Author Website Strategy: Market Your Book Strategically with Your Website

Bound for Bestseller: Book Marketing & Book Launch Strategy for Authors

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Transcript:

Websites have become kind of a big topic that's come up with some of my clients. And it's one of those things that if your book is very tied to your business, it can be kind of a great debate of like what you should do. Like, do you need to have your own website for the book? Or how do you incorporate your book into the website that you already have?

So today we're going to dive into author websites. And talk through some of the basics of like what you need to have, what you need to not have. How do you approach how to build your author website? So that it is something that is truly going to work and be a success for you. My name is Valerie Morris. I help authors launch their book strategically.

Leveraging my digital marketing background and my own expertise. Launching my own book as well as many other authors over the last four to five years. I love working with authors. Largely because... Their passion rubs off on me. So whatever you're passionate about for your own book, because let's be honest, authors are very excited about their subject matter, that often rubs off on me and gets me excited.

I love working with people who are excited about what they're doing and it's really an honor. So, but as a result of working in this space, you come across that question of how are you positioning your book? On your website, and obviously you have your book listed on different sites like Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Or IngramSpark, or some of these other audio book platforms, like, you could have your book in so many different places, first off. But let's be honest, like, those are places where, like, you're filling in the blanks for what they want on their website. So, if you want to be showcasing testimonials in a strategic way, or you want to add a video, about the author talking about the book.

You can't always do that on these other platforms. And yes, they're great as sales pages, and as a product page for actually purchasing your book. But what about promoting your book at large? The why, the testimonials, the process, the behind the scenes. Some of these extra bonuses that people will add with their book, that kind of stuff really only lives on a landing page of some sort, whether that landing page is just a page within your main website for your business, or it is.

Maybe a whole website about your book. I've seen a lot of people go different routes and we're going to kind of dive into some of those core routes. So the first big way that I've seen people build out an author website is they will build out a website just for their book. Now, they might name it or get a domain for, you know, Migratebook.com. Okay. Whatever your title is, they might center the whole website around that one book. And I think this works when you have something like a memoir or a really capstone book where you think like, Hey, I'm going to build a whole, whole brand around this one concept. The problem with this route is that if you ever decide to write a second book, it either has to fit in very nicely with the first book's subject matter, or then you're looking at possibly building a second website for two different books.

So the second route to go, which would be an alternative to writing, to making a website just for one book, is to make a website for you as an author. So it's more of an author website versus a book website. And this is a nice route to go, especially if you don't have a website already. If you, if your book doesn't fit in with your business already, if you're let's say a business owner, um, you know, you might have a place to put something, but, you know, if your subject matter has nothing to do with your business, You shouldn't be putting it on your main website, right?

So, you might want to build out a website that's just for you, okay? And then within that, you have the flexibility to feature your current book. But also feature any future books that you write. So, that's a route that I think works really, really well for most authors, is to build an author website. Then the other route that I've seen people go is largely just centered around like, if you have a book that's very tied to your service offering in your business, Like, for example, my book was about digital marketing and I run a digital marketing agency.

So mine had a very direct application. When you have a book like that that dovetails so nicely with a business, what you can do is you can simply make a page within your main company page, company website, that's just about the book. And so it becomes almost just a landing page about your book. And I think it gives a little bit of flexibility in the sense that like you don't have to come up with.

You know, gobs and gobs of content for a full on website if you just want to build out a landing page. And the nice thing is when you have it on your main website, then people can go and explore what you have to offer from there. It also is nice too because you're already paying for the hosting for this website.

So rather than spending an extra however many hundreds of dollars, a year to build a whole new website, you can instead just incorporate it into what you're doing with what you have built already. The hard part about this is that if you ever want to detach your book, your book's association with your company, you would later have to then go build a separate website just for your author or for your book.

Um, it also just limits a little bit of like, What you can do because you're working with the within the ecosystem of your company and you might be limited more on real estate So you might be talking about and for some people this is nice because it's like I'm talking about one page of a website They can be more landing page style where people can scroll and get a lot of content, but they're just on one page Whereas if you feel like you've got a lot to offer if you're gonna be doing like a book tour Or you've got a lot of resources, like, sometimes it makes more sense to maybe build out a separate website where you can house all of those things.

