the web to find simple, quality author websites that resonate with you. In Chapter 11 we include a list of author sites we like. It’s better to forget about sites that divert attention with bells and whistles, shapes and colors, and fancy moving objects! Choose an author website because you quickly see and resonate with who the author is and what that author offers you. Identify sites where you find the easiest, most familiar route to get the information you need and where you can interact with that author.
Review as many author websites as you can, whether or not they are best-selling authors like Stephen King and Dan Brown, and choose one or two that come closest to your purpose. Start a list of the website components that work best, then integrate and customize these to craft your own site.
Take careful note of your competition. As you browse, it’s important to collect information on authors and sites who you consider to be your competitors. This will teach you about your own uniqueness as an author. In every book proposal form, publishers require authors to list the top three competing titles, indicating why your book would sell instead of, or in addition to, that title. It’s worth the time to think through this step: evaluate your own value addition as a publisher would, and you’ll be better positioned to grow your audience of book buyers. Look at what your competition is doing, define your value as different and unique to you, and enhance your website with that information.
Plan Essential Author Website Pages
While I was working on The NeXT Book (Addison-Wesley) I was able to watch the way Steve Jobs built his business; I was instilled with great respect for the universal appeal and power of simple, elegant design and equally clear, simple messages. We encourage you to keep to this philosophy of presenting simple elegance by including only the most necessary web pages on your author website. Here are the key author site pages to include.
1 Landing page: The initial page people land on when they click to your author website. First impressions are powerful! On this page, your readers should immediately “meet you” and see why they should take an interest in you and your book. We recommend that you use these first few seconds of your audience’s attention to present the following elements:Your photo: As you review author photos on a site like LinkedIn or on author websites and back covers of books, you will see that the professional-looking, straightforward full-face shots with shoulders work best as an introductory photo to your audience. Take a look at top author photos like Stephen King’s. A clean, clear, confident, professional-looking shot works best, whether it’s taken by a friend with talent or a pro photographer like Karen Sterling in New York who created Carole’s photo.Greeting: A “hello” type of greeting and a one-line tagline that tells in a nutshell who you are and what you’re up to. Welcome readers with a type of “Hi, I’m … and I’m a …” or just four memorable words about you in large type. Add a “Read More” phrase to go to an About page to tell all about you.Contact info: Now readers need to feel they can talk directly to you, so it’s best to show them how to reach you, on the footers of every page of your site and/or on a Contact page.Book cover photo: Include a few quick bullet points about the book’s value and a Read More link. For examples, take a look at the author sites listed in Chapter 11. Mike’s website includes the value points for WordPress in Depth (Que) such as “Become a smarter WordPress user!” and “Advice on choosing themes and plugins!” Then use the beauty of linking to get more information elsewhere; when readers click the photo image of your book, it should link immediately to your book website (Chapter 11) or to an About the Book page for more information, and include the all-important Buy Now button to take the user to Amazon or another website to purchase your book.Navigation tabs: Links that lead to your other website pages, listed below.Social networking buttons: Small buttons leading to your presence on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and all other social media networks where you can be found. These buttons demonstrate your social influence and allow your audience added interactivity.
2 Blog page: Covered in Chapter 2, your blog is the heartbeat of your author website. Your blog is your own online magazine, where you can spark engagement, interact, and build your author community. As an added plus, your blog builds new content to increase your findability, a big win all the way around. Keep your blog on your own author site; that way, you can keep your audience right where you want them.
3 Events page: This can also be called a Coming Soon page and includes a calendar of your author events online and in person, articles, current and future books, appearances, training, speaking engagements, podcast or video releases, webinar information, etc. When you keep your appearances and writing announcements under one roof, your audience can get a complete picture. Authors get boosted in visibility by making it easier for readers to find you and easier to follow you.
4 About the Author/Praise page: Start this page with biographical information. Tell your readers who you are and why you’re qualified to write about your topic. Once you’ve begun to gather an audience, then add your audience’s positive comments about you. After your book comes out, create a separate Praise page. Use comments from all social networks for this section, along with other positive reviews. There are many ways to collect praise, but if you don’t have a few positive comments already, wait to create and publish this page until you do. In the interim, find just one single positive quote from a satisfied reader or colleague to include on your home page. A single positive quote is powerful so you might want to keep one on your home page after you’ve created your Praise/Reviews page.
5 About the Book(s): (Optional) More information about your book if you are not planning to create a book website. As time goes on, you can include a catalog of your earlier work, too.
Create Your Author Site with WordPress
Now we come to the technical side of building your website. In this section, we’ll give you the basics of putting initial content on your author website and publishing your site to the Internet.
Select and Register a Domain Name
Every website on the World Wide Web has a unique identifier, a uniform resource locator (URL). One of the best ideas of the web pioneers was to create the domain name system (DNS), which allows those URLs to have human-readable names like MyCoolSite.com. The thing is, that name also has to be unique, which, 30 years into the Web’s history, can be a problem. But given that humans haven’t run out of names for their children after tens of thousands of years, we’re confident you can find a unique domain name for your author website.
Here are some ideas:
Your own name: Use your own name—versus the name of your business or niche—if you have plans to write in more than one niche or genre. Using your own name is also helpful in establishing authorship, which in turn helps web search engines find you. Understand that you have to be first to register your name. Mike is always grateful that the former chief executive of Humana Inc. did not register MichaelMcCallister.com before he did, but suspects that some of his visitors come away disappointed. You can always use a middle initial, or Author<yourname> as alternatives.
Your business name: If you do freelance projects or have other business interests separate from your authoring niche, you may want to use a business name as your domain name.
Your niche: If you’ve carefully defined the subject matter that you’re expert in, you can register your niche as your domain name. This has the added benefit of coming up in “serendipity searches,” when a user looking for advice on solar-powered lawn mowers types in those words without spaces—solarpoweredlawnmowers—and