Quick: name the past five Nobel Prize laureates for Literature. The most prestigious award in fiction, playwriting, and poetry—should be easy, right? Okay, name the past three winners. No? Last year’s? Outside of the literati, these names aren’t all that common. Authors of this caliber usually aren’t the ones trending on #BookTok, or prioritizing author websites to get more readers.
Except, many of them do (have author websites, that is; I can’t speak to Tomas Tranströmer’s popularity on TikTok).
Last year’s Nobel Laureate, Annie Ernaux, boasts an easily navigable site that offers English and French translations. 2006 winner Orhan Pamuk keeps a very, let’s say literary site (it’s a little boring). So does the estate of our friend Tomas.
If world-renowned authors and their publishers see the value in a quality author website, then, shouldn’t you?
Don’t worry, we’re here to help.
Slam Media Lab has years of experience building the best author websites, redesigning nonprofit sites, and optimizing for search for companies across all industries. Our no-code design and development, search engine optimization, and brand strategy services ensure your site runs smoothly, allows for full customization, and looks damn good at the same time.
Discover how easy it is to build your personal website with Slam today!
So, who benefits from having an author website? We answer that question and more, share some of our favorite author website designs, and dive into all the resources Slam provides for your next site build. Let’s take a look!
What Benefits Does an Author Website Provide?
If you’re anything like us, you still hold a bit of that romanticized image of the novelist: scribbling away in pubs and cafes, researching plots by way of far-flung travel, violating Geneva Conventions as a wartime spy. Okay, maybe not that last one—but, hey, there can and should be only one Hemingway, right?
But, you might ask, Hemingway never needed a website to sell millions of books, travel the world, and win his Nobel Prize, so why should I? Fair question. Even if he was still writing today, we’d be hard-pressed to imagine Hemingway’s personal author website. Still, in an industry that subsists entirely on building a passionate readership, every tool in your writer’s arsenal can get you one step closer to building a following as devoted and vast as the most successful authors out there.
Let’s take a look at five ways an author website can boost your writing career, including:
- Establishing your brand
- Engaging directly with your readers
- Building an international fan base
- Sharing exclusive events and content
- Flexing your creativity
Establish Your Brand Through Your Author Website
If you’ve ever been through the book publishing process, you know it isn’t as simple as writing, revising, and hitting ‘PRINT.’ Editors, publishers, marketers, promoters, family, friends—a chorus of voices has input on your eventual published novel (not to mention the wild cover design variations if your book goes international).
So, how do you gain control over your brand? Easy: launch an author website.
That old cliché that doesn’t need to be stated in every article on writing—fine, we’ll sneak it in here, quietly: “don’t judge a book by its cover”—is difficult to avoid. Be honest: you’ve passed over a great book for its terrible cover design. And, vice versa, you’ve been sold on an eye-catching book jacket only to toss it on your TBR shelf for the rest of eternity. We sure have. One way to circumvent this pitfall? Take control of your brand identity.
Perfect example: international bestseller Wilbur Smith. Smith’s fiction—historical, action-packed, epic—sometimes isn’t captured by just the titles and covers of his works. Monsoon, King of Kings, Testament—they suggest large-scale action, but don’t really indicate much more. The solution? This absolutely dynamic author website.
Smith’s team deploys big blocks of responsive scroll, straight-to-the-point headers, and vibrant animations to let visitors know these novels are taking you on an adventure. If it takes milliseconds for visitors to form a first impression of a site, Smith’s brand identity through his author website does the trick.
Image source: https://www.wilbursmithbooks.com/
Engage Directly With Your Readers
For those of you arguing that this is what social media is for, we hear you. And, to risk undercutting our own point here, we agree: plenty of renowned authors make for entertaining follows on Twitter and Instagram. But, we’re sure you’re also aware that these platforms can be beacons for, let’s say, unwelcome input.
Of course, the more readers and followers you gain on social media, the more likely you are to become the next international bestseller. And harnessing the reach of Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram can certainly help. But, if your aim is to keep the conversations focused, maintain control over your brand identity, and still reach your impassioned audience, author websites can achieve a whole other level of interaction and engagement with your readers.
