You hear it from all corners, really: authors need their own personal website. True, not every author has one, including some really famous ones. So in this day of Facebook author pages and Instagram accounts, is an author website even necessary?
Donna Talarico answers this question at length on The Writer magazine website. Before we say anything else, let’s start by directing you to the full article here.
Here are some things to keep in mind.
- Your website is a hub of activity. “An author website can serve as the authoritative link to all other web-based properties about you.”
- Content matters. She offers plenty of tips to keep your website looking dynamic and bringing in traffic.
- Design matters. See above.
- Think across devices. More and more people are viewing your website on their phones, tablets, etc.
- Mind your metrics. Google Analytics is free to install and use, and it can help you bring the right people to your site.
Definitely give the entire article a read. If you’re on the fence now, you’ll be a convert after.
Programs such as WordPress and Blogger let you fire up websites for free using What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) dashboards. Domain names are affordable, especially if purchases for more than a year and set to automatically renew, through sites such as GoDaddy.
Plenty of famous authors don’t have websites. But for the rest of us, and emerging writing especially? Yeah, we need one.