You finished the book. The illustrations are done, the cover looks beautiful, and the Amazon listing is live. Then someone asks for your website and you realise you do not have one. Before you rush out and buy a template, it is worth knowing exactly what a website does for a children's book author — and what it does not.
What Amazon Does Not Do For You
Amazon is a shop, and it is a very good one. It takes payment, prints your book, ships it worldwide and puts your title in front of people already searching for books. For a first-time author that is an enormous amount of work handled for free.
But a shop is all it is. Four things it will never do:
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It never gives you the reader's email
Someone buys your book, reads it to their child every night for a month, and loves it. You will never know their name. When book two launches eighteen months later, you are starting from zero again — and paying for ads to reach people who already own book one.
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It never books your school visits
A librarian who wants to invite you has no way to find your rates, your availability, which age groups you present to, or whether you travel. They will move on to an author who has that page.
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It never tells your story
Your author bio on Amazon is one grey paragraph beside a buy button. It cannot show your characters, your sketching process, or the reason you wrote the book — which is exactly what makes a parent choose you over the thousand other picture books published that week.
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It never belongs to you
Your listing lives by Amazon's rules. Categories change, policies change, and accounts occasionally get suspended by mistake. A site you own cannot be taken away from you.
Amazon is where people buy your book. Your website is where people decide to care about you. One produces a sale; the other produces a reader who waits for your next book.
When a Website Starts Paying for Itself
There are four situations where the absence of a site quietly costs money. If none of them apply to you, skip ahead to section three — we would rather you kept the money.
You plan to write more than one book
This is the single strongest reason. A series author without an email list relaunches to strangers every time. With a signup form on your site, each book builds the audience for the next one. Fifty genuine subscribers on launch day are worth more than five thousand strangers scrolling past an advert, because the fifty already know they like your work.
You want school and library visits
Visits are usually the highest-earning activity available to a picture book author, and they are booked almost entirely through websites. Section five covers this page in detail because it is the one most authors get wrong.
You need review copies in the right hands
Bloggers, teachers, reviewers and local press will all look you up before saying yes. A site with your book, your bio and a working contact form turns a cold email into an easy yes. Without one, you are a stranger writing from a free email address.
You sell anywhere other than Amazon
Local bookshops, school fairs, author markets, signed copies by post, printable activity packs — all of it needs one link you can hand to people. "Search my name on Amazon" loses a sale every single time you say it out loud.
Imagine a teacher hears you speak and wants to invite you to her school next term. Right now, what does she type into Google, and what does she find? If the honest answer is "an Amazon page with no contact details", that is your answer.
When You Should Skip It
Plenty of authors are sold websites they do not need. Hold off if any of these describe you:
The book is not finished. Spend the money on illustration and formatting first. A beautiful book with no website outsells a beautiful website with no book, every single time.
It was a one-off keepsake. If you wrote one book for your grandchildren and have no plans for another, an Amazon listing and a nice social profile are genuinely enough.
You will not keep it alive. A site whose newest post is from two years ago and whose buy button 404s looks worse than having no site at all. If you cannot commit to updating it at each launch, wait.
The 6 Pages You Actually Need
Most authors over-plan this, imagine fifteen pages, feel overwhelmed and build nothing. You need six. Build these properly and you can ignore everything else for a year.
Your characters, your newest book, and a buy button. A visitor should know what you write and who it is for within three seconds of landing. Lead with artwork, not with a paragraph about your journey into writing — that belongs on the About page.
One section per title: cover, blurb, age range, page count, and links to every store that stocks it. Include the age range — it is the first thing a parent or teacher checks and most author sites leave it out.
A real photo and your story. Parents and teachers want to know who is writing for their children, and schools will not book someone whose face they have never seen. Keep it warm and short — three paragraphs is plenty.
Your programme, age groups, format, and an enquiry form. Skip this page and you skip the income. Full detail in the next section.
A colouring page or activity sheet drawn from your own illustrations, given in exchange for an email address. This is how your list grows while you sleep, and it costs you nothing because the artwork already exists.