Starting a personal book club, offering a membership discount or special promotions, and responding directly to readers’ feedback on discussion forums can quickly cement you as a fan favorite, building and keeping a lifelong following throughout your career.
Spread Your Work Across the Globe
Publishing that first short story, novella, or novel is an achievement, one that should be celebrated if you sell a single copy or thousands. But, once your sales start to expand beyond your local bookstore, how do you grow your readership?
Events? Absolutely. Few things make a reader feel more seen and heard than a one-on-one with their favorite author. More published works? Of course. You remember the lines outside Barnes & Noble for special midnight releases. A fantastic author website? You knew we were ending up here.
While hosting events and expanding your bibliography are key to growing your readership, an author website can ensure that readership reaches beyond your home country. Why do you think publishers boast the number of languages their writers’ works have been translated into? Writing fiction and nonfiction that resonate across the globe is hard, and to accomplish this is to elevate your status in the literary world to capital-G Great status.
So, what are some of the advantages an author website provides on a global scale? These include:
- Constant accessibility: Your faithful readers halfway across the world don’t have to wait for their bookshop to open to read up on the latest release, get info on your upcoming events, or download your old Medium posts; they can just click over to your site at any time
- Easy translation: Even the greatest authors of all time can’t speak half the languages their works are translated into, and, luckily, you won’t have to either, as online translators make your author website more accessible worldwide
- Improved analytics: Okay, we know, this one doesn’t sound very literary, but stick with us; are you suddenly getting a spike in emails from bibliophiles in Japan? Are ebook downloads regionalized to a certain county in England? Your website can help you track and determine where your readers are located across the globe, making it easier to build your loyal fan base
Is your author website ready to go international? Download our Website Launch Checklist, and reach your widest audience!
Share Exclusive Content Directly to Your Author Website
Your brand is as established as another Stephen King novel set in Maine. Your fanclub is as packed as a Gatsby party, and your international readership rivals Paul Theroux’s travel itinerary. What’s next? Make your readers feel extra special with exclusive content releases.
An author website is the quickest, easiest way to preview your upcoming work for your fans, share first look releases for your loyal readers, and even drop surprise follow-ups or sequels to your beloved early works.
Some authors have even turned to their readers to fund passion projects, circumventing publishers to bring more of their fan-favorite fictional worlds to readers. And not just independent authors are using their online presence to accomplish this goal. International bestseller Brandon Sanderson used Kickstarter to fund four secret novels, becoming one of the most successful author campaigns on the crowdfunding site.
Flex Your Creative Muscles
The end of bookstores that was prophesied around the launch of ereaders a few years ago came and went about the same way the end of restaurants was supposed to happen. Sure, bookstores needed to adapt to weather the digital age, and, unfortunately, some were lost to this new landscape, but major booksellers continue to announce increased profits and online retailers are still facing stiff competition from local brick and mortar.
All this being said, authors are pivoting in the same way booksellers have, shaping their online presence to match their natural creativity. Some of our favorite examples include:
- Author, photographer, and historian Teju Cole writes a complete story one tweet at a time
- Novelist Marissa Pesshl marries multimedia and print with trailer releases and online companions to her work, Night Film
- Graphic novelist and author Neil Gaiman co-writes a short story with help from his Twitter following
- Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk releases his novel, Beautiful You, in serialized form directly to his personal website visitors
Thinking creatively—the primary endeavor of all authors, we would argue—can open your website up to endless possibilities, immersing your readers in whole new experiences and worlds you create especially for them.
What Makes the Best Author Website?
We’ve explored a number of websites that are doing things the right way. Does this make them the best author websites out there? Some, certainly. But, what does that ultimately mean, “best author website”? Let’s take a look.
Here is horror novelist Grady Hendrix’s website:
It goes against conventional wisdom for good site design: minimal text, more images than copy, zero hierarchy in formatting—really, if we didn’t know who Grady Hendrix was going in, it would take us a few seconds to find out. And we absolutely love this site.
Why? Because Hendrix’s site breaks some rules, which makes you think his work might break some rules (you’d be right). It also introduces you to everything you could want in an author website—new releases, contact info, back catalog—without being overstuffed or slow.
So, what does that tell us? It tells us no template exists for the best author websites. To each their own. The end. Fade to black.
…
That’d be a No Country for Old Men way to end this, wouldn’t it? “And then I woke up.”
