Website for promoting your book

[Fuchsia Groan]

I don’t like my website. I don’t know how to make it sleek and professional, and I haven’t found it worth my while to invest $1,000 or so in a designer who can do that, because I don’t blog or add any regular content to it. It’s just a basic info site.

But WordPress now has a page template with big linked buttons (not unlike a LinkTree). I link to that not-too-awful-looking page on my social media accounts, where I actually do post interesting stuff about my books (or try to). Practically the only traffic I get on my website comes from Google, TikTok, and my agency’s website, in that order.

 

[AW Admin]

I don’t like my website. I don’t know how to make it sleek and professional, and I haven’t found it worth my while to invest $1,000 or so in a designer who can do that, because I don’t blog or add any regular content to it. It’s just a basic info site.

It's a pretty good site! You csn find the data easily. In terms of design: change the font. Use a book-face, a serifed font.

 

[Nether]

I don’t like my website. I don’t know how to make it sleek and professional, and I haven’t found it worth my while to invest $1,000 or so in a designer who can do that, because I don’t blog or add any regular content to it. It’s just a basic info site.

Just doing a few small things would probably help. If you just resized your banner/header (making it smaller) and changed the color scheme, I imagine the site would look pretty decent. Most of the changes with the biggest impact tend to be pretty easy to implement.

However, right now it's functional, which is what's important.

...although you *might* want to update your events section. You have something for June which, when I click on it, seems to be for SDCC2020. If you don't have anything scheduled, a "Stay tuned" might work, and then have a "Previous events" section under it highlighting your other appearances (because otherwise the section is blank and anybody interested in meeting you might be interested in the previous appearances)

 

[Fuchsia Groan]

It's a pretty good site! You csn find the data easily. In terms of design: change the font. Use a book-face, a serifed font.

Thank you! I’ll change that. I don’t like my theme’s choice of fonts, but maybe there’s a not-awful serif one.

 

[Fuchsia Groan]

Just doing a few small things would probably help. If you just resized your banner/header (making it smaller) and changed the color scheme, I imagine the site would look pretty decent. Most of the changes with the biggest impact tend to be pretty easy to implement.

However, right now it's functional, which is what's important.

...although you *might* want to update your events section. You have something for June which, when I click on it, seems to be for SDCC2020. If you don't have anything scheduled, a "Stay tuned" might work, and then have a "Previous events" section under it highlighting your other appearances (because otherwise the section is blank and anybody interested in meeting you might be interested in the previous appearances)

Thanks! I changed the color scheme from dark to light a while ago. Not sure which would work best.

At this point, I don’t expect to have any more events! But will update that.

 

[Magoo0214]

Asking what is a reasonable price for a website is like asking what's a reasonable price for a medicine. Do you need tylenol? Chemotherapy? Do you need just one pill or continuous medication for the rest of your life?

You can make your own website for the low low price of $0! Or you can spend thousands of dollars paying someone else to make and maintain it. If you're on YouTube or listen to podcast at all, you've probably heard ads for things like Squarespace and other places where you can make a nice pretty site if you don't know how to code. Stuff like Blogger and Wordpress and Tumblr exist, too.

What will help you out is to make a plan to determine the "scope" of what you want.

• Do you want your own URL (coolauthor.com) or are you okay with something a little less professional (like coolauthor.wordpress.com)?
• What do you want a user to be able to do on your website? Do you want them to buy a book totally on your website or follow a link to Amazon/Barnes and Noble? Do you want them to read excerpts? Sign up for a mailing list?
• What do you want your site to look like? If you can find specific websites other authors have used, that can help you communicate your wants better.
• How much upkeep do you want to do? If you can make a post on this forum (which you did), you can maintain a Wordpress site. But other things can be more complicated, especially if you have someone make a site from scratch.
• What's your budget? How much are you willing to spend right now? How much are you willing to spend per month, quarter or year?

Great advice. thank you. Not Ready Yet but it helps to plan ahead.