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.