Author Website

StoryOrigin is the free alternative to BookFunnel with built-in newsletter swap and group promotion capabilities that make it particularly powerful for list growth. This guide covers the website integration specifically: connecting StoryOrigin delivery to your email platform, using swaps and promotions to drive traffic to your author website, and measuring StoryOrigin traffic in ScribeCount.

Most author blogs fail not because the writing is bad but because the content strategy is wrong. One-sentence publishing announcements, every-review posts, and sporadic posting schedules are the three patterns that produce blogs nobody reads. This guide covers what author blog content actually drives traffic, builds readers, and improves your search visibility over time.

Most author podcast advice focuses on starting your own show. The better advice for most authors is to be a great guest on other people's shows first. Podcast guesting reaches established audiences at zero ongoing time cost. Starting your own podcast is a multi-year commitment that most authors underestimate before they begin.

Social media and your author website serve different functions — social is where you meet new readers; your website is where you keep them. This guide covers how to build the connection between them: driving social traffic to your website, link-in-bio strategy, social sharing, UTM tracking for campaign attribution, and measuring which social channels convert to real reader relationships.

Heatmaps show you what readers do. Analytics tell you what happened. A/B testing tells you what to change. This guide covers the elements worth testing on an author website, how to run a valid test, which tools work without a developer, and how to read results without falling into the traps that make most website tests misleading.

Flying blind on your author website means spending time and money on marketing without knowing what's working. This guide covers setting up Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, and ScribeCount's Website Traffic tracking — three tools that serve distinct purposes and together give you the complete picture from search query to book sale.

Google Analytics tells you how many visitors arrived and how long they stayed. Heatmaps tell you what they actually did while they were there — where they clicked, how far they scrolled, and whether they ever saw the email capture form you think is so prominently placed. This guide covers what heatmap data reveals about author websites and how to act on it.

Accessibility is not a technical checkbox — it is the practice of making sure every reader who wants to find you and buy your books can actually use your website. Some of your readers use screen readers. Some read on low-contrast displays. Some navigate by keyboard. This guide covers the practical accessibility improvements that matter most for author websites.

Your author website is not a build-it-and-forget-it project. A neglected WordPress site accumulates security vulnerabilities and broken links. A Squarespace or Wix site with outdated book information loses credibility with every reader who visits. This guide covers the specific maintenance tasks that keep your author website healthy — organized by monthly, quarterly, and annual schedule.