Asset 1

DESIGN for WRITERS

  • Home
  • About
  • Cover design
  • Book layout
  • Web design
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Cover design
  • Book layout
  • Web design
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
Asset 1

DESIGN for WRITERS

  • Home
  • About
  • Cover design
  • Book layout
  • Web design
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Cover design
  • Book layout
  • Web design
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
Web design

Control your own bookstore, with a compelling author website connecting you with your audience.

Every author needs a website, but not every author website is equal. We will work with you to deliver a beautiful, responsive website from which to grow your brand and your book sales. Our author websites are optimised, secure, fast, and beautiful as standard. Because we know that your website is your shopfront to the world. 

Possibilities

What will you do with your author website?

Whether you’re setting up your website for the first time, or looking to improve upon your existing presence, there’s a whole world of possibilities before you. Let us be your guide. 

Build your brand

A professionally designed and developed website is your opportunity to present your own author brand, unfiltered by anyone else and unlimited by the design constraints that come with off-the-shelf options. We will work with you to extend your author brand from books to website and beyond, or start something new entirely.

Grow your audience

Readers love to get closer to their favourite authors, and authors like you need to get closer to your readers. An author website can bring it all together, giving you direct access to your audience with blog subscriptions and newsletters direct to their inboxes, in your words, whenever you choose. We’ll build it; you provide the content.

design-for-writers-store

Open a bookstore

Accept payment online for your own creative assets – ebooks, audiobooks, print editions, other products and even services – securely and with confidence. Or simply link visitors to your books with online stores such as Amazon. Or do both. Build your own author business from the ground up and take control of your own online space. 

Baked-in goodness

Lovingly crafted to the highest standards.

You want a website that looks beautiful, and that’s what you’ll get. But that’s only the beginning, because our author websites come with all kinds of goodness baked in, depending on the build package that you choose. Your site deserves nothing less.

Safe and secure

Author websites from Design for Writers are built to be secure, and you’ll benefit from industry-leading protection from malware, automated attacks and malicious visitors. Your site is backed up nightly so we can even clean it up for you, should the worst ever happen and gremlins strike.

Lightning fast

Benefit from a website optimized for speed with super-fast, intelligent caching and a global content delivery network, all with zero configuration for you to worry about. All of which is the geek way of saying that your site will be speedy, and we’ll take care of the technical stuff for you.

Domain and hosting

We’ll take care of domain registration or transfer, so you don’t have to get your hands dirty with registrars. And we’ll build your site on the very best hosting, so that it always runs smoothly and isn’t sharing resources with hundreds of other sites (unlike cheaper shared-hosting platforms).

Search engine ready

Be sure that your website is built to give you the strongest foundations for success with Google and other search engines. Your site will be built to best search engine practices, and comes with an SSL certificate as standard to ensure you’re not penalised in search results.

Responsive design

The web is in everyone’s pocket and on everyone’s desktop, so your author website needs to adapt to different screen sizes. It’s called responsive design, and search engines demand it, so every one of our sites is built to look awesome at all sizes.

Easy to use

Our websites are built on WordPress, the software powering over a third of the entire web. Easily add, edit and remove text, images, videos, products and even whole pages, all from within your personal site dashboard. 

Build your audience

One of the prime advantages of building your own, managed online space is the ability to connect directly with your readers. We’ll help you to set up a subscription blog on your site, and set up a mailing list so you can speak directly into the mailboxes of your fans.

Education and training

It’s important not only that you get a great website, but that you feel confident owning one, too. During production we’ll take you on a gentle learning curve with a series of educational guides so you’re ready to hit the ground running when your site goes live.

Beautiful design

Every website comes with pixel-perfect attention to detail, and designs built precisely for you needs. We’ll walk you through a series of workbooks to discover together exactly what your author business requires from your website, and then we’ll build it just for you.

Sell books while you sleep

Whether you want to sell books and other products directly from your website, or link to online retailers such as Amazon, we can set up your bookstore so that it’s working hard day and night, selling books in Miami while you’re sleeping in Melbourne.

