By Keely Brooke Keith
I recently came up with a new author interview series for my blog and announced to a couple indie author groups that I had spots available. I was thinking maybe I’d get enough authors to feature one per week until summer. An hour after my announcement, I had over sixty authors request an interview, and the requests are still coming in. I’m now featuring two authors per week for the foreseeable future and still cannot host them all. On the interview questionnaire I asked for the link to the author’s website. Most of the indie authors gave me a link to a Facebook page. Many gave the link to their book’s page on Amazon.
This might not be the best use of the opportunity. Here’s why:
You, the author, want to drive traffic to your website. And ideally, your website should be: www dot your author name dot com.
I see this misdirecting of traffic on social media all the time. As an author, your Twitter and Facebook profiles are post-discovery connection points for your readers.
If someone reads your book and becomes your fan, they might follow you on Twitter to find out when your next book is coming out. Check out some popular authors’ Twitter feeds. They might tweet their book’s buy links at several different retailers when it first comes out, but other than that, they aren’t tweeting “buy my book” every 15 minutes.
Say someone reads your book, likes it, finds you on Facebook and likes your author page. Your posts might pop up in their feed based on FB’s algorithms, but don’t count on it. Regardless, now that you have a reader watching to see what you post next, give them what they want—information about your writing life and your next release—not a buy link to the book they just read. Check out some popular authors’ Facebook pages. They’re not posting a link to their book’s Amazon page every day.
So where do you put that Amazon buy link you’re so proud of and relying on to quit your day job? On your website where you list all of the places your books are available. Amazon is a store. One store. A huge store, but one store nonetheless. Unless you own stock in Amazon, why send your traffic to them? Smashwords is a wonderful tool for indie authors, but they often suggest authors share their Smashwords profile link with prospective readers. Of course they do. They make money off you. But if a reader doesn’t already have a Smashwords account what are the odds they’ll go through all that just for your book? Same goes with Amazon: while an estimated 70% of ebook sales are Kindle, 30% are not. Do you want to dis 3 out of 10 potential ebook readers? What about the 40% of book sales that are still actual paperback books? If you share only an ebook link—specifically an Amazon Kindle link—with potential readers, statistically you’re only accommodating 42 out of 100 readers.
Be accessible on all the social media sites, but don’t drive online traffic to them. Same goes for online retailers, distributors, your publisher’s website, or any site you contribute your writing to. Tweet/share those links once, but don’t make those links your profile’s “About Me” link. Drive traffic to your website. Make your bio, books, and newsletter sign-up the most prominent features on your website’s landing page, and then let people know where all they can connect with you online and where all they can buy your books.
Authors should drive traffic to their website.
About The Author
Keely Brooke Keith, author of the Uncharted series, is a bass guitarist and resides on a hilltop south of Nashville with her husband, Marty, and their daughter, Rachel.
Keely’s debut novel, The Land Uncharted, as well as it’s follow up Uncharted Redemption. Both books are available at:
