Christina Hills With publisher Reid Tracy and Christian Mickelsen giving Book Website advise

Christina Hills With Publisher Reid Tracy and Christian Mickelsen

Several years ago, I attended a live event with Christian Mickelsen. Christian is a recognized authority on personal development and coaching, plus a best-selling author. 

While at the live event, we had lunch with Reid Tracy, President and CEO of Hay House Publishing. Reid and I had a fantastic discussion about authors and their websites. 

I’d like to share the biggest takeaway from our conversation. Are you ready for this?

Websites for Writers

During our chat, he told me that authors should NOT have a book website!

That’s right. If you’re an author, don’t build a website dedicated to the book you wrote. Instead, you should have an Author Website! 

Advantages of an Author Website

Think about it. If you create a book website, all a visitor will see is information about that one specific book. As an author, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. 

Instead, create an Author website where you showcase ALL the books you’ve written (plus any other projects and articles). Then, visitors will not only see information about that specific book, but they’ll also learn about your other books, programs, and events. 

Here is a quick 5 min  video to explain the concept:

Open the Door for Rabbit Trailing

Don’t you ever have experiences of going to a bookstore to find one particular book, but ending up walking out with a few more books because you “happened to see other books.” I call this “Rabbit trailing”, and it can happen on the internet as well as in the bookstore!

That’s why it’s so important to writers to have an Author website, instead of just a Book website. An Author website will allow you to guide the visitor to your other books. 

Setting up Your Author Website

Here’s a simple website strategy I recommend:

  1. Purchase your name for the domain of your website (ex. https://yourauthorname.com) 
  2. Build a page within your Author’s Website dedicated to one book. (ex. yourauthorname.com/yourbooktitle)
  3. Buy the domain name for that book. (ex. yourbooktitle.com)
  4. Forward that domain name to go to the book page on your Author Website. (You can set this up with your domain company. In this example, people who type in yourbooktitle.com in their browser will be automatically taken to yourauthorname.com/yourbooktitle with this setup.)

For help with learning how to build your own author website yourself, join our next Website Creation Workshop.

 

Final Thoughts

No matter what business you’re in, your website is an important marketing tool. If you’re an author, be sure your website is about YOU and not just about one of the books you wrote. I know this sounds counterintuitive. After all, remember it’s not about you...

6 great author websites

However, according to our publishing expert Reid Tracy, writers who build an Author website will also build a bigger and more loyal audience. It makes sense. If the visitor enjoyed your work enough to do the initial search, they’ll probably enjoy other books you’ve written as well.

For more author website inspiration, check out Six Great Examples of Author Websites that my students created from taking the Website Creation Workshop!

(originally published in Feb, 2015)

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