What Must Be on Your Author Website?
is the wrong question
Hey friendos,
In the midst of all this book promo (t-minus three months until pub!) I’ve been tinkering with my website at katemckean.com. I’ve talked about author websites before, and tbh my previous advice of it doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive still holds true. But I realized the main purpose of my site—telling people about the work I do as an agent—didn’t leave room for telling people about the work I do as a writer. I want my website to do both, and with the current set up, it’s not doing either very well. So, I’m redesigning it, and it should be up in a few days. I have more work to do on the Agent side of the website, and that will be up and running down the road. (For that I want to make it a bookshop.org storefront so people can BUY my clients books from there, not just see them and….I have to figure out how to do that. [Ami, I am calling you soon.])
Aside from putting big BUY MY BOOK banners all over my redesigned website, here’s some other things I’m doing, and why, I’m doing them. Thank you to my team at S&S, Carah and Francesca, for the help in figuring out what these things should be.
I want editors at websites and magazines to see what I’ve written before, so I’m making a section that links to my previous online publications.
I want podcast hosts to book me on their podcasts, so I’m making a section that links to other podcasts I’ve been on.
I want people to invite me to be on panels and such, so I’m making an Events section, and also putting my bio up there so organizers can learn more about my professional experience. (And I’m making my headshot easy to find so that they don’t grab some ten year old one they find when they google image search me.)
I want people to preorder and buy my book, so I’m putting all the information they need for that in one handy place. That way when I’m posting about it on socials, I can use that one URL all the time.
I know what you’re thinking. Kate, this is all well and good because you have all this stuff to post already! I don’t! That means my website is going to suck and I’ll never get published or anything!
Calm down, you know that’s not true. And yeah, I do have a lot of this kind of stuff to post already. You know how I got that stuff? Doing my job for twenty years. You’re not going to have this stuff ready to go the minute you set up your website. THAT IS OK! Remember, this isn’t a checklist, it’s an assessment of needs. What you need for your website right now is different from what it will be five years from now.
My new site is not going to be perfect and I’m probably going to mess some of it up. But luckily, it’s just a website, and I’ll figure it out. So will you! I give you permission to do the version of your author website that makes the most sense for you and what you want to accomplish. Just remember to think about who’s looking at it and what they might want to know, instead of panicking that you aren’t doing it “right.”
Let’s spin the dial and see today’s throwback Agents & Books post!
Don’t forget, signed preorders for WRITE THROUGH IT are available at the Strand!
Happy coding! XOXOXOXOXO
Kate
As someone who programs a small literary festival, I often can’t find out from an author’s website if an author lives close enough to our town that we can afford the travel costs of inviting her to do an event. I get that people want to protect their privacy, but proximity does very much make a difference to whether we invite or not, so I’ll just take a pass. I don’t want to get into a back and forth where if I ask and find out it’s too far, I have to say, “You’re not a big enough draw for us to spend $300 to get you here.” Also, our audience is particularly interested in authors from our area.
This is a goldmine of wisdom, Kate. Thank you. I literally just finished creating my author website and spent so much time doubting if it's actually good enough. But you're right, it should be evolving and I shouldn't focus on doing things "right" but just getting it out there. Which is why I'm here on Substack but it's also rather challenging since I'm never good at promoting or saying good things about myself or my work. Do you have some advice for aspiring authors like me on launching a book?