It is true, though: the best author websites are as subjective as your favorite author. But, we can help guide you to your best author website with a bit of technical help, not to mention years of experience in web design.
The best author websites, in our expert opinion, share common traits, including:
- Great user experience
- Search engine optimization
- Hierarchical layout
- Ecommerce functionality
- Analytics collection
Let’s dive into each one, and highlight how you can give your readers an even better way to enjoy and engage with your work.
Are you ready to design your best author website? Schedule a consultation with Slam today, and let’s get started!
User Experience Can Make or Break Your Author Website
With any website, user experience, or UX, can mean a daily visitor or a one-and-done one-star review. For authors, this may not seem as dire; who is really going to be turned off from their favorite author because of a slow-loading website? But, if your goal is to reach more readers—and turn them into lifelong fans—a great website can be the difference maker.
So, what does great UX include? Glad you asked. It provides:
- Mobile responsiveness: Most of us are on our phones right this moment, flipping between TikTok, email, and web. And we’ve all experienced that site completely ignorant of smartphone dimensions, losing image quality or requiring (yikes) horizontal navigation. If your site is optimized for mobile, you’re going to appeal to the way most people search nowadays (bonus points if your site doubles as an ereader on mobile).
- Navigation: One thing Hendrix’s site featured above absolutely nails: navigation. Simple, smart, straightforward—visitors know where they’re going and why. Keeping your site easily navigable with design and layout can be a major contributor to your chances for a bestseller.
- Site speed: Raise your hand if you’ve ever clicked on a site, waited an interminable 3-5 seconds, and then moved on before it was done loading. 🙋Guilty. Large, uncompressed images, overbearing ads, and excessive plugins could all be bogging down your site’s load speed, losing potential readers by the second.
- Concise branding: Quick question: what did almost all of the sites we mentioned above have in common? They all featured clear brands and identities (okay, maybe not Mr. Hendrix, but we explained why). UX isn’t just how a user interacts with your content; it also matters how you present to the reader, and, just like a great adventure novel, getting to the point quick leaves room for the fun stuff.
- ADA compliance: Another quick question: do you have, or want, images on your site? ADA compliance, or, long-form, the Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Design, dictates that UX must be accessible to those with disabilities, such as sight impairments. All the great works come in audio format; make sure your website does, too.
Search Engine Optimization is Your Secret Weapon
For established authors, their name and their brand are often synonymous. Stephen King is the Master of Horror. Margaret Atwood equals dystopian cautionary tales. Cormac McCarthy means you’re about to get your sh*t rocked for 300 pages. Few are googling these authors with the expectation of discovering other writers.
But, say you’re a budding genre novelist hoping to share some of George R.R. Martin’s GoT readership. Or, you’re the next Danielle Steel, if only Steel devotees would notice.
Your new best friend? Search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, essentially reverse engineers the way people find what they’re searching for online. What does this mean? Let’s break it into simpler terms.
When someone googles anything, let’s say “best books of the year,” Google returns a list of relevant results. How does it determine that Barnes & Noble, The Guardian, and The New Yorker are the right search results for your inquiry? Realistically, those major companies pour a lot of time and money into ensuring their pages are fully optimized for search, almost guaranteeing they land in the top results on Google.
So, how do you compete against these heavy hitters? SEO.
Your next great sci-fi series is on shelves, your website is launched, and now you can sit back and wait for the Hugo Awards to come calling. But, when you search your name, some trucking company in Butte pops up. When you google your book series, a zine from the ‘80s holds the top ranking. What gives? Your site likely isn’t optimized for search. With a few tweaks, some keyword research, and building a couple of new landing pages to match the way your fans search for you and your work—along with matching terms to your genre and subject matter—will have you ranking higher fast.
Of course, this all sounds a bit easier than it is, which is why we here at Slam do that work for you.
Discover all the SEO services Slam Media Lab integrates into your author website!
Hierarchical Layout is Key to Good UX
The opposite of SEO, this one sounds a bit more complex than it is. Every site has a hierarchy, represented by its sitemap, or the way a website is constructed. The first page you land on is of course the Home Page. But, have you ever visited a site that stuffed as many options as possible into its main menu? Not only is this poor hierarchical structure, it makes for bad UX.
