Month: November 2021

An author’s website is a place for the author to reside permanently and can be an avenue for the author to showcase their world of creativity without any restrictions placed by other bookselling websites.  An author’s website is crucial for them in building relationships with their audience and it is a place for readers to visit at their convenience.  The website acts as a portal into the author’s world and it can also benefit them in the publishing aspect of books. The author’s website should be a culmination of a resume website, a personal website, a portfolio website, a gallery as well as a place to get exclusive access to the author.  As we can see that authors are slowly transitioning into building their custom websites and this is helping them in this tech-savvy age. 

Here is why every author needs their website.

Independent control –

This is a combination of factors because an author’s website acts as a tool for building the brand of the author as well as giving them independence over the sales of their books and greater control over the showcasing and brand image of the author.  In addition to them having a website, authors in this day and age must have a great degree of social media presence as there is no better way to build a connection with the readers.

 

Fandom –

gone are the days when others had to use pen names to publish their books and be secretive to their reader base.  An author’s personal website acts as a plugin to all their social media handles and all their social media activity and can act as an exclusive point for readers to engage with their fan base and interact and even collaborate with them.  In this age of literal face value, it is not practical for the author to go out of the norm and not have a social media presence or an online presence with their website because they will fall out of demand and will not be able to create a lasting image. 

 

Sales –

websites like Amazon and other books selling websites are great because they already have the audience footfall present for the authors book to shine and their infrastructure is already in place for them to become a great book publishing hub. However, websites like Amazon and Flipkart also have to earn money and therefore they charge a certain percentage of the actual profit of the book and there is also the charge for their delivery which is a standard rate and if you add up the costs there is actually very little profit for the other to gain. Personal author’s websites on the other hand are a place where the author can sell the book directly to the reader without having any middlemen like Amazon to dictate the terms of the sales.  And the author can even organize book-signing events and promotional events and publicize them right in the website without having to pay extra money to E-Commerce websites for promotional content.

Now that we have established the fact that every author needs a website, we can go over the tips to create a perfect author’s website-

Details –

details such as a proper contact information section and bio as well as proper keywords that depict the genre and category of the books are important as it assists the website to be organically discovered in a Google search.  Along with that, details to an easily accessible payment gateway and login section for the readers must be present so that they can view their purchases from the author’s website.  Other details such as all the plugins for the author’s social media handles as well as other places the author is selling the book must also be present along with proper hyperlinks so that the visitors of the website can go to wherever the author wants to direct them.

 

Responsiveness and attention –

the website must be responsive and the UI easily navigable so that the readers may not find it difficult to go from one book to another as well as other sections that the author has decided to include. The website must be optimized for mobile view. There must also be a section for blogs that the author writes because it will beneficial for the website’s discovery online.  There must be a dedicated team making sure that the website gets updated as frequently as possible with all the new details of new book releases and other content that the author has created along with every social media interaction and every interview and other social events that the author has partaken in as well as a place for the media to get material such as the author’s pictures and book cover pictures for use in the press as well as updated banners with press coverage of the author as well as upcoming events that the author will partake in.  This will also be beneficial to Google search results because Google search algorithms identify the website as responsive and organic and relevant. 

Here were a few why’s and how’s for a successful authors website. However, this is a lot of work for a single author to do all by themselves. Here is where we come in hand, we at Orange Publishers, India’s most loved self book publishing house in India, will not only publish and promote your books but also handle all other aspects including designing a website for you.

In this blog we will discuss the importance of book reviews and how a book review is more important than it seems and how a book review and benefit the reader as well as the author. Book reviews come in all shapes and sizes they can be long as well as short and they can be inside full as and even poorly written and not a good way to judge a book.  There are a lot of pros and cons to book reviews but in this blog, we are going to discuss primary why we all can agree that book reviews are not such a bad thing and that if book reviews are written properly by the proper professional book reviewers with the proper know-how and prowess then book reviews can act as an important tool to not only the readers but also the book market and book publishing industry in general. Few ways in which book reviews solve a lot of problems and are a blessing to the literature community.

Through the woods –

just like Google and the internet, the book market and the book publishing world is a huge place and finding the right book of your choice can be like finding a needle in a hayfield. Book reviews by professional book reviewers as well as reader reviews can act as a guide to help you find the book of your choice. Writing a book review is an art in itself because you don’t want to give away too much that is in the book and there is the risk of favouritism and bias and there is also the risk of manipulation, however, in the literature community we all can agree that this is not a big issue.  All things aside book reviews by an unbiased reviewer have always done better than harm and has always guided that readers’ community towards books of their liking.

 

Through the looking glass –

Although book reviews and book criticisms can be put together on the same page or perhaps the same book, but book reviews are sort of a glimpse into a world that you may or may not choose to enter and this is important from the author’s perspective because without the review the book would not even have reached the potential book buyers and potential readers. Now, an author can get past this problem through promotion and advertisements however there is nothing like word-of-mouth in the literary community as we can agree that the world of literature is something of a world that has moved into the future with strands still in the past. 

 

Through the mirror –

book reviews are important because they act as a reflection and interaction (be it one way) for the author to truly get a sense of how the community is reacting and embracing their work. Book reviews can be polished or crass but book reviews nonetheless provide an idea to the author of what their audience base is wanting from them and deciding if or if not to enact future changes on that demand, but get a sense nonetheless of how their book is been received by the audience. There are a select group of authors who do not adhere to or even read book reviews let alone make changes after reading book reviews because they have this belief that the work should be independent of external involvement but overall, the majority of authors tend to give importance and attention to book reviews.

 

Through the Gutenberg –

book reviews are embraced by successful published authors and successful publishing houses and even book stores and dealers because this shows the literature community and industry in a good light as being transparent and open to criticism and on the economic point of things book reviews are excellent untainted free publicity that any wise author will not be willing to let go.  The literary community is a close-knit community and forgery of book reviews are simply not possible if not practical or viral because one can talk to buy a few reviews for a few reviews but if the community gets a hint of this that publishing house for that other than we ostracized or in online terms, informally banned for life. 

 

Just as books have shifted from being paperbacks to hardbacks to Amazon Kindle e-book readers, book reviews have also come a long way from being on testimonials in book stores to editorials in newspapers to Amazon’s “what the customer thinks” area and we hope and we predict that book reviews are here to stay. What we can say for certain is that Orange publishers are the best self-publishing Book House to publish your books and we at Orange Publishers take book reviews seriously and never try to intervene in this process of pure criticism called book reviews.