1.2 Organize & keep track of all the brand components

All the “look-and-feel” of an Author website is determined by the brand imagery. The actual template used (assuming WordPress) also matters, but it's the images that people remember, not how they're manipulated or where they are displayed on the page. That's why you can change WordPress templates without people being disturbed, if you leave the imagery alone.

Changing the actual brand imagery is more disruptive to brand continuity but sometimes it becomes necessary.

1.2.1 Brand components (primary)

• The header of the website (what represents the domain), and the home page's header, if that's different
• The primary colors on the website
• The fonts on the website

• 

  The favicon (that miniature image on the left of a browser's tab)

• Official author photos
• The publisher imprint (on the bottom spine of the book)
• Covers (front, spine, back) of any books/bundles
• Website taglines, if any (text)
• Audio tags for podcasts or audiobooks, if any (audio)

1.2.2 Secondary (derived) branding

Whenever you change a primary brand component, you need to update everything that uses it.

• Newsletters
• Business cards (which can also include book covers)
• Letterhead (press releases, invoices, etc.)
• Title pages for books
• Back covers & spines for books (publisher imprint)
• Flyers & handouts (which can also include book covers)
• Author images on social media sites or in Gravitar-supporting comments

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1.3 Secondary platforms should funnel people to your author website

Many people have built pseudo-Author websites using Facebook pages, Amazon Author pages — even Twitter and other secondary platforms get pressed into service.

This is a bad idea.

1.3.1 Social network sites as primary platforms

No matter how many Facebook followers you may have, you do not control Facebook or its policies. They could change a rule tomorrow and invalidate your followers. They already restrict how many of them see your messages without extra fees.

You should feel free to use these secondary social platforms if they are comfortable for you, but try to funnel all but the most trivial traffic back to your Author website, where all the detailed information resides. You can't control the platform on Facebook, you can't display the right kind of information to satisfy your readers, and in the long run it's time-consuming to try and maintain multiple communication channels in detail. Better to concentrate on the primary platform (Author website) and use the secondary platforms as adjuncts.

1.3.2 Amazon Author pages as primary platforms

Using Amazon Author pages is even more shortsighted. You can say very little, you can't brand them visually, and what about all the readers who buy your products somewhere else? Treat it as an opportunity to connect and feed it your blog, but encourage readers to click on your Author website link for more information and to sign up for newsletters.

Ditto for Goodreads Author pages (even worse).

1.3.3 Don't forget the back matter of your books

The back of your books (both digital and print) should also funnel people to your Author website for more information. Rather than maintain one version for Amazon that sends them to Amazon to buy the next book, and another version that sends them to another retailer, etc., send them all to the book's page on your Author website where all those links reside in the same place.

The cost is an extra click, but the benefits are the ability to track those clicks, to avoid irritating Apple because your ebook has a link to Amazon, to only maintain a single version of the ebook, to add a single link to your print book, and not to worry if the link to a retailer changes or you add a new retailer — it only has to be updated on your own website, once, and not in every copy of the distributed book.

You control the link that you put into the book — it goes to your book's page, and that should never change.

Think about this when you build the Author website. Remember, if you use URL shorteners like Bitly or TinyURL, that those businesses can go away and take your shortened links into oblivion with them. You want to avoid that risk for your published books, if you can.

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