Pop quiz time: if we take a look back at Grady Hendrix’s site, what is one thing we would change to improve the hierarchy?
If you answered, “Remove FAQs from the header,”thank you, you’re doing our job for us.
Now, this doesn’t make or break UX, but giving FAQs the same priority on the site as the other more important options could mislead Google as to what’s vital to Hendrix’s website, as well as potentially slow down the overall site speed. Embedding FAQs into the About section would improve hierarchy, as well as give the other options a bit more room on the header menu to showcase Hendrix’s podcast and upcoming events.
Hierarchy extends beyond site structure. When you land on a new site and are greeted by giant, bolded words and phrases, Google is also seeing those words or phrases as the most important information on the page (if the site is formatted correctly, of course). This is the H1, or Header 1. Next, Google crawls the site for the second most important information, or H2s, before continuing on to H3s, H4s, etc., before concluding with the body text. If your site is well-formatted, relevant information about your writing, your genre, and your books will be easy to find—for Google and for your readers.
Remember: SEO indicates to Google what information from your site is relevant to users searching for you. Hierarchy helps Google find that information, and return it, quickly.
Ecommerce Functionality Can Multiply Your Sales
API integrations, choosing the right CMS, B2C retail—diving into the world of ecommerce can get a bit…jargon-y. But stick with us.
We talked about author-entrepreneurs. What about entrepreneur authors? Rather than go to Barnes & Noble or Amazon for latest releases, merchandise, and special downloads, ecommerce integrations equip your website with the power to sell directly to your readers.
Set your own pricing, offer donation options, and eliminate the middle management with an ecommerce-ready author website.
Analytics Collection Can Provide Next Level UX
If SEO and hierarchy are UX 101, analytics is a graduate-level course.
Have you ever discovered an author only to discover 99% of their bibliography has never been translated into your language? How do publishers determine the success of a single novel or work in translation? Easy (not really): analytics collection.
Decades ago, translations and foreign sales would be conducted by the impassioned few, championing a work to all corners of the world. Now, thanks to a bevy of useful tools, analytics collection enables authors to track where on the map their readers are interacting with their work, so they can then tailor their sales, events, and even search optimization to match.
When Slam launches every one of our website builds, we integrate Google Search Console for all its necessary functions. Google Search Console, or GSC, ensures Google can find your site, as well as indexes and reads every page in your sitemap’s hierarchy. It also tracks:
- Total impressions your site makes month-over-month
- Total clicks
- Clickthrough rate of visitors exploring your site
- Average rank positions of your site and web pages on Google
- Site traffic by country
And a whole hell of a lot more. Take your author website UX to a new level with GSC and analytics tracking, or make it easy on yourself and contract us to do it for you.
What Slam Offers Your Author Website Build
Let’s do a quick rundown. When Slam builds or redesigns your author website, do we:
- Prioritize your brand identity in every step? ✅
- Give you the tools to easily customize and update your website? ✅
- Optimize your content for search? ✅
- Set up Google Search Console to keep your site up to date? ✅
- Ensure your site is fully ADA-compliant? ✅
- Craft a site we know you’ll absolutely love? ✅
We know, as an author, you have to love what you do to devote a life to such work. Don’t you want a design agency that shares that same excitement for our work? Reach out to Slam today, and let’s get started!
Want to see it in action? Of course you do!
Slam Case Study: Caterina Edwards’ Author Website
We saved one of the best author websites for last. Although, we have to confess, we’re partial to it for good reason: we built it.
Award-winning author Caterina Edwards was searching for a way to both share her catalog of historical fiction, literary noir, and emotional memoir with more people across the globe, while making it easier for her readers to discover and join her for online and in-person events.
Edwards turned to Slam, and we built a website both author and developer could share proudly.
So, how exactly did we design a website to match Edwards’ stature? Along with the services mentioned above, we:
- Aligned with the author to match website design to her storied personal history
- Featured large image and video embeds without sacrificing site speed
- Added meta titles and meta description to all pages to maximize SEO
- Launched a site everyone loved
Ready to reach your widest readership, strengthen your online presence, and launch a website you can share for as long as your career demands? Contact our design experts today, and let’s Slam your author website build together!
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