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.
Social platforms change their rules, retailers redesign their author pages and website builders come and go. The one address you control completely is your own domain.
Register it in your own name
Buy the domain through a reputable registrar using an account you own, with your own email address. Do not let a designer, publisher or platform register it on your behalf. If a relationship ends, the domain should stay with you.
Choose a plain name
Your author name with .com is ideal. If it is taken, try adding "author" or "books", or a country domain where you live. Avoid hyphens, unusual spellings and anything that is hard to say aloud on a podcast.
Turn on renewal protection
Set auto-renew, keep the payment card current, and use a registrar that sends reminders. Expired author domains are routinely bought by people who fill them with spam, and you will not get them back cheaply.
Point it, do not transfer it
Most website services, Spinecrest included, ask you only to add a DNS record at your registrar. The domain stays at the registrar you chose. That separation means you can change website providers without ever risking the domain itself.
Use it everywhere
Put the domain in every book's back matter, on your social profiles, business cards and event signage. Links to your own domain keep working when you change website tools, which is not true of links to a platform profile.
Email on your domain
An address such as hello@yourname.com looks professional and survives a change of email provider. Most registrars and email services make this simple to set up.
Written by the Spinecrest studio · October 9, 2026