Chris Syme explains how to avoid social media advertising scams, and Frances Caballo lists 11 ways […]

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