Make your book the star of its own showcase website design! First Choice Books offers simple and effective 5 page showcase website design to help you get the word out about your book, with optional book sales through Paypal and/or a blog.
Showcase Website
At First Choice Books a showcase website design is built in WordPress, with webhosting in Victoria managed by First Choice Books, with your own domain name. We build the site to start, and then you can take over the site. After the site is finalized and launched, you will be able to make changes on your own, with ongoing support available.
Examples of sites that we have built for First Choice Books authors:
Lovingly Arrogant – April Lewis
Motorbird – a novel by Jeremy Sagar
Pages on the site:
The basic 5 pages:
- Welcome – introduction to the site and what you’re up to
- About the author – your bio and a photo of you, how you came to write the book
- About the book – book description, rave reviews
- Excerpts – selected parts of the book, or an entire chapter, to get readers interested
- Contact – an email form for people to contact you
Optional pages:
- Purchase the book – link to buy copies of the book, link to eBook edition on Amazon
- Blog – showing summaries of all your blog posts
What to send us:
To make your book a star with its own website, we’ll need the following items. You can send these in a Word document and any images as JPG, by email to graphics@firstchoicebooks.ca
1. Domain Name
First Choice Books will obtain the domain name for you, just let us know what you would like the name to be.
The address of your website can be based on the name of your book, your name, or a company name. If you are going to publish multiple books, a website name similar to your own or your company works best. Your specific name may already be taken, but we can find good alternatives. We recommend purchasing the .com version of your address, and consider adding the .net, .org, .info, and .ca versions to be sure to corner the market for your address and branding. eg: MyFabulousAdventures.com, MyFabulousAdventures.ca, MyFabulousAdventures.org, etc.
If you have already purchased your own domain name, we will need access to that domain name, so we can direct it to the site we are building.
2. Welcome Page
This is the first page visitors will see when they go to your site. Tell them about your and your book! First Choice Books will add a small version of your book cover.
You can include:
- Paragraph welcoming the reader and telling them what the site and your book are about.
- A short book description, including your book title and any tagline
- A selected review raving about your book
- Photo of you, or from an event.
3. Excerpts from the book
You can put an entire chapter on your website, or individual excerpt. Get your readers interested in reading the book, but don’t give away the ending! Let us know what parts of the book to use, by page or chapter number.
4. Reviews
Any reviews or words of praise your book may have received. If published online, include the URL link to the webpage the review appears on.
5. Contact Info
Your site will have a page for contact information for you, and an email form. Let us know what email address to use.
6. Optional online book sales
If you would like to sell printed copies of your book from the website, we can include a page for customers to purchase the book using Paypal. Payments can be made by credit card or direct transfer, and are processed on PayPal’s secure server. Orders will go through to you, and you do the shipping, from your own supply of books. All profits stay with you.
We will need you to set up a standard business Paypal account. Let us know what price to set your book at and how much to charge for shipping and handling within Canada or USA. (You can check this with your local post office.) All dollar amounts listed on your site will be in Canadian dollars only, but customers can pay with their own currency through PayPal.
Paypal takes a 2.9% cut of sales processed through them, plus 30 cents per transaction. First Choice Books does not take a payment or royalty on book sales.
7. Optional Blog – News and Events
One of the best ways to get started marketing your book and increase web traffic to your site is a blog. You can announce upcoming events such as a book launch or book signing. Or you can dedicate some time every week to writing about subjects related to your book content, and situate yourself as the expert in your field. Depending on your book’s topic, marketing yourself along with the book can be a great way to build interest and awareness of your book.
Send us 1-3 blog posts, each with an image, to get started. Recommended 250-500 words. Images should be JPGs, less than 600 x 800 pixels, and you must have copyright permission to use them (you took the photos, have permission from the photographer, or have made arrangements to use stock photography).
8. Link to eBook sales
If you also have an eBook version of your book, we can create an attractive link to the Amazon page for eBook sales.
9. Social Media Links – Follow and Share
We can set up links to your social media accounts, like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. Please let us know what your account names are for each service you would like the site to link to.
We can also set up social media “share” buttons for each page of the site, so your readers can easily share your content on their social media accounts, like Facebook and Twitter. You don’t need to use these accounts yourself for this service.
Pricing
5 page showcase website based on your book cover, with 1 registered domain name and 1 year’s hosting is $500.
Add optional online sales through PayPal for $100.
Add an optional blog with 3 formatted blog posts to start for $100.
Additional features such as multiple titles or other custom requests are available upon request.
Ongoing support
Once your website is complete and goes live to the public, First Choice Books offers ongoing support for minor changes (typos, adding a blog post if you have the blog option) for 3 months. This gives you the time to learn how to use the site yourself to make posts and add images or text to pages. The entire site is yours to administer at any time after launch.
Major changes, such as redoing pricing structure for sales, adding pages, or creating new site graphics, are billable per hour.
