Marketing—Do you need a website?

So, you’ve finished, or nearly finished, your novel. It’s written, rewritten, edited probably at least five times, given to beta readers for feedback, critiqued by writing friends or in writing groups and taken up a large part of your life.

Whether it took you years or months, a novel is a major investment in time, energy, sweat and tears and when the manuscript is finished, you don’t want it to languish in a bottom drawer. It needs to be read.

Marketing is the hardest part of self-publishing. It’s estimated that there are over three million books on Amazon. They publish 50,000 books a month and they are the largest company for self-publishing authors in the world. They release a new book every five minutes. It’s a lot of competition. Your book has to be seen, talked about and hopefully bought in order for it to get ahead of the thousands of other books being published. Marketing is the way to get your book noticed.

Before coming up with your marketing plan, it may be helpful to consider what you want for your finished book.

1. Do you want to make writing your career? Intend to write many books and earn enough money from sales to give up your day job. This means a commitment of long hours for the rest of your life. Writing will become a business and a passion, and you will need to build up your name to ensure you have lots of buyers for your products.
2. You may enjoy writing fiction as a passion, an activity that gives you pleasure, and you want your books read by an audience. This is the category where I am. I want my books to be the best they can be, to achieve a professional standard, but I’m not dependent on an income. I don’t want to put pressure on myself to write what sells and have to achieve deadlines.
3. The third type of writer may want to write their memoir or family history, or contribute a non-fiction book. These authors may have a smaller audience, although some biographies and memoirs sell well on the open market.
4. Another author may write for purely personal reasons, using the medium of writing to express their creativity. Often these writers contribute to anthologies in writing groups or may have a body of work that they want a book to share with family and friends.

All of these authors can self-publish a brilliant book, but their goal for book distribution may differ from a professional writer.

Back to the question: Do you need a website? If you want your book read and consider writing more books in the future, a website is a good idea and is worth the effort to get one up and running.

A website in simple terms is your address on-line. It’s where people can find you by searching online for your name and what you do. For example: www. elsieking/author.com (not in operation yet). You can sell your books from the website, advertise books you are writing, you can tell your readers about your life, passions and ideas. A website may also be a blog or newsletter where you share your writing tips. The website lets you connect with your readers and get reviews.

A website can be a simple page with minimal details (a landing or home page) or a more complex beast with links to social media, e-mail marketing, newsletters and contacts with other authors.

I’m a newbie with websites. I know they can be expensive to have made for you, but much cheaper to make one of your own using a website host such as WordPress, Square Space, or Wix. Don’t believe the adverts about creating your own websites. It is not as easy as they say. But it is fun to experiment with some website builders.

My advice, consider if you need a website. Research some of your favourite author websites and look at the plethora of YouTube videos that tell you how to create a website. (I found most of them too quick and get through too much information. They also use acronyms which they don’t explain. Find one that works for you)

If you decide to try it, be prepared with a catchy by-line, have a succinct but interesting author bio ready and think about what graphics, fonts and colours you want.

I’m a techno dinosaur, so I expect it will take me many weeks to construct my website. I’m learning as I go and have discovered you can create a website, delete it and start again and play without having to commit to publishing until you have it just right. When I get it right, I will do another blog to discuss the process, I found helpful.

If anyone reading this blog has some personal experience with building a website, please write an e-mail to scriptoriumpublishing@gmail.com We’d love to hear from you.

Elsie King ©2022                                            

Feature Photo: Image from creative commons