Ongoing maintenance

Our ongoing Managed Hosting plans allow you to focus on writing while we take care of the technical stuff. Nightly backups, regular software updates, optimised hosting, eyes on your site, premium support, and ongoing training resources are just some of the benefits.

Friendly support

We know that you can’t fully get to grips with your website until you get your feet under the table after it’s launched. That’s why every author website comes with a thirty day reasonable tweaks guarantee – so we can make sure it fits you perfectly – and friendly support beyond that.

Portfolio

Some examples of our websites.

We’ve produced many websites for authors, editors, publishers, organisations, and other industry professionals over the years. Here’s a small selection of the work we’ve done for some of our many wonderful clients around the globe.

Nicola Morgan

Bestselling author Nicola Morgan required a full strategic approach to her website, as she looked to re-align her priorities. We worked with Nicola to identify her core audiences and set up a store to sell books and other products direct to her audience. We created resources for her speaking engagements and carried out a complete redesign and redevelopment of her site.

Visit nicolamorgan.com

Dara Carr

We created a new identity for Dara Carr’s writing presence, extending from her book Angela Cray Gets Real across to her website. A bold, impactful design was required, along with a blog, social media links, a contact form and mailing list functionality so that she could communicate and engage directly with her growing audience.

Visit daracarr.com

Other People's Shoes

Ken Jarrold CBE instructed us to create a unified design for his website and new book, Other People’s Shoes. Together they’re used to promote his consultancy services. The design needed to be clean and professional, to reflect his position as a respected healthcare leader, and to promote his book – helping to build an audience for his future writing.

Visit otherpeoplesshoes.co.uk

Hazel Gaynor

International best-selling author Hazel Gaynor has been a client of Design for Writers for many years, and we were delighted to revamp her website to better reflect her personal brand. The site – with a bold modern design that was a key part of Hazel’s brief – enables her to promote her books, connect with her audience through a blog and build her list to reach them directly in their inboxes.

Visit hazelgaynor.com

Roots and Wings

Alex Koster asked us to design her book cover and website to promote Roots and Wings, a handbook for parents and educators on the benefits of mindfulness for children. The site and book design complement each other, while the site offers a store so people can purchase not only Alex’s books, but additional products she’s developed as part of her brand.

Visit rootsandwings.pub
Tried and tested

Our bulletproof development process.

With a decade of websites behind us, we’ve developed a solid process to walk you seamlessly through the various stages of development, taking your website out of your head and onto laptops, tablets and phone screens across the world. 

It’s a reliable, repeatable process drawing on our years of learned best-practice and experience, allowing us to focus on the specific needs of your author business while respecting your time with a collaborative approach which maximises your input while minimising disruption to you.

The process outlined here is illustrative of typical Pro or Strategic website projects. A condensed process exists for Express and Microsite projects.

1. Discovery

The project kicks off with our discovery worksheets. These give you an opportunity to tell us exactly what your website should do, and tell us all about your preferences.  We’ll identify what content you’ll require, and set out a timetable for delivery. You’ll begin to receive our series of educational guides, helping you get ready to hit the ground running when your website is good to go.

2. Research

Once we’re happy that we understand your needs from the discovery phase, we’ll begin our own deep dive into the project, researching your needs and identifying best solutions. We’ll pull together a plan, suggest key assets, and present it all to you for discussion and approval.

3. Design

With an agreed plan for your site, the fun can begin. We’ll get to work on your design and you’ll have an opportunity to see a mockup of your homepage and an internal page of your website. We’ll tweak those mockups until you’re happy that your design is ready to be built.

4. Build

This is the point at which all of the pieces begin to come together. We’ll apply your design to the entire site and load all of the agreed content onto our staging server. We’ll build in all of the features that come as standard for your chosen build package, and we’ll test it before inviting you to review and revise as required.

5. Launch

With your final tweaks applied, we’ll move your website from our staging server onto your actual domain before setting up domain-based services and running final tests. When we’re all happy that the site is good to go, we’ll take down the holding page and unleash it on the world.  

6. Aftercare

It’s the end of the process, but the beginning of your time with your new author website, so we’re not finished with you yet. We’ll provide you with comprehensive handover notes, a thirty day reasonable tweaks guarantee, you’ll complete your series of educational guides, and of course you’ll have access to our support.

