How to Choose the Perfect Email & Domain for Your Author Brand | Ep. 41

Should your author's email match your book title? Or is it better to use your name? 

The right choice can impact your author's brand, book visibility, and marketing success. In this episode of The Author’s Edge, Allison Lane breaks down the email and domain strategies every author should know—so you can avoid common mistakes and create a professional, memorable online presence.

If you're launching a book, growing your author platform, or just starting your writing career, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you make the best choice. Tune in now to set up your author brand for long-term success.

🎧 Hit play now to discover the best domain and email strategy for your author career.

What You’ll Learn:

• Whether your author email should match your book title or your name.
• How to set up multiple domains without complicating your branding.
• The biggest mistake authors make when choosing a domain (and how to avoid it).

Resources Mentioned: 

• Buy your domain on Squarespace: https://www.squarespace.com/ 
• Google Workspace for email hosting: https://domains.google/ 
• Need book marketing tips? Check out Allison Lane’s website: https://www.lanelit.com/ 
• Ask Allison a question: Email her at allison@lanelit.com 

📢 Don’t miss this episode packed with expert tips on choosing the right email and domain for your author brand! Listen to this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_0VSF5vhCDQ?feature=shared 

Timestamps Highlight:

• [00:03:00] – Should you buy a domain for your book title? Here’s the answer
• [00:03:51] – How to use a book title domain as a vanity URL that redirects to your main website.
• [00:04:26] – The biggest mistake authors make when choosing a domain—and how to avoid it.
• [00:05:19] – Where to buy your domain and what to expect in terms of cost.
• [00:06:03] – Final advice: Your domain is your online home—make sure readers can find you.

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Transcript

Allison 1:16

The best way to decide what your domains are? And then, that links to what your emails are is what are people searching for? Welcome back to the Author's Edge. I am your host, Allison Lane. And like we do every Thursday, I'm answering listener questions. Here's one I just got today. Dear Allison, Do I need to have an email that ends with my book title? Like allison@booktitle.Com, or should my email end with my name, like allison@allisonlane.Com? This is an important question, and I want to make sure that you hear a direct answer and a it depends answer. The direct answer is you should always buy a domain that is your name because your name is not going to change. So, Allison Lane was taken. So, I went with Lane Lit. But I also could have gone with Allison Lane Writing or Allison Lane Books. You just have to choose one. Make sure it's something that you can pronounce. Originally, my domain was Allison Lane Literary and I gotta tell you, sometimes my Maryland accent would that literary, I would just sort of like barf all over when I would say it. So, I forget that. My website, my domain is lane lit. If you want to send me an email, it's Allison at lane lit, like literature. I try not to say literary that much because if it's at the end of the day, it's like my mouth doesn't work anymore. So, you always have your main website, whatever it is. And then, yes. Here's the way that domains work is that you buy the domain, and then Google or whatever your email service provider is, will authenticate and verify that you have indeed bought that domain and it will offer you the opportunity to create email addresses related to it. So, once I verified that I had Lane lit, which I still do, and I still pay 12 a year for it. Then, I created Allison at LaneLit, support at LaneLit, help at LaneLit, you know, just a spattering. And these are all aliases. It's not like you have to do anything fancy in order to create those. They just, when they come into my Google Mail, my Gmail, they go to different folders, which makes it really easy for my assistant to help me and for me to categorize where things come from. The second part of that question is should I have an email address that ends with my book title like Allison at book title dot com. And yes, you should definitely try and buy your book title and even if your book title isn't available like if it was happiness, you probably could purchase happiness, but it's probably really expensive. But you could buy the domain happinessbook. com, and then you could have allison at happinessbook. com. The great thing is you'd have two domains, but one website that acts as your home base, your headquarters. And then, the other one is really a vanity URL that when someone goes to happinessbook. com, the website provider you're using automatically shows them your actual headquarters website. That way, if someone is just learning about you and they don't know your name yet, but they know your book title, especially when you're a debut author, for sure, make sure you get both. You will be sorry if you don't. And if you haven't already gotten your name or your name underscore book or your whatever. What you don't want to do is buy a very pithy, quirky, clever domain for your website or your email and not buy your name. For example, awesomebookcoach. com. Then, someone would have to say, Oh, okay. Every time I want to see Allison's website, I have to go to awesomebookcoach. com and then they have to do mental gymnastics. Nobody wants to have to do that. They want to search for you or search for your book. So, the best way to decide what your domains are? And then that links to what your emails are is what are people searching for? Are they searching for your book? Then, they're probably typing in the title of your book So, you could put happinessbook. com. And then, you would have Allison at happinessbook. com and you'd have Allison Lane. com if it were available, which it's not. So, that leads us back to the point. That is it for today. That's a quickie. Oh, here's one more thing. If you want a domain, you can buy them on a lot of different websites. My domain, I purchased through Squarespace, which actually bought Google Domains. Which is weird, I know. But if you go to Squarespace. com, there's a button, I think right on the homepage, where you can put in a word or two of what you're thinking your website wants to be named, or what you want to test out, and it'll give you all the options for free. And that's free, you can do that. And depending on how valuable. that site name is, it'll cost you somewhere between 12 and 20 a year for those. Beyond that, that is just my BS meter, like 1, 000 for a domain. No, thank you. I will think of a different one. Like, no. Those are my tips. If this is helpful to you, or if you have other questions, please email me. For goodness sake, I'm Allison at LaneLit Like Literature dot com. You can email me, ask me a question, I will answer it. Also, if you have a request for a podcast topic, like if you want me to do a deep dive in repurposing your content, that's one I get all the time. Or how to build a course related to your book, but not specifically about your book. Those just happened today. But please request because I have planned the rest of the year out, but I am happy to swap out for topics and requests that are urgent and that you ask for. Okay, I'll see you next week.