Writing a book or thinking about writing one? Already have one published or online? Then think seriously about getting yourself a domain name and a website. There is no better way of bringing your name and your book some great cheap publicity.
The big guys are doing it. Author Stephen King has StephenKing.Com, StephenKing.Net, StephenKing.Org, and may have some others I’m not aware of. Looking for something by authors James Patterson or Nicholas Sparks? You guessed it! There’s JamesPatterson.Com and NicholasSparks.Com, with information about them, their books, and links to places you can buy them. Heck, even authors as unknown as yours truly have personal websites and websites for his books: Check out my BooksonKindle.Com Why these websites? Well ego, of course; ego and the chance to sell more books. Isn’t that why we wrote the damn things, so people could read them and send us money?
Even if you don’t want to spend the money or the time to develop a full-fledged website, it is still worth ten bucks a year or less to own your name in dot-com or dot-net or dot-org or dot-whatever. You can always have the traffic to your domain name forwarded to your publisher’s site if you don’t want to build your own site. You’ll find publishers more than happy to accept another link and connect it to the page with information about your book.
With a little time and interest you can build your website yourself. Yours truly is living proof that the graphically challenged (I’m colorblind to reds and greens) can build decent websites. For one thing, the web abounds with templates looking for people to use them for a reasonable fee–including free! For another, you site doesn’t have to be complicated. Your book’s cover can be page one; then toss in a review or two if you have them; include a few hundred lines from the book and finish up with a link to your publisher or an online bookstore. You’re done!
I’m not talking big bucks here. Most domain names can be purchased for less than ten dollars a year. Those thousands of templates I mentioned…many can be had for free. If you buy a domain, some registrars (do a little research here to be sure of what your potential registrar offers) will give you space for a free site and an automated site builder. (Cheap Mike’s is one of those registrars)
Yes, “free” means ads but nothing intrusive like pop-ups. And if you simply can’t bare the thought of ads on your web site, you can have your own space–absolutely pristine–for less than five dollars a month. Domain names are cheap. Advertising is dear. Websites can be had for nothing. What are you waiting for?
Michael Nardine
As should be made obvious by the accompanying photo, Mike Nardine (aka Cheap Mike) is plain vanilla and old as dirt. He is Secret Laboratory’s Technology Editor and has been writing since before the invention of the electric typewriter. His first computer was a 1kb Sinclair; his love-affair with computers began with a Kaypro. He has sold short stories to women’s magazines and has published several books, which are available in Amazon’s Kindle Store. Mr. Nardine has also written a whole slug of book reviews, play reviews, news articles, and consumer-tech stuff for various ezines and The Reader Weekly of Duluth, Minnesota. He presently lives in Rochester, Minnesota with his wife of many years and a fifteen-year-old Jack Russel Terrier named Chloe. Still writing as he circles the drain, he also sells domains and web hosting at CheapMikes.com. Visit Mike and view all of his titles at booksonkindle.com.
Email Mr. Nardine at michaelnardine@secretlaboratory.org.
