Creating a book launch website in 45 minutes, on your own
Posted onAs you prepare to launch your book, your mind strives to find out all the ways through which you can promote your book and get more audience for it.
Today, the best way to promote is to create a website for your book launch website.
However, you must be concerned about all the trouble you’ll have to go through to get your online book launch site created, right?
But wait, What if you can create your website on your own, in less than an hour?
Here, in this article, I’ll show you how easily and quickly you can create a book launch website on your own.
There’s a video as well of this entire process, at the end of this guide.
Save all the money you’d otherwise have to pay to the programmers and designers. Below are the swift steps that you have to follow in order to create a website for your book, prior to its launch. It only takes a few minutes to execute each of them.
- Choose the platform to create the website
- Get a web address & hosting space for your book selling website
- Working on the designing part of your book’s promotional site
- Creating menus, pages, and links
- The call to action for purchase/pre-order/subscribe
- The author’s section and social following
- Advantages of creating a book launch website
Step 1 – Choose the platform to create the website
Once you decide to go for an online book launch program, the first thing you’re supposed to be sure about is – the platform to create the book launch website.
Using a programming language is a complicated and time taking process. Besides, there are easier options.
There are abundant CMS that will allow you to create a professional-looking responsive website in minutes, without writing a line of code.
We highly recommend using WordPress for creating your book Launching landing page website.
Wondering why? Below are the few good reasons to prefer WordPress over any other website building tool.
- WordPress is ideal for beginners and non-technical people.
- It comes with intuitive options and is very easy to use.
- WordPress is the free and open source.
- There are abundant themes of various niches available for WordPress.
- Availability of plugins or add-ons to extend the features of your website.
- It is an SEO friendly platform & provides tools to SEO optimize your content.
These were the few main advantages of using WordPress.
Besides them, there are many other advantages that you’ll find out as you start using it.
Step 2 – Get hosting and the domain name for your book launch website
The domain name represents you and your book’s website online. So you should carefully choose a domain name that is relevant to the subject as well as the name of your new book.
You should stick to the following while choosing the domain name:
- Select a name that is easy to remember and spell
- It must be relevant to the subject of your website
- Keep it short and simple
- Include your targetted keyword (More on this later)
- Carefully choose the extension
You should be extra careful in choosing the extension for your website. For instance, if your book/s are in a local language targeting the local people, then you should go for a country-based domain name like .au, .nz, .uk, or .in.
However, if your book targets an audience more than that, you can go for a .com domain. With hosting subscription for over a year, you get to choose your Domain name for free with Bluehost.
Hosting with Bluehost is ideal for small business website hosting. The very basic plan that BlueHost provides is enough for your small business website, and it provides efficient web hosting for your website with the best uptime.
You can choose from the available plans and proceed to check out. Once you get your account created, and hosting space subscribed, you can log into your server and start creating your website.
Thanks to the optimized hosting scheme of Bluehost that lets you install WordPress with a single click. So now you can directly login to your Cpanel, install the WordPress and you are ready to proceed.
Step 3 – Working on the designing part of your book’s promotional site
Thankfully, when you are using WordPress to create your website, you don’t have to worry about design and coding.
There are a number of WordPress themes available on the internet. You can choose the one you like the most.
For this tutorial, I’ll go for the MyBook book launch website template. You can also browse from among the other author WordPress themes.
The MyBook publisher’s website script is a pre-designed and full-functional template for creating book launch sites. You can use this theme to create a book launch landing page website or a multipage website.
It makes the whole process quick and smooth. All you need to do is to replace the example text and upload the images.
Get this Book Theme for absolutely FREE!
When subscribing to our hosting partner using this link, you get your favorite theme or plugin from our store without paying anything.
Additionally, it comes with a visual editing system that helps you to customize your website right at the front end.
It is extremely easy to use and comes with a well-organized and thoughtfully designed interface for your book launch website.
Download the theme and install it. Also, install the sample data (with a single click) and get your site ready and all set with the example data.
Setting up the covers and images of your book launch website
Sliders and images not just beautify your website but also makes it more expressive.
The slider sections are generally placed below the menus, at the top of the main content area. You should use this section to add more value to your website. 
Instead of displaying some random image of a book, you can be more expressive and display some information about your book here.
The MyBook theme comes with the front-end editor and you can use the theme’s front-end editor to edit the cover. Set the image of your book and re-write the content. All this can be done at the front end itself.
Also, don’t forget to include images as and when required. That helps make your site more intuitive.
Choosing the colors and fonts
Choose the color combination that complements the theme and cover of your book.
With the MyBook WordPress theme for a book launch, you can use the front-end editor to change the colors and background.
Change the color to complement the cover and subject of your book. Furthermore, you can rearrange the sections of your site just by drag and drop options.
