What an author website actually needs
Most author websites fail in one of two directions. Either they are a single page that never changes and tells a visitor nothing, or they are an elaborate build with eleven sections, three of which have been "coming soon" for two years.
The useful version is small, current, and organised around the two jobs a site has: convince a stranger to try a book, and collect an email address so you are not renting access to your own readers.
The four pages
Home
A visitor should learn what you write within a couple of seconds. Your most recent or best-selling book, a single clear line about the kind of book it is, buy links, and a mailing list signup.
Not a welcome message. "Welcome to my website, I am so glad you are here" occupies the most valuable space on the site and tells nobody anything.
Books
One entry per book with the cover, the description, and links to every retailer that stocks it. If you have a series, make the reading order unmistakable — this is the single most common question authors get by email, and a numbered list answers it permanently.
For anything beyond three or four titles, give each book its own page. It gives search engines something specific to index and gives you somewhere to send a link.
About
The second most visited page on almost every author site, because a reader who liked the book wants to know who wrote it.
Write it for readers, not for a publisher. Something about how you came to write what you write, a real photograph, and whatever concrete detail makes you a person rather than a byline. Keep it in whichever voice suits your books.
Contact
A form or an email address, and a line about what you do and do not answer. Rights enquiries, media requests and reader mail are different things and it helps everyone to say so.
The mailing list is the point
The signup is not a page; it belongs on every page. It is the only audience you own outright — social platforms lend you reach and adjust the terms whenever it suits them, and a retailer will never tell you who bought your book.
- Offer something specific in exchange: a short story, a first chapter, a deleted scene.
- "Sign up for updates" converts badly, because it asks for something and offers nothing.
- Say how often you will email, and then email that often.
- Put the signup in the back matter of every book as well as on the site.
Buy links
Link to every retailer that stocks the book, not only Amazon. A reader who buys on Kobo and finds only an Amazon link does not switch retailers; they close the tab.
What to skip
- A blog you will not write. A site whose latest post is from 2023 dates you far worse than having no blog.
- A page of press coverage you do not yet have.
- Automatic music or video. It has never once helped.
- A splash page before the actual site. Every extra click loses visitors.
- A "coming soon" page for a book with no date.
The two things that actually matter technically
Make it work on a phone, because that is where most visitors are. And make it fast — a reader who followed a link from the back of your book will not wait five seconds to find out what else you have written.
Everything else is decoration. A plain four-page site that loads instantly and lists the right buy links outperforms an elaborate one that does not.
Common questions
- Do I need a website before my first book?
- A simple one helps, mostly so the mailing list can start collecting names during the run-up. It does not need to be more than a home page and a signup at that stage.
- Should I use my name or my book title as the domain?
- Your name, in almost every case. It outlasts any individual book and carries across whatever you write next.
- Is a website worth it if I only have one book?
- Yes, for the mailing list alone. Readers who finish book one and have nowhere to go are readers you lose before book two exists.