Later down the road, if you ever sell your business, You know, it just might muddy the waters a little bit from in the standpoint of like, well, is the book the company's asset or is it your personal asset? Um, so just something to think about, maybe something to, you know, ask some professionals like a CPA or an attorney around like, hey, I plan on selling my business in the next 5 to 10 years.

Does that make things too confusing if I have my book promoted on this website? Or, how do I need to structure the bank accounts for my book so that I make sure that things are as clean as possible when it comes to tax time? Those are questions that I cannot ask, answer for you. I am not an attorney. I am not a CPA.

I don't know the full answers to things. I know kind of best practices of what I'm doing. But ultimately like you need to make sure that you have covered those bases with the folks that you trust now a Fourth route you can go if you're gonna build a some sort of website it in any way Is to just build out a landing page and there's lots of places in today's world You can build landing pages on Canva.

You can build one on programs like MailChimp You know a lot of different Email programs or just, um, online course programs, like a lot of those places give you the ability to just build a landing page. And that route you can go is, is sometimes a little bit easier. You know, if it's built into something you're already paying for and you can build a landing page for, you know, essentially no extra cost.

That could be a really fun route to go. Um, the, the challenge there is that if you ever decide you want to incorporate it into a main website, you're going to have to rebuild the whole thing, whereas sometimes when it's, you know, on one website and, or on one webpage and you want to maybe expand it into something else, it's a little bit easier to copy code over or to duplicate things and just like, mimic it in another hosting setting.

So you know, you're, you're also limited by probably a lot of functionality when it comes to some of these landing page builders. So you just kind of have to kind of pick your poison, right? Of like, Which route am I gonna go? The important thing though, regardless of whatever you choose, and this is one of those things where like, you're gonna need to take an evaluation of like, what's your situation?

What makes the most sense to me? After hearing about all of those different routes, which one feels like it makes the most sense and why? But regardless, You need to have one of those options. You need to have one of those scenarios where people can go get more information about your book that is not dependent on Amazon being live or Barnes Noble being live or whatever and then on those landing pages you simply can point to Those other websites where you actually purchase it.

So, yes, you can have people purchase, like, bulk orders or things like that directly on your website. You could even process purchasing your book directly on your website. There are pros and cons to, you know, going either route. But your website is something you control. You don't control what goes where.

On an Amazon book listing, you are infilling the information and Amazon is the one who is deciding what goes where, whereas on a landing page or your website, you have full control to showcase you as an author and showcase your books in whatever way feels most authentic for you. It's your power, right?

And that only comes by having kind of a home base. The nice thing about having that as well as when you go to start marketing your book, you have one URL. That you point people to from there, they can click other buttons to get to the different, you know, online stores where they can purchase the book.

You can control the narrative a little bit more of where you're pointing people and why. And then you don't have to worry so much about if the URL changes for any reason, or your product gets removed from Amazon or you take it down on Amazon. Oh, well, I've already given out that Amazon link to like the hundreds of people, thousands of people.

Well, what happens if you have control over the homepage and you're just pointing people to one spot where then they can branch off and take action however they want. But your author website, regardless of how it looks, needs to be a priority for you. And if you do it at the right time, it can really be a great tool to start building buzz for your book and also something that you can use long after your book launches.

It's one of those things that a lot of people kind of forget about. Until well after their book launches and they could have been leveraging that website or that landing page as they led up to their book launch that you don't have to wait to do it later. You can do it earlier rather than later and it can be a really good strategic tool for your marketing.

A lot of people aren't thinking that way. And so if you are, it just gives you a nice leg up. So author website, like if it's not on your radar, I encourage you to start thinking about what that landing page or author website needs to look like, which route is going to be best for you to go down. And then what do you need to make it happen?

Like if this is something that you know you need, do you need to get a website developer involved? Do you need a copywriter? Like who do you need to have in your corner to make this project a reality? Go after that author website, start building up some of that authority. Maybe you can even get some things like I did where like I got a speaking gig before my book was even out into the world just because people knew about me and could get some information about me.

So don't forget about the lead up time to a launch because you can be doing a lot of promotion and letting your book work for you even before it's even live to the world. So get a little bit strategic about author websites. You'll see a huge world of difference in the way that your book is launched.