What do the best author websites have in common?
by Kim Vermaak
One of the best things about this Author Website is how it blends Hamilton Wende’s career as a journalist with his experience as a TV producer and a novelist.
The moment you open the website, the image shows him in the field as a war journalist. This author’s website shows cases he has covered some 17 different wars and conflicts.
Scrolling down there are some sample videos from his career as a TV producer.
This author website gives readers an opportunity to grab a free copy of his book Red Air. Having covered the war in Afghanistan, Hamilton brings an authenticity to the character in this book.. And the cover certainly reflects his brand.
A great website is not the only thing an author needs to be successful, but it definitely helps. Let’s delve a little deeper into this author’s website so you can learn from some key elements that you need for your author’s website.
The Best Author Websites Have Easy Navigation
The best author websites are well organised. Hamilton Wende’s website flows logically and the navigation bar next and what is available on that page. The themed colour flow means that the reader’s eye easily flows from one place to the other without disrupting conflicting colours.
The Best Author Websites Have Consistent Branding
Branding is about the image readers get of who you are as an author and what your books are about. It is not just about your logo or colours. The Hamilton Wende website uses the colours, types of images and font to communicate with readers and prospects of what this Johannesburg freelance writer and television producer is all about. It is a lesson that many coaches and consultants can learn from Best author websites when setting up their websites.
The Best Author Websites Creatively Highlight Key Points on Your CV
In television, Hamilton has worked for several international networks including National Geographic, CNN, BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera English, ZDF and ARD. The website shows the logos of several of the international brands he has worked with.
This journalist has covered seventeen different wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The countries he has worked in include Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Rwanda, Congo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan, Eritrea, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan.
This author’s website uses images that show word maps and some personal travel photos that reinforce his brand for those visitors who don’t want to read all the text. Over and above the images, the website has enough text based content to help Google to catalogue this website and give potential clients enough resources to find out more about him.
In fact, Hamilton mentioned at the time of creating this website that although he has a substantial amount of field experience, a new prospect asked if he had a website where they could find out more about him. This is what we call an opportunity cost. When you don’t take the time to manage your brand, you may lose out on well-deserved opportunities, simply because you have no online presence or an amateurish website. Hamilton used his author website to host a range of his experience, including links to several TV shows listed on YouTube, which he has produced as well as the logos of companies he has worked for.
The Best Author Websites Show Where to Buy Your Books
Your website is a great place to get to learn about the author, but it should also help you to sell books. The Hamilton Wende website gives readers a taste of his style of writing, but also directs visitors to stores where they can buy his books.
The Best Author Websites Have Links
Are you on Amazon or Goodreads? All the best author website ensure that these essential book pages should appear on their websites. They are a way of helping superfans to find your books. If you are new to the author world, then make sure you get a free Goodreads account. It is a social book social cataloguing website that allows individuals to search its database for books, quotes and reviews. You can add your book links onto it and this gives the reader an easy way to find your book, post reviews and share your book details with other fans. A great resource is to link your reviews to your books as well. The Hamilton Wende author website links to the author’s Amazon Page as well as to the author’s Goodreads page.
The Best Author Websites Have Calls to Action that Sells Books
A website has to direct readers to where to buy your books. Update this section every time you get into a new retailer.
Now that you have learned a bit more about this author’s website, you can buy his books on Amazon.
Or you can contact him via his website.
From time to time we feature other Writer’s websites on our blog. Keep checking back for more tips and hints on websites.
This website was designed by Write Learn and Earn.
Hamilton Wende's Books
Here are some of this author’s books. He has also written an article on How to write a book on our guest blog page.
The King's Shilling
There are two kinds of wars: one external, a public war for all the world to witness: the other intensely private, glimpsed by only a few. It is 1916 on the German East African frontier – surrounded by the beauty and oppressive heat of the African savanna with its guardian, Kilimanjaro towering above the skyline, and a war of words and prejudice flares up – these are yet early days for the South African and Rhodesian regiments to be integrating with the men of the King’s African Rifles and the Indian Baluchis. But in battle every man must discover for himself the hard truths of his own fears and the meaning of courage. When Lieutenant Michael Fuller went to war, haunted by the memory and desire for the woman he left behind, he had no idea that his secret mission into enemy territory would take him beyond the guns and bombs, deep into the heart of the human spirit.
House of War
Sebastian Burke, a British academic, has spent his whole life trying to understand the secret life of Alexander the Great and his slave bride Roxane. Now, with the Taliban forced underground, he finally has the opportunity to undertake the journey he has dreamed of for almost his entire adult life, a journey into the heart of Alexander’s world, a journey to the lost city of Ay Khanoum in northern Afghanistan. Here, with the help of Claire Finch – a fiercely independent American documentary producer – he hopes to find and expose to the world the contents of the Royal Diaries of Alexander – the last copies of which were kept in the city before its destruction by barbaric invaders from the East. However, from the moment two American servicemen are murdered by Al Queda terrorists in the bar of their hotel in Tashkent it becomes clear that there is far more at stake than just Sebastian’s reputation as a historian, and what started out as a quest to validate a lifetime of academic study quickly turns into a journey of discovery that will bring Sebastian face to face with his Rhodesian past – a past that he has run form for more than 30 years.
Red Air
When CIA operative Al Morris is kidnapped in Afghanistan, it sets off a dizzying chain of international terrorist intrigue. His son, Danny, is a foreign correspondent who has never respected his father’s choosing a career in spying. However, he writes an article about the terrorist group which unwittingly betrays an Afghan warlord, Azmaray Shah, and leads to his son Turan’s capture. Azmaray Shah insists that Danny come to negotiate for his father’s life and for the release of Turan. Stricken by guilt and the need to help his father, Danny joins a mission by US Marines to rescue Al. Danny finds himself caught in a vortex of combat across Afghanistan which forces him to confront his own courage and question the values he has carried with him all his life. This is a story of war, of fathers and sons, and the deepest need we all carry for hope and redemption across the generations.
Do you need a professional touch for your author website?
Let us help you set up an author website that shows that you are an author that has your eyes set on growth.
Hello, I am Kim Vermaak
I spent most of my adult life helping other companies build their dream and their brands.
After I turned 40, I wondered if there was more to life than taking
care of children and slaving away to earn a living.
I wanted to create a legacy for my children and the next generation. I found that through my books I could celebrate who I am as well as teach others to earn a living through their writing.
Being an author is not a hobby. It is a business, and it is my passion to teach authors how to thrive in that business. I look forward to seeing your book business grow.
Your Book Whisperer
Kim