You can set unique colors and fonts for headings, content, and various sections. So even though the theme is pre-designed, you can make it look exactly the way you want.
Create all the pages you want
First of all, make a list of all the pages that you want to be on your book launch website.
Not sure what pages you want??
Well, then pick up a paper and create a rough note about the subjects you want your website to address. Then based on the topics, their content, relevance, and interconnection, you can streamline the pages you want to create.
The most common pages seen on a website for book marketing are – Author’s introduction page, book synopsis, a contact form, and a well-planned call to action section.
Setting up menus and links to the relevant section
Menus and navigation are a way through which the visitors can take a tour of your website. They help them locate the information they are seeking for.
So you have to be very careful while planning the menus of your website.
Organize the important links and subsidiary links as main menus as well as sub-menus. In order to make every page accessible by your visitors, proper internal linking is essential too. Make sure that the important links are all displayed on the homepage.
In order to make every page accessible by your visitors, proper internal linking is essential too. Make sure that the important links are provided in the relevant sections.
By properly organizing the links on your website, you will ensure that all the information stored on your site easily reaches their targeted audience.
Step 4 – And finally: The call to action (purchase or pre-order the book)
A call to action is indeed the most important part of your website. This is the section that urges the casual visitor to take action and become your customer.
The MyBook theme comes with a call-to-action section right below the menu, which is an effective place to attract users.
Also, It is a highly customizable section that you can use as per your requirements to make your visitors take the required action.
The effectiveness of your call to action will depend on three factors.
1. The CTA of your bookselling website
Choose your words carefully when it comes to the call-to-action text.
Using positive and imperative words may inspire your visitors to take the action.
With the call to action in your book launch website, you can
- Pre-order the book
- Subscribe to the newsletter and alerts
- Download a few books of the page
- Buy the book (After the book launch)
You can literally use the call to action section for any purpose you want.
2. The design of CTA section
The design of your call to action section plays an important role in how it impacts the users. This section demands special attention as it is the one that makes your prospect readers take the required action.
Basically, everything in this section makes a difference – The color, the text, the titles, the image, its location, etc. The call to action section is inevitably the most important section of your website.
So, when you place title, images, or text in this section, should be strategically planned to attract users’ attention and make them take the required action.
A design that captures the attention of a visitor along with effective CTA text can take you a long way.
3. The location and accessibility
Last, but not least, the location of your call to action section directly impacts its effectiveness.
For instance, What is the use of a well-planned call to action section placed at the bottom of the sidebar where it can be hardly noticed?
As the call to action in the MyBook book launch WordPress theme is available right at the beginning of the website, you don’t have to worry about that here. You can use a tool like Google Analytics to know about the effectiveness of your strategies. It helps you track the traffic, demographics of your visitors, and many such useful reports to evaluate the performance and make the best decisions regarding your website.
Step 5 – Express yourself and your passion, using the author’s section/page
Tell your prospect readers about yourself, let them know your identity, hobbies, beliefs and what inspires you.
There’s an author’s section in the MyBook WordPress theme for book publishing, and you can use it to introduce or re-introduce yourself.
Besides, always choose a theme that is social sharing ready.
Such themes let your visitors like and share your pages through their social media.
Social media is a great place to attract a large group of people of similar interests. The interested visitors may choose to follow you on their preferred social media platform to stay updated with your latest releases.
Step 6 – Advantages of your book launch website
When you are launching a new book, there are a number of ways you can promote it. However, you can consider your book launch website as a small business website to promote your product, which is your new book. And there are a number of benefits of creating a website.
Getting people interested in your book and winning loads of pre-orders for your books seems difficult. But with a book launch website, it’s easier than it seems.
It is a cheaper and efficient way to let your readers know what your book is about and excite them for your book launch.
This might make you wonder – Why should you opt for a book launch website?
Well, there are many advantages of creating a book launch website. A few of them are listed below
- Availability – An advertisement that is always available to everyone.
- Accessibility – The promotional website is available 24×7, anytime and anywhere.
- Social sharing benefits
- Backlinks and other unexpected perks
Besides, a website can have as many pages as you want and so you have the freedom to express. Key in all the details about the book that you want to share with your readers.
Also, you can provide the link to your book launch website along with other book marketing and publicity campaigns.
As promised in the beginning, here’s the video of this entire process. These simple steps will help you create an amazing website for promoting your book in less than 45 minutes. Watch the video below:
Step 7 – Try on your own!
These WordPress themes are designed to make life easier for the authors who want to promote their books before launching. Watch some live examples of such websites using Templatic themes.
No need to spend on designing and programming, no waiting till your website gets programmed.
Just grab a WordPress theme for book authors and start right away.
To get started with, have a look at the collection of our best WordPress Author themes.
