As part of any book marketing plan, which is part of the process of building your author platform, it’s expected (make that absolutely necessary) that writers and authors have a website. Whether you’re in fiction or non-fiction, your author websites are your main calling card for you as a professional, where industry contacts and readers can find out more about you.
Your website becomes a hub for any and all book marketing and offline marketing for that matter, with all roads pointing back to your website. So, I think we all have an idea of how important it is to have one, but…
Are your author websites targeting the right audience?
Let me put it another way, are your author websites geared towards other authors and publishing industry professionals, or are they aimed directly at your general readers and fans of your book?
As an example, let’s take the Johnnymarsh.net website. As you will see it’s clearly aimed at the young adult audience with an iconic colour scheme tying in with the Dream Raider book cover. It offers fun puzzles and wallpaper, it’s informative and engages visitors with free content. The alternative would be to create a website about our processes, our publishing endeavors and offer publication advice, which would obviously not be suitable to the young crowd, but instead be of interest to publishing professionals and other authors.
Thing is, publishing professionals and other authors are not the target audience, it’s children and teens from the age of 10 and up. Safe to say, because we wanted to build fierce word of mouth in schools, we built an entertaining website for the target audience. The website has a clear purpose. Now if I was to create a website based on trading the stock market, it’s likely I won’t have wallpapers and puzzles. Instead I would have information with updated stock analytics and trends, budget plans and the like.
As a published author building a website that engages other authors is great and you can get like-minded discussions happening about industry news and programs. There’s nothing wrong with this either, just ask yourself this…
Does my author website have a clear purpose and target the right audience?
Anthony
Ready, aim, deliver!
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“Photo in your pajamas patting the dog! ” I have one somewhere taken years ago … LOL
On a serious note, yes, I totally agree that photos have to look professional and welcoming.
Haha, I had this mental image where the dog has PJ’s too! If you want others to take you seriously then it’s important to look the part. It’s huge for giving people a professional perception of you. Cheers for the comment!
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