How to Create a Reliable Author Website

An author website has one main purpose: to give your books, biography, contact details and buying information a stable home that readers can trust. People who hear your name on the radio, see your book shared on WhatsApp or meet you at an event will often look you up afterwards. What they find should tell them quickly who you are, what you have written and how to get your books.

Social media alone rarely does this well. Information is scattered across months of posts, prices change from one caption to the next and old phone numbers stay visible long after they stop working. A reader who has to piece the details together may give up before buying.

That does not mean every author needs an expensive or complicated website. Our view at Sotrane Publishers is that the most useful author sites are small, accurate and properly maintained. What matters is that the site is owned by the author, kept current and built around what a reader actually needs.

Decide what the website must do

Begin with the visitor, not with colours, animations or templates. An author website may need to help someone:

• Learn who the author is and what they write.
• Understand what each book is about.
• Buy or order a book.
• Invite the author to speak or visit a school.
• Make a media or institutional enquiry.
• Find upcoming events.
• Read useful articles connected to the author's subject.
• Confirm which social media accounts are genuinely the author's.

For most authors, five clear pages do more than a large site that is rarely updated. A practical starting structure is a home page, an About the Author page, a Books page, a page of news, articles or resources, and a Contact page. Add pages for speaking, media, school visits or consultancy only when they serve a real purpose.

Understand what you are paying for

Website quotations often bundle together several separate things, and it helps to know what each one is.

A domain name is the address people type or follow, such as sotranepublishers.com. It is not the website itself. You register a domain through a domain registrar for a fixed period, and it must be renewed to remain yours. Web hosting is the service that stores the website's files and makes them available online. Buying a domain does not give you a working website, and paying for hosting does not necessarily give you the domain you want. Some packages combine the two, but you should still know which account controls each.

The domain's settings, which developers call DNS, point visitors to the hosting service. You do not need to understand the technical records, but you should know which account holds them. WordPress, which you will hear mentioned often, is software for building and managing a website. It is not another name for a domain or for hosting.

Many registrars and hosting companies operate internationally, and their packages, prices and renewal terms change. Compare the current terms yourself rather than relying on a recommendation, and pay particular attention to renewal prices, which are often higher than the first year's price.

Write the costs down separately: domain registration, hosting, design and setup, ongoing maintenance and any business email. Ask which are included in the initial quotation and which renew each year. Two websites that look identical can come with very different responsibilities after launch.

Keep control of the domain and the important accounts

One of the most avoidable problems occurs when an author pays a developer to build a site and the developer registers everything in their own name. Months later, the author wants to change provider and discovers that they do not control the domain, the hosting account or the administrator login.

Before work begins, ask who will register the domain, whose email address will own each account, who will have administrator access, who controls the hosting, where backups are stored and what happens if you stop working with the developer. Wherever possible, the domain and hosting should be registered under accounts you control. A developer can be given the access needed to do the work without becoming the only person able to recover the site, and that access should be removed when the work ends.

Keeping control of your domain is the online equivalent of keeping your publishing contract and your book files.

Choose a domain people can remember

An author's own name is usually the clearest domain if it is available, and an established pen name works just as well. Keep it simple. An address someone can hear once in a radio interview and type correctly later is far more useful than one full of hyphens, abbreviations or unusual spellings.

Before registering, check that the name is easy to spell, that no similar address could confuse readers, and that it will still make sense when you publish your second or fifth book. A domain built around a single title can become awkward as your list of books grows.

Make the home page clear to a stranger

A visitor arriving from a radio mention or a shared link may know only your name. The home page should show your full name, the kind of books you write, your current title and a clear route to its details. If speaking engagements matter to you, make it equally easy to enquire about them.

Compare "Welcome to my world of inspiration" with an introduction such as "I write practical books for first-year university students, drawing on the questions they ask me every semester." The second tells a reader what you write and why they might want to look further. Describe your actual work and audience rather than borrowing a general phrase.

Test the home page with someone who does not know you. Ask them to find your latest book and tell you what it covers. If they need to ask you, the page needs clearer information.

Give every book a useful page

Each book page should answer the questions a serious buyer is likely to have. Include the correct cover, the full title and subtitle, the author's name, a clear description written for readers, the price, the available formats and how to buy. Add delivery information where relevant, the ISBN where it is useful and genuine reviews or endorsements where you have permission to use them.

Show the price openly so nobody has to send a message asking "How much?". If you sell to schools or organisations, say how they can enquire about bulk orders. If the book is stocked in an online shop, link directly to its product page rather than to the shop's front page.