Client praise

You're in good company.

View more testimonials

Author Hazel Gaynor

“I’m so thrilled to share my brand new website which has been brilliantly designed by the very talented Andrew at Design for Writers”

Hazel Gaynor

Author of The Cottingley Secret and other books

Author Kate Thompson

“I’m thrilled! This is the first time I have a website I feel really proud of and reflects my work as a writer and journalist. Design for Writers not only interpreted my ideas seamlessly, but were also incredibly easy and efficient to deal with. I can’t recommend them enough.”

Kate Thompson

Author of The Wedding Girls and other books

Packages

Options for your budget and your needs.

Choose from our range of website build options to suit your plans and budget. From a budget Express build to full strategic engagement, we have a professional website package to suit you. Check them out below…

Option one

Express build

Ideal for authors and industry professionals on a limited budget, our Express build is a condensed process to set you up quickly with a professional website without the expense of a full development engagement.

We’ll guide you through the fuss-free process with some straightforward workbooks which provide everything we need to get your site launched on time and on budget. You’ll first select which of a range of available site designs best suits your needs. You’ll be able to choose your own colours and fonts to fit your personal style, and we’ll outline your content requirements so you can gather together the required text and images for us to load onto your site for you. We’ll customise the site to reflect your choices and you’ll have an opportunity to review it all before it goes live. 

In the background we’ll build your site on free-for-a-year standard web hosting, set up all of the software, set up a contact form which routes enquiries directly to your email inbox, add links to your social media profiles (if you want them), enable reader comments on your articles (if you want them), provide the facility for you to embed pictures, audio and video into your articles, and register a co.uk, .com or .net domain for one year (see below). We’ll upload your launch content for up to twelve pages.

  • Multi page website
  • Choose from a selection of designs
  • Customise colours and fonts
  • Load up to twelve pages of initial content
  • Manage content in a website dashboard
  • Add and edit unlimited pictures, audio & video
  • Post to your blog & enable comments
  • Contact form setup
  • Link to your social media profiles
  • Link to your book on Amazon etc
  • Guided worksheets to complete process
  • Domain registration or transfer
  • One year of standard website hosting
Option two

Pro build

Our Pro builds offer a more personal and in-depth approach to the design of your website, helping you to achieve your goals. You’ll get all of the benefits of an Express build, but with a more intensive process so that we have time to learn more about your website’s styling needs.

We’ll engage with you on the finer details of your website’s visual design, identifying what elements of design work for you, and why. We’ll pull all of that together into a mockup so that you can tweak and approve the design, which we’ll then go ahead and build.

We can set up your newsletter subscription system, enable search engine optimisations in your content, and even build your own store, allowing you to sell products and services directly to your audience from your author website.

  • Everything in Express build, plus...
  • Bespoke website design
  • Full style consultation
  • Unlimited content upload
  • Personalised development process
  • Extended search engine optimisations
  • Newsletter subscription service
  • Comprehensive training series
  • Sell direct from your website
Option three

Strategy build

Our Strategy builds offer full strategic engagement on your website and content. With these builds we ask not only what you need, and why, but also how best to go about achieving that. Together we’ll take a deep dive into the process and identify your goals, making sure they’re reflected through the structure of your site and the journey that your visitors take there.

We’ll build a personalised plan, review your priorities, target your audience to inform the design as a whole, maximise leads and align your goals sitewide. This will allow us to design your website from the bottom up in a strategic way, on top of all of the features of a Pro build.

  • Everything in Pro build, plus...
  • Full strategic consultation
  • Audience profiling and goal alignment
  • Ability to add membership functionality
  • Deep search engine optimisations
  • Extensive security features
  • One year of Managed website hosting
Website design

Feature comparison.

An at-a-glance guide to some of the main features of our website build packages

Express builds

Ideal for authors on a limited budget, our Express build follows a condensed process to deliver a professional website without the expense of full development.

