The Spinecrest Journal

Practical guides for authors on building a website that readers trust and that sells books.

• What an author website is actually for

  Before you pick fonts, decide the three jobs your site must do for a reader who has never heard of you.

• Pen names: one site or many?

  How to decide whether each pen name gets its own website, and what to do about the shared email list.

• Anatomy of a book page that sells

  The elements every individual book page needs, in the order a reader looks for them.

• Buy links that never break

  Retailer URLs change, regions differ and formats split. Here is how to keep every buy link working.

• Writing an About page readers actually finish

  A practical structure for an author bio that builds trust without turning into a résumé.

• Growing a newsletter without pop-ups

  Pop-ups annoy readers and can hurt search visibility. Inline offers that respect the page work better for authors.

• Own your domain, own your audience

  Why every author should hold their own domain name, and how to set it up so it outlives any platform.

• Reading-order pages: the most useful page you are not writing

  Series readers search for reading order constantly. A clear page answers them and sends them straight to book one.

• Getting early reviews the right way

  How to build honest early reviews through advance copies while staying inside retailer rules.

• Your author site is a phone site now

  Most readers will see your website on a phone. A checklist for making it work on a small screen.

• Privacy basics every author website needs

  Newsletters, analytics and ads all involve personal data. What a small author site should have in place.

• The ten-minute monthly site check

  A short routine that keeps an author website accurate, fast and trustworthy all year.