WordPress Is for Authors

By Yael K. Miller

If you’ve read the article “Why Book Authors Need Their Own Websites” by my business partner Phyllis Zimbler Miller, you know why if you’re a book author you need a website.

And if you’ve read my article “What You Should Know About Web Design for Books” you have a basic idea of what the website should look like.

Now comes the tough part — getting the website.

You could hire a web designer who will create the look in Photoshop and then either send it out to be coded or turn that look into website code himself/herself. I know a lot of web designers who can do this for you and it will look very pretty. But there’s a problem with this.

You’re an author, which is a fancier way of saying writer. You’re a writer. You like to write. And here’s the problem with those lovely Photoshop-to-coded websites. Everything is so rigid that even a minor change might have you hiring that very expensive, very good web designer to fix it for you.

You could say not a problem. But as a writer myself, I know we consider, fuss, obsess over whatever we write. And our brains and fingers itch over our desire to change something. But such a hyper-designed site will serve as a roadblock to our natural creative desires.

What if something is out there that allows you to easily change any copy you write? Any copy, anywhere on the site and, yes, easily.

Is there such a unicorn out there?

Yes, there is and it’s called WordPress.

Wait a minute you say. I’ve heard of WordPress. Isn’t it for blogging? I want a website.

Yes, you can blog with WordPress. But WordPress is in a fact a Content Management System (CMS), meaning you can have a website or a blog or both with the same software.

Now this part is very important. You do NOT want WordPress.com – that’s WordPress blogging on a hosted side.

You WANT the WordPress which you get from WordPress.org – which is FREE. You have to get your own URL (domain name), but you would have to get one anyway for a designer website.

While there are steps you need to take to get WordPress setup on your own URL, once the WordPress site is up it is very easy to use and the text editor works like Word.

To control the look of a WordPress website, you use what are called WordPress themes. Some are free and some you have to pay for. Different themes have different looks, different built-in features, different advantages and disadvantages.

(My company is a big fan of the theme Thesis, which we use for all the websites we build. Check out our http://www.millermosaicllc.com to see what Thesis looks it.)

I truly believe if you are an author (writer), WordPress will satisfy that creative urge within you to be in control of the content of your site. And you’ll love being able to make immediate changes without having to wait for your web designer to get back to you.

Learn about our WordPress book author call-to-action websites now!
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Yael K. Miller is a co-founder of www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, which combines traditional marketing principles with the power of Internet marketing strategies to promote your business more effectively.