  • Multi page website
  • Choose from a selection of designs
  • Customise colours and fonts
  • Load up to twelve pages of launch content
  • Manage content in a website dashboard
  • Add and edit pictures, audio & video
  • Post to your blog & enable comments
  • Contact form setup
  • Link to your social media profiles
  • Link to your book on Amazon etc
  • Guided worksheets to complete process
  • Domain registration or transfer
  • One year of standard website hosting

Pro builds

Our Pro builds offer a more in-depth and personal approach to the design of your website, helping you to achieve your goals with a bespoke website that’s tailored to you.

  • Multi page website
  • Bespoke website design
  • Full style consultation
  • Unlimited content upload
  • Manage content in a website dashboard
  • Add and edit pictures, audio & video
  • Post to your blog & enable comments
  • Contact form setup
  • Link to your social media profiles
  • Link to your book on Amazon etc
  • Personalised development process
  • Domain registration or transfer
  • One year of standard website hosting
  • Extended search engine optimisations
  • Newsletter subscription service
  • Comprehensive training series
  • Sell direct from your website

Strategy builds

Together we’ll take a deep dive with a full strategic engagement on your website and content, reviewing your priorities, targeting your audience and aligning goals site-wide.

  • Multi page website
  • Bespoke website design
  • Full style consultation
  • Unlimited content upload
  • Manage content in a website dashboard
  • Add and edit pictures, audio & video
  • Post to your blog & enable comments
  • Contact form setup
  • Link to your social media profiles
  • Link to your book on Amazon etc
  • Personalised development process
  • Domain registration or transfer
  • One year of Managed website hosting
  • Deep search engine optimisations
  • Newsletter subscription service
  • Comprehensive training series
  • Sell direct from your website
  • Full strategic consultation
  • Audience profiling and goal alignment
  • Ability to add membership functionality
  • Extensive security features
Let's begiN
Website design

Frequently asked questions

Answers to some of the most common queries you might have…

How do I arrange a domain name?

Let us know what domain name you'd like. We'll see if it's available and suggest alternatives if not. Then we will either register the domain on your behalf (and add an agreed fee to your final invoice) or we can point you in the direction of the best registrar. Spoiler alert: it's Hover.com and no, we're not affiliated at all; they're just very good.

I already have a domain name, is that ok?

Absolutely. We’ll build your site in a private staging area which only you and we can see. Once we’re both happy that it’s all ready to go live, we’ll log into your domain registrar, point your domain to your new website, and ensure a smooth transition.

What if I need a faster turnaround to meet a deadline?

We recognise that in some cases clients require a faster turnaround, and we offer an expedited service for times like that. We will determine this fee on a case-by-case basis according to existing workloads, turnaround time and the complexity of the project. If you need fast turnaround, just tell us when you get in touch. We’ll always do what we can to help (and be honest and tell you if we can't).

I’d like a site or some designs from you, but I’m not a writer.

That's fine. Our specialism is writers and writing organisations but we also work with other individuals and organisations. Our fresh, relevant designs are applicable across the board, so please do get in touch and let's see if we're a good fit.

I'm not too good with a computer. How can I manage my website once you've built it for me?

No need to panic. We build our sites on WordPress, the biggest technology behind websites which now powers over a third of the entire web. We know from speaking to our clients that once you've used it a couple of times, you'll find it fairly intuitive to navigate. Everything is clearly labelled so you can find your way around. And in some of our packages we include an excellent series of educational resources which you can access. Many clients make use of our Managed Hosting service, which includes advanced support so we can take care of the technical side of things while you concentrate on your content. Keep your eyes peeled here on our website too, as we're planning a series of videos and blog posts with guidance for those new to WordPress.

What if I'm not happy with my design?

Our design process is collaborative from start to finish. The package you choose will set expectations for what is and is not included in your fee. We will work together – combining our expertise with your insights – to produce your designs. It's extremely rare for this process to lead to an unsatisfactory outcome (and we've designed over 2,000 books and well over a hundred websites) as potential problems can be identified early, and designs tweaked. But should it happen we'd always do our best to work with you and put things right. So long as there are realistic expectations and respect on both sides, then there's little that's insurmountable.

I have another question, not answered here

Not a problem. Just drop us a message via our contact form and we'll get back to you as soon as possible!

Let's begiN

Lovingly crafted by Design for Writers (and yours could be too). © 2021 Design for Writers. All rights reserved.

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