You’ve picked a web host and domain name registrar and you’re ready to sign up. But first, you need to decide on a domain name — plus several back-up choices.

Your domain name is the main address of your website. It’s your identity on the internet. So it’s important to choose something memorable and easy to find — many people agonize over it.

Authors have it easy

Luckily, for those of us building an author website, the choice is easy — if we can get it, we want the name on the cover of our books:

FirstnameLastname.com

We want the .com ending because that’s the one everyone thinks of first. And we want the name we write under — real name or pen name — because that’s how people are going to look for us.

Sure, you could also do BookTitle.com or MysterySeriesName.com, or use the name of your main character. But then what happens when you write your second book? Or start a new series?

If your name is already taken

As you can see, I got my first choice — kathleenwendorff.com. But if your name is Mary Smith, you may not be so lucky. So it’s a good idea to brainstorm a bunch of possible alternatives ahead of time.  You could add your middle name or middle initial. Use your nickname. Use both initials. (For instance, jkrowling.com or gmmalliet.com) Check FirstnameLastnamebooks.com or FirstnameLastnameauthor.com.

I’ve also seen suggestions to add a dash ( Firstname–Lastname.com ) but others say dashes  and numbers confuse people, and should be avoided if possible.

You could also try a different top-level domain — .net, .org, or something less well-known. But .com is so standard and expected, that seems risky.

In fact, though I’ve seen many recommendations to buy up the .net and .org forms of your domain name and direct them all to the .com address –- I checked many author websites, and nobody was doing that. Maybe retail businesses find this worth the added cost, but authors don’t seem to.

One last warning

Finally, I’ve heard that you should not check the availability of your chosen domain name before you’re actually in the process of buying and registering it. Supposedly, predators pounce and buy up names which people show interest in, and then try to resell them to you later at an exorbitant price. True? I don’t know, but it didn’t seem worth taking the risk.

Good luck, and here’s hoping your first choice is waiting for you!