If you want to make a living as a self-published author these days, every blog, class, and coach is going to tell you that your number one need is a great website.
You want to be able to build your audience on your own terms, with your own ownership. You want a place to showcase your titles, get people on to your mailing list with your awesome freebie, and control your brand and messaging.
And most of all, you want a website that is easy to use and can help you let your audience know about new books quickly and smoothly – especially if you write books in series. That’s where we come in.
Why Write in Series?
One of the most sure-fire ways to make a living as a writer is to write books in series.
Whether you write in a non-fiction genre like self-help or reference, or dazzle your readers with your fantasy, science fiction, mystery, or romance books, the best way to hook a reader and keep a reader is to return to your most popular themes and characters in a series – or two, or three.
A lot of self-publishing marketing rules suggest writing in series. You can use your first book as a freebie to help grow your audience and build that all-important mailing list. Later, you can bundle titles into a set to boost sales, or allow one title to be included in a cross-promotion set to find new readers for the whole series. Online ads are much more effective when you can showcase a whole set of books, instead of a single title.
So if you are serious about making a living as a writer – consider writing books in series.
Why WordPress?
Maybe when you started out, you weren’t sure about this whole “author” thing, so you just grabbed yourself a free website on Wix or Squarespace.
But now you’re finding it’s a bit of a slog to publish a new title. If you’re in a rhythm and starting to really build your audience, you’re likely publishing at least a couple of new titles a year. And every time you do, you have to make a bunch of manual changes to several pages on your website.
Wouldn’t it be so much nicer to be able to just enter the info about a new book, and have it show up on the website in all the right places, automatically?
If that sounds like a fantasy, that’s because you haven’t tried WordPress yet. It’s time to change platforms. And not just for ease of use; your new WordPress site will also offer:
- Ownership – full control over your own data and interface
- Better SEO – to help new readers find you online
- The ability to add advanced features like a storefront that let you sell your books to your readers directly
- The dream: an interface where you can just enter book details and have it magically appear on your website, without having to know a bunch of coding stuff
Let your website work for you in the background while you spend your time doing what you really love – writing.
Why Sweet Smart Design?
We have a proprietary plugin that allows authors to showcase their books in series format.
On the back end, when you have a new book, here’s what you’ll do:
- Use the Add New Book form to enter all the information about your new book, including title, cover image, blurb
- Fill out easy form fields to enter links to buy websites, audio files, excerpts, and more
- Click simple checkboxes to add your new title to the right series, tag it appropriately, and mark its author
- Click Publish
And that’s it. Like magic, the new title will appear on your website in your main library, the series page, and on its own book page. And, you’ll be able to embed it in other locations with a simple one-line shortcode.
On the front end, you’ll see:
- Books sorted by series when a visitor views your whole library, all books by one author, or all books with the same tag
- Books ordered within their series by reading order, which can be changed any time you add a new title
- Series in order on the archive pages based on your preferred ordering, which can be changed at any time
- Single books showcasing all kinds of information, like where to buy it, how much it costs, links to even more
- Embedded series or books inside blog posts or pages – so you can highlight other books in a series while blogging about a brand new title, or drive traffic to a new title easily and quickly
Want to see it all in action?
Try out our demo author website to see how it all works.
Are you a Self-Published Author ready to take your website to the next level?