Your website

Search engines and the systems that connect books to authors look for one stable address under your control. Without one, the top result for your name is whatever a third party built, and you cannot correct it. On every publishing route this is yours to own; a traditional or hybrid publisher usually runs its own author page as well, which is worth linking to but not a substitute. You're done when you have one stable address you own and use the same way everywhere.

Your own website at a domain you own and renew. It does not need to be large: a home page, a bio page at a stable address, one page per book, and a way to reach you. It is the address you put in every profile, bio, and form that asks for one.

Retailers, libraries, search engines, and Wikidata all have a field for the author's official website, and they treat it as the source that settles how your name is spelled, what you have written, and how to reach you.

Everything on it, which is the point: the spelling of your name, your bio in three lengths, your books with their identifiers, your contact route, and the structured data search engines can use. The site's author page here carries a link to it.

Record the address here in the form you use everywhere (with or without www, but always the same). If you do not have a site yet, the checklist item Set up your author website walks through what it needs. Add the address to your Amazon, Goodreads, and BookBub profiles, your Wikidata entry, and your email signature.

1. Open the address in a private window and check that it loads over https and lands on you.
2. Search your name and confirm the site appears, and that the name on it matches the cover.
3. Check that the bio page and each book page have stable addresses that have not changed.

A page on a publisher's site, a retailer author page, or a social profile is not your website: you do not own the address and cannot control what shows there. A free subdomain on a site builder is yours only as long as the builder allows.