Create An Effective Website to Promote

I always recommend including educational and helpful information on your promotional website. Do you offer information to help your visitors? Even if they don’t buy your books the first time they visit, do they leave with some information or a sample story? These things will bring them back and can convince them to buy one of your books instead of someone else’s.

Coordinate Author Website and Book Content

This is an effective promotional strategy when your articles or content are tied to your books. I have information on my site which explains e-books for people who don’t know what they are or how to read them. It is amazing to me that many e-published authors do not understand e-books. Two of my books are available in e-book form and I help people understand how they work, how they can be read and the advantages of e-books. The e-book pages get a lot of traffic each month, so there are people who appreciate the information.

Specialize Content To Create An Effective Author Website

If your books are about independent women, include articles about the lives, successes and challenges for independent women. Show how these facets of life affect your characters and how they shape your stories. If you read a helpful article, share the link or write an original article and post it on your site. This works with all types of readers. What about: single mothers, women executives, single dads, foster children or hundreds of other topics? It is effective to focus on situations and issues that your characters deal with in your books. Find these situations and issues in your work and share more detail about these things with your readers and website visitors.

Draw Readers Into Your Books

I enjoy sharing information about the settings of my books. For people who have never been to Cape Ann , Massachusetts or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I included background and pictures to give them insights into my settings. These pages get good feedback from Massachusetts and North Carolina natives. I take that as a good sign that the pages give a good representation of the area. There is also a narrative written from my contemporary heroine’s point of view. She gives the reader a tour through the town and shares some local history. These are simple ways to share useful information with visitors and to draw them into my stories. What sort of things can you include on your site to bring visitors into your stories?

This is easier when you determine your target market and find things that would be useful for them. These details give readers and visitors an added bonus and these are great promotional tools when your articles coordinate with the subject matter of your books. This gives you the chance to find ways to show the benefit of your books and how it can make the reader’s life better. You can post a few articles and ask your visitor’s input. You may be surprised how much this can help your sales.

Nikki Leigh - Fiction and Non Fiction Author
Author of the Book Promo 101 Series www.nikkileigh.com/book_promo_101.htm