Looking for a website designer to create a cost-effective online page to promote your novel or children’s book? Old Mate Media can help.
The book publishing landscape has changed drastically over the last decade. The era of traditional printing and publishing has found serious competition in the self-publishing model. Authors can now create, publish and sell their own books into any country in the world and keep 100% of the profits. How good! However, it also means indie self-published authors must take on all the book promotion themselves.
At Old Mate Media we help indie authors create world-class books as good as anything offered by traditional publishers. Books good enough that they can be sold independently or showcased to potential resellers and publishers. Our services extend to promotional material, including websites. We have a website designer in the Old Mate Media team with over two decades of experience.
What kind of website do you need for your children’s book?
While you’re free to go as fancy as you like, there’s no need to go over-the-top with your website. The goal is to have a landing page you can send potential readers and reviewers to. A site where they can find out more about you, the author, and buy the book. Potentially you may want to have other promotional material available to download, such as a press release or colouring-in kits. You may even have additional merchandise people can buy like t-shirts.
Ultimately it depends on your budget as to what your web designer can build. You can keep adding features. But you also don’t need to in order to have a presence on the web where people can find you and your book.
How much does it cost to build a children’s book website?
We should preface our website designer for children’s books service by pointing out that you get a free webpage as part of any package you take with us. If we’re working on your book, we’ll add a landing page for the book on our website and list you as one of our authors. This provides two immediate landing pages where you can send readers so they can discover and buy your book.
We don’t take any cut from your profits. However, these landing pages for authors and for books are relatively simple.
If you want a bespoke website sitting on your own domain, then you’ll need to invest some money. Our website designer provides bespoke experiences for each author we work with, so you only pay for what you actually want and need.
What impacts the costs of a website designer:
- Is it just a landing page or do you want multiple pages and blog?
- Do you want people to be able to buy your book directly through the site or will you send them to stores like Amazon?
- What other calls-to-action will you need; for example, a newsletter sign-up?
- Are you going to manage the site, or will you require ongoing maintenance?
- Have you already purchased a domain name and a domain hosting plan, or do you need help with that?
- Are you after a bespoke website or are you happy to follow an existing template?
- Do you require a lesson on how to use WordPress or do you have that knowledge?
- Do you need anyone to produce the content on your site?
- Are you after any search engine optimisation advice or expertise?
When should you start building your children’s book website?
You want to have your website live by the time your book is on sale. Your website will likely be advertised in your book after all, and it’s going to be the central point through which you can promote your new release children’s book.
Website development can take a long time, so you want to start thinking about it as soon as you commit to self-publishing your book. Your website designer can hurry things along if required by utilising templates. For example, we’ve made websites for children’s book authors before, so if we keep to a similar template as previous sites, we can do things faster and cheaper.
However, the more complex you make the site, the longer it takes not just to build, but to create content for and test. As such, we ask our self-publishing authors early on which way they intend to go.
- Are they happy with a landing page on Old Mate Media that talks about their book and where to buy it?
- Do they want a landing page on their own domain that focuses on that book?
- Or do you want a more complex website that talks to multiple books and can grow with your author business?
Of course, you can always start with something simple and within your budget, and then re-engage your website designer later to take it to the next level or add more books. A website provides a space you own and a channel you control. It is not subject to the whims of a large corporation such as Amazon, Facebook or Apple. As such, it’s a worthwhile investment for an author looking to build their indie author business.
Does Old Mate Media only do children’s book websites?
No, we do all kinds of books, not just children’s books. Our website designer, our templates and our approach work for books of all types and genres. We love our children’s books at Old Mate Media, but we work across all kinds of print and digital media projects.
Do you need a web designer?
Regardless of whether you’re already working with us in developing your book or not, just schedule in a call with Old Mate Media and have a chat about your goals. It’s free, easy and you’ll no doubt learn something you didn’t know before the chat. You can also email us if you prefer.
