Someone finishes your book at midnight and searches for your name. What they find in the next ten seconds decides whether they buy the next one, join your mailing list, or close the tab and forget you. An author website is the one place online that is entirely yours: no algorithm decides who sees it, and no social network can change the rules under it.
This guide covers what a fiction author’s website needs, what it can safely skip, and how to get one live in an afternoon. It is useful whichever tool you choose, including the ones that are not ours.
Start with who is visiting
Two kinds of people come to an author’s website, and they want different things.
- Readers want to know what you have written, what comes next, which order a series goes in, and how to hear when the next book is out.
- The trade (agents, editors, booksellers, festival organisers, podcasters, journalists) want a bio they can copy, a photo they can print, and a way to reach you.
Everything on the site should serve one of those visits. If a page serves neither, it can go.
The pages every fiction author needs
A home page that answers “who is this?”
Your name, large. One line on what you write: “Cosy mysteries set on the Cornish coast” tells a reader more than “Author. Dreamer. Coffee addict.” Then your newest or best book, with its cover and a button to buy it. If a book is coming, put it here with its date and a preorder link: an upcoming release is the most useful thing a home page can show.
A page for every book
Each book deserves its own page, at its own address, with the cover, the blurb, where it sits in its series, and a link to every shop that sells it. A sample chapter helps more than any review quote. That page is the link you put in a newsletter, an interview, an ad or a social post, so a reader who clicks lands on the book itself, not on a list they have to search.
If you publish wide, link every store, not only the largest. A reader who buys from Kobo, Apple Books or their local bookshop should not have to go hunting.
Series pages, in reading order
Series readers want one thing above all: the order. List the books numbered, first to last, and say plainly which one to start with. If the books can be read in any order, say that too. It is the question authors of long series are asked most, and a series page answers it for good.
An about page
Write a short bio in the third person, so a festival or a journalist can copy it as it stands, and add a good photo that is bright, recent and at least 1,000 pixels across. Then add a paragraph in your own voice: why you write what you write. Many authors keep three lengths of bio (a line, a paragraph, and a page) because each request asks for a different one.
A way to stay in touch
The mailing list is the most valuable thing your website does. Followers on a social network can vanish with a change of algorithm; an email list is yours, and it is still the most reliable way to sell the next book. Use a proper email service such as MailerLite, Kit, Mailchimp, beehiiv or Buttondown. Most have a free plan for a small list. Put the signup on the home page and on every book page, not only in the footer, and give people a reason: new-release alerts, a free short story, or the first look at a cover.
A contact page
A simple form or an email address. Agents and event organisers will look for it, and if they cannot find it in a few seconds they will move on to the next author on their list.
What you can safely skip
- A shop, unless you sell direct on purpose. Most authors are better served by linking to the stores where readers already have accounts.
- A blog you will not keep up. A blog whose last post is three years old tells a visitor you have stopped. Post news when you have it, and do not promise a weekly column.
- Pop-ups, sliders and autoplaying video. They slow the page and annoy the very readers you want to keep.
- Every social network. Link the two or three where you actually talk to readers.
- A visual flourish on every page. Your covers are the design; let them do the work.
Your address
A domain of your own, such as yourname.com, costs about €10–20 a year from any registrar. Buy your name now even if you do not use it yet: names go, and the address printed in the back of your books should outlive any service you build on. If your name is taken, add “author” or “books” to it.
You do not need your own domain on the first day. Most hosted builders give you a free address on theirs, and you can point your own domain at the site later. (On Draft Margin, your site lives at yourname.draftmargin.com for now; custom domains are coming, and will be free too.)
Four ways to build it
- WordPress on your own hosting. The most flexible choice, with a theme or plugin for anything. You are also the one who keeps it updated, backed up and secure.
- A general website builder such as Squarespace or Wix. Polished templates and little maintenance, for a monthly fee, but they know nothing about books: you build each book page and series list by hand.
- A builder made for authors. You enter books, series and buy links, and the theme lays them out. Less freedom over the design, and far less work.
- A designer. Expect €1,000–5,000 for a custom site. Worth it for a big launch with a budget, as long as you know who will update it afterwards, and what that costs.
Our comparison of WordPress and hosted builders weighs the first three in money and in hours. If you are looking at author-specific builders, Pub Site and its alternatives goes through them one by one.
Get it live in an afternoon
Whichever tool you choose, the work is mostly gathering. Do it in this order and the building itself takes an hour.
- Write your one-line description of what you write.
- For each book, collect the cover (around 1,600 pixels tall is plenty), the blurb, the series and its number, and every buy link.
- Choose a photo and write your bio in three lengths.
- Set up your mailing list with an email service, and copy its signup link or form.
- Choose your tool and a theme, and fill in your books, newest first.
- Open the site on your phone. Most of your readers will see it there first, so check that the text is readable, the buttons are easy to tap, and nothing runs off the side of the screen.
- Put the address everywhere: your social profiles, your email signature, and the back matter of every book.
Help people find it
Nobody types your web address; they search for your name or your book. A few things help search engines show your site first:
- Your name in the title of the home page, and each book’s title in the title of its own page.
- A sentence or two of description for every page, which is what appears under the link in search results.
- Structured data, which tells Google that a page is a book with an author, a series and an ISBN. Good builders add it for you; on WordPress, an SEO plugin does.
- A sitemap, submitted once in Google Search Console, so new books are found quickly.
- Pages that load fast and work on a phone, which search engines check.
- Links to your site from your profiles on the stores and social networks you use.
Keep it current
A website is not finished on launch day. On every release day, add the book and move it to the front. Twice a year, click every buy link: stores change their addresses, and a broken link at the moment a reader wants to pay is the most expensive mistake on any author site. When a book is coming, put it on the home page with a date as soon as you can say it out loud.
Mistakes worth avoiding
- Your name small, or missing from the top of the page.
- Books with no buy links, or links to only one store when you publish wide.
- Covers that are tiny, blurry or squashed.
- A mailing list signup hidden in the footer.
- Text set inside images, which search engines and screen readers cannot read.
- Never checking the site on a phone.
Where to start
If you enjoy building things and want control over every detail, WordPress will reward the time you give it. If you would rather spend that time writing, choose a builder that already knows what a book is, and have your site up tonight.
Draft Margin is one of those, and it is free, with no ads and no paid plan: here is why. You can open the live demos, with real books in them. And if you would like ideas first, fifteen author websites that get it right is a good place to look.