The first hurdle an author has to clear in terms of a website is the fear of being perceived. Don't laugh. It's a whole thing. We've lived most of our lives not being seen or attracting attention to ourselves. It's a bullshit cultural feature of patriarchy. It's pretty ingrained in most female presenting folks to NOT draw attention. Fortunately, an author website, hosted by a professional data center, offers you any number of layers for protecting yourself while promoting your writing.
The second hurdle is getting past feeling like the website has to be utterly and completely perfect for ever and ever. Literally, the only thing your website needs to do is identify you and your books. It's a communication tool and a landing spot for anyone curious about what you write. The most likely scenario for someone visiting your website is that someone found one of your books and they want to look you up to see what else you have. You can make it as fancy and as involved as you like, but don't think you need fancy for your site to succeed. Your only goal is to create a welcoming place for readers to find out more about your writing and books.
DO:
- Design a site that reflects you. Not just your first book. Or your second.
- List and describe all your books.
- Include multiple buy links.
- Keep the site up to date with new releases and buy links.
DON'T
- Offer any information that could be used to locate you physically.
- Think you have to build a site all by yourself. You can and should hire out the site unless you're trained or a total control freak. (And then, I'll ask if your time could be more profitably used by writing rather than coding a website.)
- Force yourself to add something to your website that makes you uncomfortable. You won't find a link to a newsletter on my website anymore because my god I hate sending newsletters. Hates it. So I stopped. And Mail Chimp fired me as a customer. So.
Websites are necessary and help you welcome readers to your work. In a perfect world, the design of the website will reflect your writing persona to some extent. At the end of the day, though, there's no need to spend a ton of money. The fancier the website, the more expensive and time consuming it will be to maintain. Keeping it Simple Silly has its benefits.
