Free Websites to Promote your Books or Writing

but there is nothing like having your own domain name and hosting your site there.

Well, there might be things like it, but the point is it isn't really necessary. No need for somevbody without experience in website creation to go throught the shopping (some of the most blind shopping in the world) for registrar and host server (who might or might not have fanastico, by the way, and not always possible to know going in)

It's hard to really articulate much advantage of having one's own domain compared to having site traffic.

Furthermore, it's getting pretty tough to get the domain you want. Much easier to get them at blogger or blogspot or whatever.
Again, you see plenty of big name writers with professionally maintained sites using bigwriter.blogarino.com for their blogs.

There are MANY other reasons why free web hosting can be helpful. Storing backup files, hanging images to link to, adding to the link cloud.

This list is a resource that people can use as they see fit, I'd say. Just as they might choose to quickly set up a free, hassle-free blog site rather than monkey around with domains.

What you are doing, it's well to keep in mind, is quite a different purpose from what an author of one or a few books is trying to accomplish.

Also, they might not be trying to move a novel. Maybe they have a non-fiction book in a nice, discrete niche. In which case a whole different set of motivations and rules apply. I have a couple of websites in niche markets that come up on Google front page. And what often comes up is not just the target site, but a couple of the free-hosted sites I used earlier or for various purposes in the promo. So many three of the top ten Google items lead to me.

There is more than one way to skin these cats.
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Three Star Member Joined : 11 Jan 2008 Posts : 165

As mentioned in these posts, there are several reasons to use these free websites.

1) for link building (even a page rank 0 site adds credit)
2) to put your writing online for random reasons
3) to build part of your online "platform"
4) to have a place to mess around with web coding
5) to place your thoughts, photos, ideas, etc.
6) for niche marketing
7) for backing up your files
etc.

I'm just trying to help our fellow writers and authors with resources for making their work known.
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Director: Bauu Institute and Press
Editor: Indigenous People's Issues Today
Publisher: New Great Books Reviewed
Editor: Indigenous Peoples Issues & Resources