Author Websites: How to Make Your Author Website Stand Out

Author websites are an online presence that published authors can use to interface with their target audience, sell books to website visitors, show off blurbs and testimonials, and solidify their book marketing and author branding overall.

Author sites are common for every level of success in the literary world. Whether you’re a bestselling nonfiction author, have a history of self-publishing children’s books, or are about to publish your first book series, having an author website gets you on the playing field with nearly every other published writer in the digital age.

You don’t need to have a bestseller out in the world to benefit from an author website. When you build your author platform for the web, here are four pages you should consider:

1. 1. Homepage: Your homepage—or landing page—is important to making a good first impression. This can be an opportunity for potential readers to get to know you better, so consider teasing information that will take visitors deeper into your website. The homepage should include an easily navigable header to take its users to links enabling them to purchase your books, access your social media profiles, and so on.
2. 2. About page: Whether someone wants to learn more about your books or already loves them, they might want to know more about the person behind the author name. An author bio deserves its own page on your website. Let people know more about you—try to keep the information you provide somewhere between a brief tagline and an overlong essay. This might not be the place to tell your entire life story, but it could be an ideal space to explain how and why you got started writing thrillers, romance novels, children’s books, or other writing projects.
3. 3. Book page: Even if you plan to let your website link out to other vendors selling your books, you should still take the time to create a page highlighting your output. Create sections for each of your works—complete with book covers, positive book reviews, and synopses. You can build a separate page to advertise your latest book or give it the primary place on a larger book page.
4. 4. Contact page: Consider giving your readers a way to provide their contact information and to reach out to you—for example, a generic contact form. You might choose to add an email sign-up option on this page and throughout your site to get people onto your own personal email list. Sending out an email newsletter with personalized content can help you keep your fans—both present and future—excited about your work.

Laying the groundwork for an author website is important, but you’ll need to make sure you’re ahead of the curve, too. Here are four ways you can make your site stand out:

1. 1. Acquaint yourself with modern web design. Author website design—like any other kind of web design—is a lot more sophisticated now than it was in the early days of the Internet. Your website should possess responsive functionality (or adapt to the screen size of whatever device your visitors are using), an engaging color scheme, inviting fonts, and so on. Even if you’re planning to use a minimalist template or hire a web designer, check out other author website examples in conjunction with learning the basics of general web design.
2. 2. Give visitors something special. People love giveaways, so giving your users something special on your site can help you get something in return (like a user’s contact information for a mailing list, for instance). Consider using an interactive pop-up to offer a first glimpse of your new book (or something else) if someone decides to opt-in to your newsletter. Alternatively, you can embed the offer on your homepage. Customize this initial exchange between you and the user in a way that feels authentic to your personality.
3. 3. Maintain active social media profiles. Building your own site is only the beginning—that site should link out to various accounts displaying social proof you’ll engage with your readers. If they get on your email list and follow you on social media, you’ll be able to update them about when your next book’s release date, upcoming events or podcast appearances, and anything else that’s relevant to your career success.
4. 4. Keep search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. SEO is a strategy for making sure your site shows up in search engines. By including specific keywords and phrases in your site’s metadata and content overall, you can ensure it’s not just the best author website you could have made but one that will appear higher in search results, too. Consult the multitude of resources available online about how to optimize search engine results.

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