Does an Author Need a Website?

Well you have written that magnificent novel. You have polished; copy edited, and tweaked it until you could scream. When you start dreaming dialogue you are ready top proceed to the next step. Is building a website necessary? Chances are you are not computer savvy let alone web savvy. What should you do?

Most of us out in the real world have ideas, helpful hints, and downright good stories to tell. Only a few of you out there will pick up your pen or computer, and put it to paper. Those of you who do may never submit it to a publisher or magazine for fear of rejection. Those of you who manage to jump that emotional hurdle will eventually find acceptance. While you wait for your rejection or acceptance, start on your marketing for that precious piece of work you spent hours creating.

A website for an author is almost compulsory today. Years ago, we relied on the newspaper, word of mouth, and magazines to promote products, but today is another ballgame. If you want to be successful as an author, you need people to find your eBooks, paperbacks, and photo journals quickly and easily. Magazine articles help get your name out there as well. Today many of those are online instead of paper or do both.

Many of us grew up with a computer and mastered the word processing part of it with ease due to the ‘Help’ key and a few classes, but what about building your own website?

Several years ago if you didn’t write HTML, you were out of luck and your checkbook just got a great deal lighter if you wanted to proceed. Graphic designers were in short supply, and there was no such thing easy HTML software. Fortunately, for us things have changed. Anyone can have a website to promote themselves or their budding business for minimal cost. While you anxiously await good news on your novel or article, start promoting yourself with a new website. Your first step is to search free web design templates on the main search engines.

Websites such as Intuit or Free Website Templates. to name a couple have easily downloadable templates where you just fill in the information about yourself, and where to buy your products. Many of them even give you the ability to add shopping carts for check out, purchase of a domain name, email responders, PayPal and much more. If you can read, and follow directions, your website can be finished in a couple of hours. Try to make your domain name the same as your author or penname for people looking for your work.

Once you have the basics you will need to find a few keywords that will point individuals toward your website. Wordtracker is an excellent place to start. It is free, and you can find numerous words with the number of people who search for your specific words. This is imperative in today’s market to see what works best for you product. Keywords or meta tags in your software template are essential to your website traffic success.

Your website is now ready, and if you’ve purchased your domain name, you are ready to hit the ‘Publish’ button. You are now on the web. Make changes every other day even if it’s only a single word, and set your email to Google Alerts for your website and name. Don’t worry if you don’t show up on the search engines for a couple of weeks. Step One is now complete.