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A good author Web site helps establish your credibility as an author, helps promote your books, and gives your readers, who become your fans, a source for information about you. Many companies have been set up to help develop Web sites—you can search for these companies on Internet search engines. If you feel that you can't afford either the time or the money to do that right now, at least reserve a domain name for yourself. Depending on the length of the contract you sign, the cost of reserving only a name comes to about $20 per year. You can do that by going to www.networksolutions.com. Try to use your name as the Web address (for example, www.gordonryan.com.) Although there are places to buy domain names that are less expensive that Network Solutions, they have a long track record as a stable company that will likely still be around years down the road to insure that you still own this domain name.
If you don't establish your own Web site and only reserve the domain name, there is another option for establishing a Web presence. For a small fee of a couple of dollars per year, you can purchase what is called "web forwarding" from Network Solutions. With web forwarding, you can have the author domain name (such as www.gordonryan.com) published in your books, so that readers and bookstores can use this simple address to find you, and then when the user types in that address, it automatically takes them to your author pages on our site, where they can look up your biography, see your picture, see a list of other books you have written and a schedule of author appearances. Check with us, and we'll help you get that set up. An example of an author that does this is Louise Erdrich. She has purchased the domain name www.louiseerdrichbooks.com, and when you enter that name in your browser navigation bar, it automatically forwards you to her author Web pages at the publisher's Web site, www.harpercollins.com.
If the domain name with your own name isn't available, try variations on your name such as gordonryanbooks.com, gordonryanauthor.com, gordonryanonline.com, or gordonryanwebsite.com, etc. There are a lot of variations, all using your name.
Here are some sample author Web sites to help you come up with ideas. There are all kinds of styles. Some of these authors are with Mapletree, but most are other nationally-known authors:
or check out other author Web sites by finding them at www.authoryellowpages.com.
Sample author biography and tips