BOOK PROMOTION ON A BUDGET: PART 2
Things I wish I’d known before I started out on the published authors trail.
WEB PAGE:
Every author “MUST” have a web page.
If I type an author’s name into Google and don’t see a website, I can’t easily find more information on the book they are selling.
Authors need to realize that the book buying community is just as busy as everyone else. If I can’t find what I am looking for on the Internet in under five minutes—and I’m being generous here because I won’t even give it that long—then I’m moving on to something else. Some authors use blogs as websites, but they really aren’t set up to provide all the information that a website does.
Publicists, blog hosts, interviewers, readers, radio hosts or anybody who wants information, the first place they look for information is “the authors’ web page”.
There many companies that offer a service of setting up your web page offering services such as the purchase of your own domain (.com name), page design for your book even your own email addresses.
Again I have seen costs for this “one of set up” going into four figures, and not always starting with a one. After that there is often charge for continued support and any changes required.
Let’s take a look at this…
One of the top locations for “web hosting” these days is http://godaddy.com
While they are always producing special offers and mixing and matching what they have to offer here is a basic break down on what it might cost you to create your web site.
To purchase your own domain, “.com” “.net” or whatever you want it will cost you “under $10 a year” this can offer also supply you all sorts of other add-ons, freebies etc, but for now I’m going to show you the worst costs.
Now you have your domain/site name, you need to set up where you web site will be of “hosted/located”. For the majority of cases just a basic economy plan will do you.
This will cost you under “$5 a month” and for that you will get:
10gb (giga-byte) of space, email accounts, email forwarding, some free software and free advertising on the likes of Google and Facebook.
There is even an option for a blog set up, and something called “Web Site tonight” which provides templates for you web pages some especially for authors, with book, bio, author pages etc.
While this sounds complicated and you might not want to get involved in setting up such a thing, it really is not that hard. I could for instance set up an author’s web site, with mail, blog, five pages about them and their book even advertise it on the internet for $299 and that includes a few dollars for my time.
A fraction of the thousand or so you see being charged.
PART THREE "YOUR BOOK IS PUBLISHED" TOMORROW
Author of Young Adult Romance/Fiction book
Across the Pond
http://acrossthepond-storyheart.blogspot.com/
http://across-t-pond.com
Another great article. A website truly is a must for any author. Even before I had signed my first book contract I started a website.
ReplyDeleteThe important thing is that you also have to update it and offer a benefit to the reader so she has a reason to keep coming back.
Thanks for all your doing to help fellow writers. You're a prince among men, just like Fred.
Cheryl
I stopped hosting authors who don't have Web sites because it is much too difficult to find enough information on them online to ask good questions for interviews.
ReplyDeleteMy contributors at Pop Syndicate simply don't have time to track down a bunch of stuff from several different sites for one interview.
Plus, not having a Web site tells me the author is not that serious about his/her career. If they were, not only would they have a site, but they would also include a must-have media center for publicity.
Thanks for the posts!
Angela