Part Three of a Series
This is the third installment of my author website series which details the ways you can market your books using your website. Your author website is your primary online presence, your brand, your “home,” and your author platform. This is where people will come to find out more about you and your books, which gives you an excellent opportunity to present yourself and your books in the best way and to brand yourself. You can do it somewhat on Facebook and other social media sites, but your website is the only place you have complete design and editorial control. Make the most of it.
Listen to the Digital Book Marketing Episode on Season 3 of Go Publish Yourself
1. Your Author Platform and Brand
Include some testimonials, which are similar to review quotes but more oriented toward you as a writer, versus individual books. They can be very good in convincing potential readers, and the media that you are a great writer, not just a one-book wonder.
Take IngramSpark's Free Online Self-Publishing Course, How to Build An Author Platform
2. Mailing Lists and Newsletters
As mentioned above, set up a mailing list at a service like MailChimp or Mailerlite as soon as possible, and start collecting email addresses on your author website. These services make the process easy, from creating a form for your website to creating professional-looking newsletters. Anyone who signs up for your mailing list is interested in you and your work—they are sometimes even referred to as “Super Fans” and are most likely to purchase your books and spread the word. As soon as you're ready to begin promoting your book, you’ll have a ready-and-waiting audience to announce it to. You can send an email out for feedback when you have a designed book cover, when your book is available for pre-order, on publication day, and more.
3. Selling Your Books
Obviously, selling books is the ultimate goal of your book marketing efforts, whether through direct sales or online retailers.
Did you know that you can sell your book directly to readers by creating shareable purchase links for your books and earn more on your sales? Just upload your book to your IngramSpark account and create links that you can share on your social media accounts, author website, and more!
You may also consider selling through online retailers and providing links to their websites where your books are available.
4. Social Media Links
Add “Follow Me” buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—whatever social media pages you have. You can also have your feeds displayed on your author website with recent posts, encouraging people to follow you. The more followers, the better, because whenever you post a new book or blog to your website, you can announce it to your followers to drive traffic back to your site. This is a great way to use social media in an interactive way—post on social media to drive traffic to your website and have social media links or feeds on your website to drive traffic there to add followers.
5. Press/Media Page
The press/media page is a collection of author photos, book covers, media coverage, testimonials, review quotes, and anything else that may be of interest to the media or reviewers. This should serve as everything they need on one page. Making their job easy will put you in their good graces, and increase the chances they might give you some type of coverage.
You want the media to be able to contact you easily. Have a short form, but then offer other ways if you choose. If you have a separate publicist, agent, or speakers bureau, you may want to list them or link to their website as well.
6. Book Giveaways
This can be a good way to generate traffic, get readers interested in your books, and get people to sign up for your mailing list. You can also use your mailing list to announce the giveaway.
Check out our other blogs in this series for more valuable info:
The Complete Guide to Creating an Author Website
Domain Names for Your Author Website
Author Website Traffic Analytics
