Want to know why you need an author website if you write books? You need it to have one of the most potent book marketing tools at your disposal – something you may have a hard time advancing as an author without.

It can help your brand and your books attract traffic from the search engines. If you have a website that is written well, organized, easy to read, easy to navigate and gives enough detail about yourself and perhaps your books, this in itself gives search engines the opportunity and a legitimate reason to list you in their rankings. Make sure to create strong keywords pertinent to your site – I recommend using Word Press for your site creation.

It holds everything in one spot for you. You can put the images and titles of all your books plus the links to them on one page. Peruse my published books page to see how you can do this well.

It makes it so easy to pull in readers from multiple angles. Link to your site through your social media posts addressed to your friends and relatives. Link to it through social media groups geared toward authors. Link to it through any online professional profiles you create. Link to it on book promotion sites. Link to it in emails to friends each time you publish a new book.

It enables you to create a personal connection with readers. List your email address. Link to all your social media account pages. Taking these steps helps readers follow you and ask questions they may have.

Finally, it makes it easy to run a reader newsletter subscription list which is the most powerful way to connect to customers – they read their email every day, more than they log into their social media accounts and pay attention to online ads. Hook readers into giving you their email address and signing up by offering a free content magnet that may be hard to resist such as a free book or a free chapter from one of the books you have written. Issue newsletter communication for each book you release and each time you welcome a new subscriber; the key is to touch base enough without being a pest.

These are all the reasons you need your own site.

There are many things you must do well to sell your books. Here are eight important components of hooking readers into buying your books.

Write quality content. Your content has to be free of typos and grammatical errors. Also, it must be well-structured and pleasant to read.

Ensure clarity. Make sure readers will understand what’s happening throughout your book. A great way to do this is to have a smooth transition between every scene, particularly if you’re writing a fiction story.

Proofread. After you finish writing the book, carefully read over everything you wrote or have someone else do it. When I proofread my works, I painstakingly look for errors, make sure I understand what I just read in each paragraph, make sure no paragraph is too long and make sure all paragraphs are double-spaced.

Edit. Correct each error you or someone else finds during the proofreading stage.

Have a good book cover. Your cover must look attractive. If you’re self-publishing your book and want to handle the cover yourself, please use Pixabay – they provide quality images you may use for personal or commercial use.

Write powerful blurb for fiction books. You can write well plus have a solid title and cover for your fiction book but it likely won’t do you any good unless you write a powerful blurb that is sure to prevent readers from bolting to the next book on sale. Strive to have at least four to five short but powerful paragraphs that are likely to build up enough intrigue; pay attention to the back covers of traditionally published books.

Keep in mind the probability of a preview for your book. Amazon provides a “look inside the book” preview feature for all books. If I see the book is full of long, single-spaced paragraphs or I become confused about what’s happening in the book while reading the preview, I won’t buy the book.

Promote your books rather than letting the market take care of everything for you. If you don’t promote or market, people can’t find your works.

You have learned key things to do as an author. Adhere to this advice to sell more books.

Writing books is a lot of work. You put a lot of time and effort into it.

You would surely hate it if nobody ever bought your book. Writing a book is hard enough; you don’t need the frustration and the feeling you wasted your time added on.

I have news for you; some people make the mistake of posting the image and title of their book on social media but not making it possible to actually find the book and buy it. It irritates me to click on the book image then not being able to find the book and preview it before perhaps buying it.

You may only get one chance to leave a lasting impression with each potential reader. Every time you post the title, image and description of your book, be sure to hyperlink the purchase link for your book into the promotion page.

Finally, promote your books through social media, Facebook writers groups, book promotion websites, your own author website and more. Not promoting your books makes it too hard for people to find them.

As they say, patience is a virtue. This is especially true for you as an author.

You’re likely to go through ups and downs on your book sales. There may be times when you make multiple sales in a month then go many months without selling one book.

The more books you write and the more you learn how to be a successful author, the more rewarding your writing career should be. The key is to hang in there.

Putting in time, even a few minutes, to spend writing your book during your first computer session for the day can be critical. The earlier in the day or evening you write, the more opportunity and will you have to complete a significant portion of your book.

If you wait until it’s almost time to go to bed to work on your project, you may not do any writing for the day at all. The earlier you add words to your book, the better.

I’m devoting the entirety of this post to deciding whether to write a fiction book you have on your mind for an important reason – it’s easier to make sales and generate sales for a nonfiction book consistently than it is for a fiction book. This is especially true if the nonfiction book is a self-help book or another book which is likely to appeal to a lot of people in your niche market, people who are likely to buy your book now.

Getting enough people to buy a fiction book you write is a different animal. Before you commence writing it, take these critical measures to help ensure you don’t waste your time writing, proofreading, editing, publishing and marketing it:

1) Spend at least a few minutes at your computer pondering whether you can truly make the book into a piece of work that someone other than perhaps a dedicated family member of yours will buy.

2) If you determine it’s worth it to pursue the project, spend considerable time coming up with a strong title for the book and think about how you can begin the book with an action scene likely to hook people into buying your story.

3) Devise a solid book description you can put into your “About the book” page and the blurb section of Amazon or anywhere else you choose to self-publish your work or submit it to a literary agent or publishing house for consideration.

As authors, we can only go so far without the aid of those we create our books for which is you, our precious readers. We can promote our books on social media sites and to book promotion sites and maybe even pick up some sales from it but without active promotional help from you the customer, it does us limited good.

When you buy our books then read them, you can help us go a long way by writing a brief but helpful review and sharing the links to our works to your friends and on your social media accounts. Thank you.

Writing books is just half the battle. To make this hard work worth your while, you must join the game, be a player and participate.

I’m suggesting you join groups related to writing and promoting your books on LinkedIn and Facebook. Hop to it.

I just completed my author website and am promoting it now. Besides listing all my books on this site, I provide writing tips here. I hope you get a lot out it in your quest to be entertained and grow as an author.