What an author website is actually for
Before you pick fonts, decide the three jobs your site must do for a reader who has never heard of you.
Most author sites fail for a simple reason: they try to be a diary, a press kit, a shop and a fan club at once, and a stranger lands on them and leaves inside ten seconds.
A reader arrives at your site with one of three questions. Who is this person? What should I read first? Where do I get it? Your site is good if it answers those three in the first screen on a phone, and great if it answers them without the reader scrolling.
Job one: say who you are in one line
Not a biography. A line. "Cozy mysteries set on a fog-bound Maine island." "Hard science fiction about the people who maintain the machines." A reader decides in that line whether they are your reader. Everything else on the page is for the people who said yes.
Job two: show the right first book
If you have more than one book, pick a front door. For a series, that is book one. For standalones, it is your strongest or most recent title. Put that cover large, give it a two-sentence hook, and make the buy button obvious. A wall of twelve equal covers asks the reader to do your job.
Job three: make buying effortless
Every book page should list the stores where it is sold, in the order your readers actually use them. Broken buy links are the most common fault we see, and they are invisible until someone complains. Check them every time you publish.
What can wait
Blog archives, event calendars, long origin stories and press photos are all fine, but they belong one click deep. They serve readers who are already interested. The first screen is for the ones who are not yet.
If you rebuild nothing else this year, rebuild your home page around those three jobs. It is the cheapest marketing improvement most authors can make.
Written by the Spinecrest studio · October 15, 2026