Question about book landing pages and hosting!

[thejdubb02]

My question is the creation of a simple/custom website to highlight your book and serve as a launching point for your marketing efforts.

Has anyone found a good solution for this? Maybe a service that does hosting, gives you flexible templates, and maybe even widgets that work with eBook stores to make everything look professional and fancy? Obviously I don't need a 'store' since I won't be selling it myself. I have seen a lot of websites that do this but the monthly costs can be ridiculous because they do credit card transactions and everything. I don't need a 'store', just a portal.

Any ideas? If you use something like this, I would love a link to the company you are using and to the site you built through them to get a feel for what can be done.

Thanks!

 

[Ankari]

Most people use wordpress.org. I think there is a minimal fee, but you get a simple to use service with the ability to add custom widgets and/or templates.

 

[Chilari]

Did you post this on /r/fantasywriters yesterday too? I think I replied there, but if not, then Wordpress is a safe bet. You can have a static home page, if you keep it at example.wordpress.com it's free or if you want domain and hosting, provided the domain you want is available and not high demand then it won't be much (mine was $26 a year) and there are both free a paid-for themes available; customisation also costs money but not much and there are packages that encompass several options like premium themes, customisation, no ads and so on that have discounts.

Lots of widgets, including text, picture, tag cloud, countdown to a date (ideal for the run-up to publication) and others.