Whether you're published traditionally, seeking representation, self-published, or just thinking about writing a book, you should have a website. It doesn't have to be fancy or complicated. All you need is a place that is uniquely yours outside of a third-party social media site. 

One of the biggest reasons to have a website is to make it easy for potential readers, agents, and publishers to find you. It's your chance to show exactly who you are as a writing professional and share your thoughts.

Regardless of whether you build your website yourself or hire someone else to build and maintain it, there is certain content you'll want to have. 

Writing 85,000 words is easy. Picking four words to describe what happens in 85,000 words is hard. Picking a title for your novel can sometimes feel daunting because you want it to be memorable, to capture the themes of your book, and to fit in with the other books in your genre but stand out at the same time. So how do you pick something perfect?

​Read on for some tips for choosing a title.

Regardless of what you write, you should be comfortable using social media. Authors of fiction and nonfiction are expected to do a lot of their own marketing, and social media is a great (and free) way to accomplish this. It's also a quick, easy way to build an author platform and show your potential agent and editor who you are, because they will definitely Google you. 

After your book is picked up for publication, you can do a lot, including cover reveals, unboxings, or ARC giveaways, to promote your book, but what do you do while you're still drafting your novel or looking for an agent? 

5 Posts Aspiring Writers Can (and Should) Make on Social Media

Let’s say you have a book out and want to promote it. So you contact a website and offer to write a free guest post (or several) for them. (The example below follows blogging, but you can also use these patterns for video, podcast, etc.)

In exchange for providing the free content, you have some requests:

• You want your column(s) to be accompanied by your book cover
• You want your column(s) to be accompanied by your headshot
• You want your column(s) to be accompanied by your bio, with a link in the bio that will redirect readers to a buy page for the book — Amazon or IndieBound or whatever you ask