Great Author Websites We Should Know

[Tales of the Pack]

I'm going to upgrade my site soon to support the release of my book in October, and I'd love suggestions of authors who really nail it on the design front.

Something with a landing page that offers excerpts and preorders, perhaps, with options to buy in various mobile and paper formats.

Anything come to mind? Famous or not-so, it doesn't matter to me.

[macdonald79]

It's not the most stylized design in the world, but I think gladwell.com (http://gladwell.com) is one of the most readable websites I've ever come across for an author.

[Anne Lyle]

I tend to only visit the websites of my favourite authors, and some of them are frankly a decade out-of-date in terms of design.

My own isn't quite finished yet - I want to replace the temporary banner image with one from my cover art (which hasn't been released yet) and of course add an image of the book itself - but I tentatively offer it as an example of how you might do it right :)

http://www.nightsmasque.com

It's not fancy, by any means, but then I'm not overly keen on slick author websites. Two of the most graphically impressive websites I've seen were by self-published guys who couldn't write their way out of a wet paper bag.

I'm a web developer by trade, and created the whole thing in Wordpress (a custom install on my web account, not on wordpress.com). The yellow colour will make more sense when the cover art is in place...

[Maryn]

Not intending to derail, but Anne, I love the pavers and fog in your background image and would enjoy using the picture as a wallpaper. (I change mine fairly often.) Any chance you found it on a free-to-use site?

Maryn, returning us to our regular program

[sheadakota]

I'm not famous, but I think my website rocks- see linky below :)

[Anne Lyle]

Not intending to derail, but Anne, I love the pavers and fog in your background image and would enjoy using the picture as a wallpaper. (I change mine fairly often.) Any chance you found it on a free-to-use site?

Sorry, the photo from iStockPhoto ("fade to grey" effect by me). Cost me about $5 in credits, I think. The price depends on the size of image and the licence terms - I would have to pay more if I distributed it as some kind of derivative work, I think.

The dagger in the banner of my main website was about the same price, and the engraving of Richmond Castle in the same banner is from Wikimedia Commons. One can make professional web graphics on a very small budget!

(See how I brought it back on-topic there? :) )