The bad thing about having a book boosted into bestseller ranks by something artificial like a BookBub ad is that you then have to watch it very quickly slide back into obscurity. It’s depressing to watch those numbers changing. I have to remind myself that it’s far better than if the ad hadn’t been there in the first place. I just need to get a book that makes it there on its own without any artificial manipulation like a price drop (though with publisher support). That’s one of my career aims.
As part of working toward that goal, I’m about to be getting my web site redone. The designer has a fairly extensive questionnaire so he can better know exactly what I want. I’ve started work on it, but I imagine that’s what I’ll be spending Saturday working on.
The hard part is that he asked who my top competitors are. I thought a good start would be to go to the “people who bought this also bought” for my books, but most of the people who come up aren’t what I’d consider my competition. Most of them are paranormal romances or cozy paranormal mysteries, while I’m trying to position myself in fantasy. I guess I should tell him that. There are some fairly close comparisons in some of my subgenres (especially the YA steampunk), but in fantasy there isn’t a lot that I would put in the same category as my books, which may be part of my problem. Or else the people I get compared to are way out of my league, so trying to compare myself or the kind of website I can afford to get done to them is rather pointless.
I also need to come up with examples of websites I like and don’t like. When it comes to author websites, I can find a lot I don’t like, but few I do like, that have all the information I want in a way that’s easy to find and that doesn’t look too cluttered and doesn’t make me scroll for hours to get to a spot on the page.
Are there any author websites you particularly like or don’t like?
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