Make the buying route obvious

A simple test reveals most problems. Ask someone who has never seen your website to open a book page and buy the book without asking you anything, and watch where they hesitate.

They may not know whether the price includes delivery, which towns you deliver to or whether a mobile money number is still current. An "Order now" button might open a WhatsApp chat with no book title in it, leaving the reader to explain what they want. Each hesitation tells you something that needs fixing. If your book is available through the Sotrane online shop, a direct link to it removes much of that uncertainty. Wherever you sell, one clear buying route is better than several incomplete ones.

Design for the phone first

Many visitors will open your link from WhatsApp, Facebook, LinkedIn or a text message, which means they will be using a phone. A site that looks impressive on a laptop but requires pinching and zooming on a phone has failed the most common test it will face.

On a phone, check the text size, button size, menu, book cover images, contact form and loading speed. Make sure phone numbers and email links work when tapped, that the order button is visible and that pop-ups do not cover the content. Test the site on an ordinary mobile data connection as well as on office Wi-Fi. Large photographs, automatic videos and unnecessary animation make a simple author site slower than it needs to be.

Keep the site current, secure and backed up

A website loses credibility quietly. The home page still announces a book "coming in March" in September. The events page lists a launch from two years ago. The contact number has changed. None of these errors is serious on its own, but together they suggest that nothing on the site can be relied upon.

Set a monthly routine to check book prices, order links, contact details, events, broken links, software updates, form messages and backups. After a launch, an interview, an award or a new edition, update the relevant page while the information is fresh. A small, current website is far stronger than a large, abandoned one.

Security belongs in the same routine. Your site address should begin with https, which means information travelling between a visitor and the site is encrypted. Ask who arranges and renews the certificate that provides this. Keep the main administrator account under an email address you control, use strong and unique passwords, and switch on an extra sign-in check where the service offers one.

Ask how often backups are made, where they are kept and how a restore works. A promise that "backups are included" is less useful than knowing that an earlier version of the site can actually be recovered. Set reminders for domain and hosting renewals as well. If a domain expires, the website and any email using it can stop working, and a domain that is not renewed may eventually be registered by someone else.

A business email address such as info@yourname.com can help readers recognise genuine messages, but it is another service to set up and renew. Ask where the messages are stored and how you would keep the address if you changed hosting provider. If your site collects contact messages or newsletter sign-ups, handle that information carefully and tell people what they are signing up for. Never add everyone who sends an enquiry to a mailing list without asking.

Let the website and social media do different jobs

You do not have to choose between a website and social media, because they do different work. Social media is good for conversation, visibility and short updates. A website holds information that should still be easy to find six months from now. A Facebook post might announce a school visit, while the website keeps your biography, book details and speaking enquiry information in one permanent place.

Your social media marketing can then send readers to useful pages instead of repeating every detail in every post. The website, in turn, should link to your genuine social accounts so visitors know which profiles are really yours.

If you add articles to the site, make them worth reading. A lecturer might publish explanations drawn from questions students ask every year. A children's author might share reading activities that parents can genuinely use. One detailed article that answers a real question is more valuable than ten thin posts written to make the site look busy. The same principle sits behind good author branding: give people a clear reason to remember your name.

Questions to ask a developer before you pay

A short conversation before development can prevent expensive confusion later. Ask for written answers to these questions:

• Which pages are included, and will the site work properly on phones?
• Who registers and owns the domain and the hosting account?
• What hosting is included, and for how long?
• Will I have full administrator access?
• Can I update books, prices and events myself?
• What happens if something breaks after launch?
• How are backups made and restored?
• Will the site connect to my existing shop or ordering system?
• What are the annual renewal costs, and what will future changes cost?
• Who owns the photographs, graphics and text used on the site?

A quotation that says only "Website: K8,000" cannot be compared fairly with another if one includes hosting, maintenance and content setup and the other covers design alone.

Test it before you launch

Before the site goes live, ask three people to try it: someone who already reads your work, someone who does not know you and someone using only a phone. Give them simple tasks. Find the latest book, find its price, work out how to order it, find the author's biography and send an enquiry. Do not explain anything while they test. Their confusion shows you exactly what still needs work.

Where Sotrane can help

A website works best as part of a consistent author presence rather than as a project on its own. Sotrane's book marketing support can include aligning an author's website, social profiles, mailing list and core information so that readers meet the same clear message everywhere. Our design team can also prepare an author identity, with a mark, typefaces and colour guidance, for consistent use across a website, social media and print.

Build the smallest site that represents you properly, keep control of the important accounts and maintain it regularly. A reader who arrives curious should be able to leave confident about who you are and how to get your books.