In my first post on publishing websites, I talked about how inexpensive it can be to have your own website. There are some people who would tell you that you only need to be able to put up your book on Amazon and you are good to go.
They would be wrong.
Yes, you do need to have everything you are selling, books and otherwise, up on Amazon, but your own website does things for you that Amazon cannot including:
- You can price your books at an amount that might sell on your site, but would not on Amazon (given how low eBooks are selling for now);
- You can provide whatever sort of information you would like about the book without regard to all of those Amazon rules;
- It's your home. Well, at least your home for books. If you tell someone it's on Amazon, that is very different than saying it is up on Degree Press where only your books reside.
It may well be that you only want to have a place where you can place information that then links to your Amazon pages.
Or it may be that you wish to sell in both places. I recommend this second option. If you look on my publishing website, you will see a way to purchase eBooks from me or to click through for Amazon. I'll take either purchase.
Whatever it is you want, you need a place from which to do it.
In Part 3, I will share some alternatives to WordPress that you could use for a book publishing website.
