#107 - Do Authors Need a Website?

Do authors need a website? Hi, my name is Shelley Hitz and I help published authors reach more readers with their message using our five step marketing plan so you can consistently market your books without feeling pushy or salesy. In each of my Ask Shelley episodes, I promise to share at least one thing that will help you write, self publish and market your books so that the message of your book can impact lives. So the question that I received is, do I need to have a website in order to market my, my book? And what else can I do in that website? This is a great question because I think there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to book marketing and there's a lot of people that will say you have to do it this way, you have to have this, you have to do that. Wah, wah, wah. Like you have to have a platform, which means a website and social media and email list and oh, it can feel really heavy. Especially you know, most of you are doing this part time on the side. You have another job or life and all the things going on and no, the short answer is no, you do not need a website. You can market your books without a website. You can start with a mini author platform which I consider to be your Amazon author page, like a BookBub author page and a Goodreads author page. So those are just places for people to, to start to find you. And then you have some sort of email list. So we right now recommend Mailerlite. It's free for up to a thousand subscribers and for most of you that'll be plenty for a while. And so you can get started for free. You can give away a compelling free gift. And Mailerlite even gives you tools to create a free landing page so you don't even need to have to embed that on your own website so you can get started, started with all of that for free. You could even set up like a free Facebook page to have some information there if people are googling and they find you there. But you don't have to have that. I mean there's, there's, you don't have to be on social media, you don't have to have a website. Like there's multiple ways to market a book. The, the main ways to attract new readers, as I've talked about many times with our five step marketing plan, is SEO Search Engine Optimization, which is through like blogging, YouTube, Pinterest. You can even use it on Amazon when you create a short Kindle ebook that you optimize for certain search phrases and Paid ads. So for books, we typically recommend Amazon ads, but there's other paid ads and places that you can, you can pay them to promote your book. And then there's collaborations. That would be things like podcast interviews, solo email swaps, guest blogging, all of that sort of thing. Speaking on stages or speaking at summits. But there's so many ways to market your book. So no, you do not need to have a website, but it is helpful to have at least a business card website. So I usually recommend maybe at least five pages. You know, you have your home landing page, you have a page all about your book and where to buy it. You have a page for your email list. Sign up. You have a contact me page. There's just some basic pages, and we go through this in our platform module in Christian Book Academy of just setting up your website with those basic pages. And then if people are searching for you, they can find you and they have a way to contact you that way. I've had people contact me asking me if they could use a quote from my book. It just all sorts of things. If I want to speak at an event or just. There's so many opportunities that can open for you, but many times there's not a way for someone to get in touch with you. That business card website is something that you can set up and you don't have to keep adding new content. A lot of times, I think authors, when you think of websites, you think of blogging like, oh, I've got to have a blog. I'm a writer. All writers have blogs, right? Wrong. You can. I mean, a lot of times it's a perfect fit for a writer because you already love writing typically. And so blogging is a great way. And then you can use search engine optimization, like I talked about earlier, and optimize your post so that people who are searching for you can find you. We have training on that specifically to help you optimize your blog for search engine optimization and like. So when people are typing something into Google, you may come up in the search results. We have those trainings for you in Christian Book Academy. So if you're not a member yet, join us@christianbookacademy.com but I just want you to take a deep breath and like, no, you do not need to have a website. But if you really want to have a career as a writer, if you want to publish multiple books and you want to have a way to really start to, you know, be found, whether someone's just searching for you and they can find your website and contact you. Or if you do want to blog, you know, website, it is, it is a great, it is a great thing to have. I'm not gonna lie. I do, I do recommend it. And then you have your email subscriber list embedded on there because you asked, what else can I do with that website? Well, you can have a page, like I said, just for your book, where you talk about your book, the benefits of your book and the hook maybe of your storyline and you have links to where they can buy it on Amazon or other retailers. One of the things I've noticed with a lot of authors and their websites, I've done website audits and a lot of authors, they hide their book. It's like, where do I find your book? Like, it's not even easy to see it or to know it. So that's one thing is make sure you have something in the top navigation for that book page and then have maybe a mock up of your book cover in the navigation bar on the sidebar. And just make sure it's easy for people to know. Like even if you're doing blog posts, you can have something at the bottom that says check out my book, da da da da da da. And we give you some really great training in how to talk about your book in a way that doesn't feel salesy and slimy, but it really helps compel your potential book buyers to know. Like, is this book going to help me? Is it something I want to read? It's called copywriting, where you write to sell. So we have a training called scrolling to sold. It is an excellent training, teaches you the basics of copywriting and then gives you templates you can use for talking about your book. All right, so I've talked about a lot of things you can, like I said, have your book page. You can have a place for people to sign up to your email list. And if you don't know anything about email list or if you want to learn more, we have a Kingdom Writers Conference about that that you can sign up for free. You get free access for five days. If you're a Christian Book Academy member, you already have access to this in the conference replays module. So no need to sign up. But if you're not yet a Christian Book Academy member, you can get access to our email marketing edition@domathonwritersconference.com email and that really will help you to understand what email marketing is like, what all this stuff is. I give you a really step by step approach to that. There's so much that goes into websites and thinking about that. But this is just to kind of get you started and thinking about what you want to do as a writer. We would love to help you and even give you more personalized advice in our signature membership called Christian Book Academy. You can join us@christianbookacademy.com and we would love to see how we can help you and, you know, get going in marketing your book and really deciding what to do regarding a website. All right. I will talk to you next time. Bye. Bye.