If you’re new to romance writing, you may feel a bit overwhelmed by the different components to growing your books sales and career. One of the questions that you may be asking yourself is should you start a website to sell your books? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this question in various contexts. My ultimate answer is yes, you need a digital presence that helps with branding and connecting your readers to you and your books. Continue reading below for what to consider.

*In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please read my disclosure here.*

Get your free book

Make Money with Ebooks

Make Money with Ebooks is a course that breaks down the ins and outs of both fiction and non-fiction self-publishing. If you’re looking for a course that provides monthly office hours with the course creator, provides access to marketing ideas and how to leverage platforms to grow your brand-Make Money with Ebooks is the course for you.

Listen to the Show

Related Posts

• 7 Lies Self-Published Romance Authors Believe

• 12 Mistakes that Romance Authors Make that Turn Off Readers

• A Conversation with Seyna Rytes

Romance Author Websites

What I’ve noticed about romance author websites is that they can be a great resource for the fans of your works. Your website can do the following:

• Share who you are and your brand story-As a reader, I love discovering more about my favorite authors. The about page helps to humanize who they are and why they do what they do.

• Create clarity on a series-If you’re a prolific author, having a page that clearly shows the flow of a series can be helpful to readers and help them understand which book they should read next in a series.

• Work as an affiliate for Amazon or other online retailers. For every book that is clicked on, if you’ve installed an affiliate link you may also earn affiliate income.

• To sell your books-If you decide to sell your books on your own platform vs. an online retailers you could set up your site to manage those transactions (it’s not complicated) usually there is an interface or product that will help you process the sale.

• Grow your email list-It’s often said that “the money is in the list” having an email subscription form on your website is a great way to capture fan’s email addresses. Then, you can nurture and grow a long-term relationship with them through email.

• Share a belief-You can take a stance on something that you believe in on your site.

• Embed your audiobooks feed-Make it easy for readers to connect with your audiobooks if you offer that. Also, share your audiobooks referral link as well so that you can earn affiliate income.

Diversify Your Author Income

I touch on this vaguely in my comments above. But, I want to give a more thorough explination. There is more than one way to make money in your author business. Your website can help facilitate that for you on the backend of your business. Here are some suggestions.

• Affiliate marketing-Market favorite products that make sense for your business. For example: Audiobooks on Amazon or Kindle could be great affiliates to support. For me, I also share business related tools that help authors write their books such as Grammarly which is an editing tool that I use.

• Host Events-If you want to do online or in-person events you could sell tickets through your site. If you’re interested in hosting a writing retreat, this could be done through your website.

• Sell classes-Maybe you’re a badass at something that other authors struggle with. You could create and sell an online webinar teaching that one thing. For example: you kick ass at social media, list building, marketing, or sales? Teach a class.

• Sell Cover Art-I know of authors who run graphic design companies that focus on designing cover art.

• Editing skills-Maybe you provide editing services? You can share that on your author website.

How to Market Your Author Website

It’s not enough to create your website and walk away. You have to advertise that you have one. Basically, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

• What purpose does my website serve to my business?

• What purpose does my website serve to my current and future readers?

• Why would someone be interested in going to my website?

• What would entice someone to visit my website?

Once you’ve thought through the above answers, start sharing your site in the following ways:

• In podcast interviews-Refer people to a page that has a free book as an opt-in

• Share on Instagram, TikTok, etc.

• At your favorite conference-Finally, we’re getting back to normal and attending conferences. Share you website with other attendees.

• In people’s groups-WHEN APPROPRIATE, don’t share your website just to share it without context.

Don’t Forget to Backlink

If you’ve decided to curate content via a blog on your website don’t forget to backlink to that content throughout your website. Basically, include links to older content on your website so that people stay on your website longer.

Link to helpful content that you would like to share with your readers.

Buy Me a Coffee

Thank you for listening and supporting Let’s Talk Romance with Autumn Stone. I love having conversations with authors creating stories for characters of color and the people who read them. If you enjoyed this episode please “Buy Me a Coffee.” This support helps to cover the cost of running the show.