In this blog post, we will be considering whether you should have your own website as a self-publishing author – how important it is and what benefits it brings. You can also use your website for selling books directly to your readers, but this will need a lot of preparation. We will also consider how to utilise your website to the best effect more in a later blog post.
The first thing to consider is whether it is absolutely necessary to have a website as a self-publishing author. Of course, the simple answer is no, but having a website can offer you considerable advantages in terms of sales and reader loyalty. This may depend on what genre or type your book is, so research what other authors in your chosen area are doing to see what is typical. Do they have a website? A blog? Do they sell their books on their website?
Websites vs Social Media
Having your own website is not the same as running a successful Facebook page or similar – websites have a lot of advantages that social media doesn’t. For example, and possibly most importantly, you have a lot more control over your own website.
This is not just creative control (although we will come back to this), but also control over how long it lasts. Social media sites tend to come and go, so there is no guarantee that your page will always be there. Even if it is, your readers may well have moved to another social media site, so you will have lost the audience you spent so long building up. With your own website, you have a lot more influence to keep readers there – they are specifically there for your website, not the whole social media site.
Going back to creative control, remember that you don’t have any choice about Facebook (or whichever site you use) making a new user interface. Maybe this will suit your page better, or maybe not. The point is that you don’t get a say in any of this and there are limits to how much you can customise your page to make it attractive to your intended audience.
Having your own website should also make it easier to find for people who are likely to buy your books. As the creator of your website, you can optimise a landing page for your website for each of the search terms that you think people might use to find you or your books. This means that readers can easily find you and you have people that are genuinely interested in your book, rather than someone who just stumbled across your Facebook page.
You can, of course, still link to all of your social media pages from your website so that readers can interact with these as well. You might run some promotions on social media that you advertise on your website if you want to gain followers. This also works the other way around – be sure to include a link to your website on your social media. Just remember that you may not have time to develop all these platforms, so focus on your website first.
Blogging
One of the main advantages of running your own site is the ability to have a blog. A blog is an excellent way of connecting with your audience and giving updates on how new books are progressing. There are many different ways you can use it – for example, you can announce any promotions you are running, such as giveaways, reductions or bundles.
You can also give release dates on your blog, maybe including a countdown to the day. You can even include extracts or sneak peeks at the cover design during this countdown to build interest. If you already have an audience while you are still writing, give updates on this as well if you are happy to. You can tell them how many chapters you have completed, when editing starts and release the cover image. All of this keeps your audience feeling involved and connected, which should help you to build a loyal fanbase.
You can also use a blog to flesh out your book’s world if you are writing in the fiction genre. You could create character profiles or write short stories. This will help to make your book seem more immersive and keep your reader’s interest until the release date.
In addition, you may decide to have guest blog posts on your blog. This should help both of you – your guest’s loyal readers will look at your blog, while your readers discover your guest. Likewise, you may then be invited to do a guest post on someone else’s blog, which is another great opportunity to get more traffic.
Selling Books
Finally, you may decide to sell your books on your own website. This means that your readers should easily be able to find and buy the book they want, as well as allowing you to keep all of the profit, without needing to give a cut to a selling platform. However, remember that you will be solely responsible for keeping up with orders and distributing the books.
Wrapping Up
You can now see how helpful it is to have your own website as a self-published author and maybe even some new ways of using it. In my next blog post, we will be looking at some more ways to use your website, so come back in two weeks for that.
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