This content is protected against AI scraping.
If you’ve been thinking about setting up an author website (even if you’re unpublished for now), and you don’t want to spent too much and you want it done in less than ten minutes, then this is your lucky day. Read all about it!
I’m always telling people how important writer websites are.
If a reader, an agent, an editor at a publishing house looks you up online, an author website makes you look professional.
Unless you have a very curated social media presence, your social media profiles may feature your latest post about your cat, a political opinion, or a cocktail you took a picture of because it was Friday. There’s nothing wrong with any of that! But if you have an author website, it will probably be the first hit, and it will always be focused on who you are as a writer.
Recently, I was pondering how to build an author website for my other pen name, Stacey Donovan.
I have published one “clean and wholesome” romance as Stacey Donovan—Sunrise Cabin, which sold very well and hit a bestseller list. I am interested in writing more clean and wholesome romance under that name in the future.
When I started this blog, BrynDonovan.com, over ten years ago, there weren’t as many options for websites. I am thrilled with the success of the blog and so grateful for my readers. It’s very expensive to maintain, though, and I have had to learn a lot about the technical side of things. To be honest, I have spent hundreds of hours fixing things and figuring things out.
For the Stacey Donovan website, I didn’t want to blog regularly. I wanted something very simple. I figured it would take a lot of time to research the best author website template. In my experience, setting up a page of books that’s easy for readers to shop can be a huge hassle.
Obviously, I didn’t want to spend too much. Most services sound cheap, but then nickel and dime you for services you thought would be included.
In a wild coincidence, I heard from Tertulia, a beautiful independent online bookstore that now offers an author website builder.
Because this blog gets a lot of traffic, I often hear from companies who want to give me a little money in exchange for a sponsored post. I’ve never done it before, because many of the products seemed random and I don’t want to promote anything I don’t believe in. But this sounded interesting to me, and I took a meeting with one of Tertulia’s co-founders.
I saw a demo of their website builder, designed exclusively for authors. I honestly could not believe how quick and easy it is. It looks elegant and professional.
Here’s how their author website builder worked when I set up my Stacey Donovan author website.
1. I put in the ISBN of my book and my Instagram handle.
(If you’re an unpublished author and you don’t have either, they still have a path to set you up.)
2. They asked me to choose a theme.
I chose Belleza in Lilac because I thought it looked friendly, lighthearted, and romantic, like the fiction I wanted to write as Stacey Donovan. Everything is so gray these days, and I loved it that they offered tasteful, colorful choices.
In addition to my book, it auto-populated with my author bio from Amazon (which I just updated a bit) and with a newsletter signup! The newsletter signup is very exciting, because I’d already started a newsletter for the Stacey Donovan pen name, but it was more expensive than this whole website service—which is $7.99 a month, billed yearly.
Three minutes into this, I’d already saved a lot of money.
Right now, Sunrise Cabin is only on Amazon, so that’s the only buy link. They put it in there automatically! I’m not actively promoting the book, though I will be once I have new books under this pen name. I’m going to set the book up later on Ingram Spark so that it can be sold by any bookstore, including Tertulia.
It also automatically set up a contact form, which is very handy. The copy I’m showing on the newsletter signup and the contact form is the default messaging, but I can always change it later if I want to.
3. I chose a domain name.
Here’s another reason why this is very easy and a great value. Tertulia searched the most obvious domain names for me and suggested the best available one: staceydonovanbooks.com. And it’s free for the first year! There was an extra step here—I subscribed to the website service first, then used the coupon for the free domain, and it took about a half hour to update to the new domain.
I know it may seem early to be making an author website, since I won’t publish under this name until next summer at the earliest, but I wanted to do it so that no one else would grab that domain name and so that I could begin to build a presence for that pen name.
Here’s the completed Stacey Donovan website, that took about seven minutes in total to set up—I timed it. (Sign up for the newsletter if you’re so inclined!) It’s so simple, but I can always add as much as I want later…because Tertulia just launched unlimited custom pages.
Other sample author websites using this author website builder:
- National Book Award winner Imani Perry: https://
imaniperryauthor.com - prolific thriller writer and podcaster Steven James: https://stevenjames.net
- poet Albert deGenova: https://albertdegenova.com
- romance writer Scarlet Ibis James: https://
scarletibisjames.com - author and historian Aaron Jura: https://aaronjura.com
If you want to try out creating an author website before you commit, click the link below!
check out Tertulia author website builder
I’ll make a small commission if you do decide it’s right for you.
Have you been thinking about creating an author website?
Have you ever launched a new pen name—or a second pen name? I’d love to hear all about your experiences in the comments! Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful week!
That’s so cool, and it’s a great price. I have a domain name. I just don’t know how to migrate it so that I can set up a website.
They have an option to migrate your own domain here. I’m guessing it’s pretty easy, since everything else was so simple, but I didn’t try it myself!
If I have custom branding I paid for, can I upload and use that as a theme on the website or can I only pick from their options?
That is such a good question. The customizable pages are brand new, so I haven’t played around with them yet! My guess is that you can do whatever you want with uploadable images, but the theme itself is locked in. In my own experience, it’s usually easy and cheap, or customizable, so it really depends on what’s more important!
PS See Ruby’s reply—you can customize with your own brand colors!
I moved my author site to Tertulia last month from WordPress and it was the best decision I made. It was simple and easy. I had questions, and the staff was eager to help and even had a Zoom chat with me to move my domain name over. You can even change the colors to your custom brand colors. I’m looking forward to when they finish setting up the “Buy Directly from Author” feature.
Hi, Ruby! Oh, that’s so good to hear! I actually didn’t know if you could customize the colors (they probably told me, and I forgot, haha). Yes, the “buy directly from author” feature is going to be fantastic! Thanks so much for sharing your experience!