Choices and Steps for Your Author Website and Professional Email
- Jackie McFadden
- Aug 6
- 4 min read
Aspiring and Newish Author,
Regardless of which book publisher you ultimately sign with, the publisher will expect you to have invested in your professional brand. It is the author’s responsibility to have their own website, their own professional email, their own branding, and their own following. The book publisher’s responsibility is to produce a professional book for you with your name on it. The book publisher will offer some assistance in marketing. Still, the bulk of hustling to sell copies falls on the author’s shoulders.
Therefore, before we can submit your book to a professional book publisher, you will need to have some items in place. Below is a summary of steps for you to consider.
CHOICES FOR:
1. REGISTERING YOUR DOMAIN NAME
2. WEBHOST
3. WEB BUILDER
4. PROFESSIONAL EMAIL ADDRESS
You basically have three routes:
a) You can hire someone and pay this person to do all the above initial setup and future updates for you.
b) You can do it all yourself. In which case, you will need to do research, learn new skills, and be willing to spend time learning and mastering technology.
c) You can do a mix of (a) and (b). A popular version of this is hiring a person to create the initial website with you then assuming responsibility for future content and updates.
Costs for paying a company to set up your own website can cost $1000+ for a desktop version and $500+ for a mobile version. This general price is for a basic site. It doesn’t include adding new content after the initial setup, nor does it include the reccurring cost of registering your domain name or hosting your website. If you choose this route, I highly recommend that you make sure you know and feel comfortable using the web builder that the company will be using to build your site. Web designers tend to steer people toward WordPress, which, in my opinion, is NOT INTUITIVE and IS NOT EASY TO USE, even for programmers, which I am not.
To achieve registering your domain name, web hosting, web building, and a professional email address, you have endless choices from an array of companies. These companies each package their services differently and each company has their own partner companies that they like using, so the careful research that you do will be vital. I’ve added my personal thoughts later in this document.
I have had three companies of my own, and I have run someone else’s company. With that said, I have learned a LOT from mistakes and from successes. If you want to be taken seriously and be seen as credible, it is essential to avoid the free stuff. Search engines such as Google will not steer traffic toward these free options.
Your author website focuses on you and your most current book and activities. Readers of your first book will check back for announcements about future books. All your details for books, events, reviews, and awards should be on one website (your author website), and preferably using your name as the URL.
Recommended name for domain registration:
Author first and last name.com
Example: jackiemcfadden.com
or
Author first and last name with “books”.com
Example: jackiemcfaddenbooks.com
Recommended professional email address:
or
author@authorname“books”.com
Example: jackie@jackiemcfaddenbooks.com
Recommendations for what to include on your website
At this stage of your writer/author journey, the basic information you need on your website can fit on seven webpages or less, which is good, because that is the same number that generally gets packaged with companies that build the site for you. Here are the webpages that I recommend for you to start with:
Home page
basic information about and some artwork for your first book
photo of you, the author, and your bio
clickable links to book seller sites to purchase your book
News and Events
clickable links to your scheduled author appearances, book signings, book fairs, and interviews
Blog
You are a writer, so readers are going to expect to read regular posts from you that help them know you and what’s important to you. Blogs motivate people to buy your books.
Email Sign Up
To develop followers, consider using Mailchimp for form creation. Another choice to consider would be Constant Contact. Once you decide what web builder/web hosting service you want to use for your website creation, check to make sure it supports the service you plan to use. Many web builders come packaged with Email Marketing add-ons; therefore, this might be a third option for you.
Book Overview
Back of the book text plus image of book cover
Book Reviews
List endorsements and links to online reviews of your book
Contact Me
Message form (so that you do not have to include your phone number or email address)
Your website should also include:
Social Follow Buttons
Where your community can find you—Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube
Display at the top and bottom of each webpage
Social Share Buttons
These allow your readers to share your website with their own communities
Google Analytics
Include a Google Analytics tracking code on your website
Sign up for Google Analytics via your professional Gmail account.
Here’s an article that I recommend you read that compares web builders/web hosts that writers most often use:
I have personally used Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, and WordPress. Personally, Wix is my number one choice. It is the easiest for a non-programmer to use, has improved dramatically in the last few years, and is no longer glitchy. My second choice is Squarespace, which is relatively easy to use, offers numerous templates that one can start using immediately, and integrates with many other applications including Google Workspace (professional email address). My experience with Weebly was that it can be clunky, error-prone, and riddled with bugs.
To help you make your choice, I suggest that you check out the details by reading about them on their respective websites.
There’s Only One Way to Find Out,
Book Shepherd Jackie