Topics include:

• should you use Wordpress? (hint: probably not, unless you’re good at fixing things)
• why every author needs a website
• what is the purpose of your website?
• the importance of having a professional look to design and organization
• how much content? a lot is fine . . . but it needs to be well organized!
• provide a short bio and a long bio, a short book description and a long book description; let visitors to your site check out your content on the home page and then drill down using menus to discover more
• how to use the website to drive sales: having great content is key to making people want to buy, so that is the first step
• most authors will choose to direct sales to online retailers, since handling your own sales can be complicated and time-consuming; plus, having a sales presence on Amazon can improve your rating and get reviews for your book
• the website should be about you, the author, to allow for it to expand if you publish more books in the future
• avoid doing too much fancy stuff and using trendy effects: they get old and tired quickly; minimal design is best
• all websites must be responsive, that is, they must work on smartphones as well as desktops (and Google will delist you from search results if your site is not up to snuff!)
• IMPORTANT! always register your domain under your name so that you have control of it; never let the people you hire as developers register your domain on your behalf

Links

Pub Site: a website-building service
https://pub-site.com/

FSB Associates: a full-service marketing and publicity firm
https://fsbassociates.com/

Participants

John Burke is the co-founder of Pub Site, an easy-to-use website building platform designed specifically for authors and books, and is the COO of FSB Associates, a publicity firm specializing in promoting books and authors on the web.

Burke worked for several publishers including Crown, McGraw-Hill, Addison Wesley, and John Wiley, as well as in bookstores, before joining FSB Associates to launch its website development efforts. Their first website — one of the first ever author sites on the web — was for Sue Grafton.

Since then, John has developed over two hundred author websites, ranging from one book to over eighty. He is based in San Diego, California.

Peter Goodman (host) is publisher of Stone Bridge Press in Berkeley, California. He began his publishing career in Tokyo, Japan, in 1976. A longtime member of IBPA, he has served on the IBPA board and as IBPA board chair.

For more information, go to IBPA at https://www.ibpa-online.org/.