3 things to do before you start building your author website
So many authors I speak to about their websites approach the whole thing with a sense of dread. It’s another one of those tasks that comes along with life as an author, like tax returns and posting on social media, that feels compulsory but very much Not Fun.
So perhaps the first thing you need to do is convince yourself that building an author website is not a waste of time. And that it will actually add value to your career and your readers.
I know what you might be thinking, why bother building an author website at all? Do authors really need them?
Sorry, I’m here to tell you that – the answer is yes!
I know I’m biased but it’s 2024 people! For better or worse, the world lives online. We do pretty much all our research online. Like it or not, almost everything is done online these days.
Aside from the fact it’s just a bit weird nowadays if you don’t have a website, here are a few reasons why an author websites are so important:
1 It makes you look professional
I don’t know about you, but if I look up any other kind of goods or service and they don’t have a website, I’m automatically more suspicious of them as a business. It makes them look amateur. And the same goes for your author career – you want a career, right? You want to treat your writing like a business, and if you launched any other kind of business, what’s one of the first things you’d do? Yep, you’ve got it. Set up a website.
2 It’s an important way to promote your books
It sounds obvious but your author website is the place to host everything to do with your writing career. Sure you have an author profile on Amazon, and maybe a page on your publishers’ website too, but your control over what appears on them is limited.
Not so with your website. Your author website is the only place you truly ‘own’ on the internet (even your carefully curated social media presence is just rented property on someone else’s land).
Your author website is the best place to house everything related to your author career, and should include: obviously, all your books (plus links so people can easily buy them!); your professional bio; your agent’s / publisher’s / publicist’s details; a place to promote events and news; a way for readers (and press!) to get in touch. It’s also a great way of directly selling signed copies of your books to readers.
Where else can you do all that in one place?
3 It’s the best way to build an author mailing list
The best time to start building a mailing list is yesterday. The second best time is today. It takes a long time, and building a mailing list – even if you think you don’t want to start sending newsletters yet – is a really good long-term strategy.
And the easiest way to build one? You got it, by having a sign up form on your author website.
Hopefully, I’ve convinced you now.
“the prospect of building your own author website doesn’t have to fill you with dread”
Right, let’s start with the three things I think you should do before you start to actually build the damn thing.
1 Adjust your mindset
If you’re like most authors I’ve worked with, the thought of sorting out your author website probably fills you with dread not joy. So the first thing I’d like you to do is to take a deep breath and try and work on your mindset a little.
Tell yourself that your author website is going to be a fun project. Because I promise you, it can be!
You’re a creative person. And building a website is not too dissimilar to writing a novel – it’s a creative project, it requires lots of different parts of your brain, it can be frustrating but is ultimately very rewarding, AND the best bit about it is that it’s a hell of a lot less of time-consuming than writing a book.
And listen – if you’re written a book, you’ve literally done one of the hardest things known to mankind, and you are 100% a badass.
Building a website?
Pah, that’s nothing in comparison. I promise!
Also, there’s nothing that massages the writer ego quite as brilliantly as putting together a website that details all your writing achievements.
It’s a great way to remind yourself of what you’ve already accomplished, how far you’ve come in this difficult business, and to sit back from the endless daily-word-count-targets and take a moment to feel proud.
I understand that you might hate dealing with technology. Perhaps the thought of it fills you with unmitigated dread. Perhaps you tried to build a website a few years ago and it was so complicated it made you want to throw your computer out of the window.
I get it. You are not alone. I speak to authors every day who feel this way.
But what I want to reassure you is that things have improved, and continue to improve when it comes to technology. Especially when we’re talking about web design.
It’s now easier than ever to build your own website, and platforms like Squarespace continually streamline their user interfaces to help simplify things further, so that even the biggest Luddite can master their software with a little bit of time and patience.
So, altogether now, you can do this. I promise. And you honestly might even enjoy it. A little bit.
At the very least, just think how proud of yourself you’ll be when you get to show your shiny new author website off to the world.
2 Research other authors in your genre
Feeling motivated? Feeling positive about building your own site?
Excellent! The next step then, is to do some research.
So, you’re a writer, which means I already know you love research. It’s actually one of my absolute favourite parts of writing my novels – the hours lost to documentaries, podcasts and random Youtube videos.
Too many authors dive straight into building their websites without really taking the time to do research what makes a good author website, and it can really make or break both the experience of building it and the end result.
Before you start choosing templates or setting up domain names, I want you to do the following:
Take a look at your peers’ websites. I don’t like the term ‘competitors’ as I believe there’s no such thing as a competitor when it comes to books – but hopefully you know what I mean. People who write in your genre. People you look up to. People whose careers you wouldn’t mind emulating.
Take some time to look at their websites and make some notes on what you like and don’t like about them.
Are there any great ideas you could steal? Any particular layouts that appeal to you?
To be clear - I’m not advocating directly copying anyone here, but you’ll find as you research you become inspired by other people’s work. Make sure you note down anything you’d like to have on your website.
If you’re super keen on visual research and enjoy this kind of thing, you can even create a Pinterest board especially for your author website, pinning colour schemes, layouts and anything that catches your attention.
It’s also important to think about the kind of mood you want your website to have. Do you want readers to feel uplifted? Challenged? Intrigued? Excited? A lot of this will depend on your genre, and you’ll find you have an instinctive feel for what your readers would respond best to.
Your cover is also an important consideration here. Your books’ covers are THE most important marketing assets you have, so you want to make sure that your website design doesn’t fight with them, but instead provides a perfect complementary backdrop to really show them off.
Last but definitely not least – think about your readers. What would appeal to them? Who are they? What kind of things are they interested in? What would draw them to your site and keep them there?
3 Get your content ready
And the final thing you must do before you even start battling with the technology is to prepare your content.
Lots of authors approach this step the wrong way round. They go onto a website hosting platform, pick a random template and then just replace the dummy content with content of their own, typing things in as it comes to them.
Too often this leads to them ending up frustrated when the text they want to include doesn’t fit, or there are too many image blocks on the template and they don’t have enough relevant images to fit, so they just dump something random in there and hope for the best… and the whole thing looks a bit of a mess.
You don’t need to do this.
Think about what content you really need on your website. Less is more when it comes to text. People scan websites – they don’t want to be reading great mountains of text.
So keep things short and sweet. Ignore the templates. You want the website to fit around your content and not the other way round.
Another thing that it’s important to get right is your author headshot. Gone are the days when an awkward selfie taken in your bedroom would suffice.
You want something professional. Now that doesn’t mean you have to pay a professional photographer to shoot you – although if you do have the budget, this can be a really good investment (and these people are absolute miracle workers – I had some taken recently with the amazing Hannah Macgregor and you can see how they turned out here →)
My other half took this headshot on my iPhone!
But if you want to DIY your headshot, do think carefully about the framing of the image, the light, the background and what you’re wearing.
You can absolutely take your headshots on your phone (confession – some of my past headshots were taken on my phone!), but do some research and follow the advice online to make sure that your headshot looks as professional as possible.
For other images on your site, make sure they are relevant to your books / audience, high-quality and also look professional.
There are plenty of free image libraries available now – and in fact I have a blog post on how to find images for your author website right here →
You also need to make sure any images you use are the right size. Not too big that they slow your site down, and not too small that the quality of the picture is lost.
I’ve got a guide on how to resize images here if you’re not sure exactly how to do this →
Once you have all your content ready, save it neatly into a folder on your desktop.
I know it might seem laborious, but if you follow these three stages first, I promise that when you come to actually build your website the whole process will be quicker, easier and a hell of a lot more enjoyable.
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