Author Website

Most author websites have the right pages but the wrong content on them. This guide covers every essential page — Home, About, Books, Series, Newsletter, Contact, and Press/Media Kit — with specific guidance on what to write and why each element matters for readers, search engines, and the professionals who'll look you up.

Squarespace produces the most visually polished author websites of any platform at this price point, with zero technical overhead. Its limitations in SEO depth, plugin extensibility, and direct sales sophistication are real but not dealbreakers for the author whose primary website goal is a professional, beautiful brand presence with email capture.

Most author websites are invisible to Google and to the AI tools readers increasingly use to discover books. This guide covers keyword strategy for authors, on-page SEO for book and series pages, Google Search Console setup, and how generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity decide which authors to mention — and what you can do to be one of them.

Heatmaps show you what readers do. Analytics tell you what happened. A/B testing tells you what to change. This guide covers the elements worth testing on an author website, how to run a valid test, which tools work without a developer, and how to read results without falling into the traps that make most website tests misleading.

Google Analytics tells you how many visitors arrived and how long they stayed. Heatmaps tell you what they actually did while they were there — where they clicked, how far they scrolled, and whether they ever saw the email capture form you think is so prominently placed. This guide covers what heatmap data reveals about author websites and how to act on it.

Accessibility is not a technical checkbox — it is the practice of making sure every reader who wants to find you and buy your books can actually use your website. Some of your readers use screen readers. Some read on low-contrast displays. Some navigate by keyboard. This guide covers the practical accessibility improvements that matter most for author websites.

Your author website is not a build-it-and-forget-it project. A neglected WordPress site accumulates security vulnerabilities and broken links. A Squarespace or Wix site with outdated book information loses credibility with every reader who visits. This guide covers the specific maintenance tasks that keep your author website healthy — organized by monthly, quarterly, and annual schedule.

A slow author website loses readers before they read a word of your bio or see a cover. Google also ranks faster websites higher than slower ones. This guide covers Core Web Vitals, how to test your website speed, the most impactful fixes for WordPress and other platforms, and what performance scores to aim for.

Learn how to harness email marketing from your author website to connect with readers and increase book sales, with tools like ScribeCount, BookFunnel, and StoryOrigin.