One form. Not a plain email address sitting in the page text where bots will harvest it within a week. A form also lets you ask the one question that matters: are they a parent, a teacher, or press?
A blog, an online shop, a newsletter archive, a members area. Every one of these is a commitment. Build the six pages above, let them earn for six months, and only then add something that needs feeding.
The School Visit Page
If you take one thing from this guide, take this. School and library visits pay far better per hour than book royalties, and they sell books in the room. Schools plan terms ahead and decide from a website.
A librarian lands on your page with four questions. Answer all four and you get the booking:
| Their question | What to put on the page |
|---|---|
| Is this right for our children? | Age groups and year levels, stated plainly. "Reception to Year 3" or "Ages 4–8", not "suitable for young readers". |
| What actually happens in the session? | A short outline: reading, drawing demonstration, Q&A, how long each part runs, maximum group size. |
| Can we afford it, and can you get here? | Rates or at least a range, travel radius, and whether you offer online sessions. Hiding the price costs you more enquiries than a high price ever will. |
| How do we book? | A form with name, school, preferred dates and group size. Not "email me to discuss". |
A short "for teachers" section with a downloadable activity pack tied to your book. Teachers share these with each other, and every download is a new email address and a future booking.
Building an Email List That Works
Of everything on this page, the email list is the part that compounds. Followers on a social platform belong to the platform; a list belongs to you.
Three rules make the difference between a list that grows and a signup box nobody fills in:
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Give a real reason to join
"Subscribe to my newsletter" converts almost nobody. "Get three free colouring pages of Lucy and her dragon" converts well, because a parent gets something their child will enjoy in the next five minutes. You already own the artwork.
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Ask for the email in two places only
The printables page and the footer. Popups on every page annoy parents and increase the number of people who leave immediately, which also harms how you rank in search.
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Email them before you need something
A short note two or three times a year — a sneak peek, a new printable, a photo from a school visit — keeps you familiar. If the only email you ever send is "my book is out, please buy it", most people will not open it.
Domain, Hosting & Who Owns What
This section is short but it saves authors a lot of pain later.
Use your author name as the domain. yourname.com works for every book you will ever write.
Register it in your own account. Your designer can manage it, but the account should be yours, with your card and your email on it.
Buy it early. Domains are cheap. Buy yours while you are still writing.
Naming the site after one book. luckythelittledragon.com is dead weight by book three, and you lose all its search history when you move.
Letting someone else hold the domain. If you part ways with a designer who owns your domain, you can lose your address and every link pointing at it.
Hyphens and clever spellings. You will spend the rest of your life spelling it out at events.
Hosting is the space your site lives in, and it is billed yearly. Expect roughly $60–$120 a year for a small author site including the domain renewal. That is paid to the hosting provider directly, whoever builds the site for you.
What It Really Costs
Authors get quoted wildly different numbers for the same thing, so here is the plain comparison.
| Option | Cost | What you are really getting |
|---|---|---|
| DIY site builder | $150–$300 per year, forever | A template that looks like every other template, plus a weekend of your time. Stop paying and the site disappears. |
| General web designer | $1,500–$5,000 one time | Usually solid work, but they have never laid out a picture book and will ask you to supply all artwork and copy yourself. |
| Designer who already has your illustrations | Lowest, because the art exists | Your characters, palette and cover are already drawn. Reusing them removes most of the design work and most of the cost. |
Whichever route you choose, insist on three things: you own the domain, you can edit your own text without paying for every change, and the site loads properly on a phone.
Our author website packages start at $200 one time, with no monthly platform fee to us. You own the domain and the site. If we illustrated your book, your characters and cover files are already with us, which is most of the design work done.
Mistakes That Lose Readers
The problem: every other mistake here is fixable later. This one quietly costs you every launch for years, because the readers who loved book one are gone forever.
The fix: one signup form on the printables page and one in the footer, both offering something a child can enjoy today.
The problem: you paid for original artwork, then built a site using generic images anyone can buy. You throw away the one thing that makes you recognisable.
The fix: use your own characters as the site's visual identity — header, backgrounds, buttons, the lot. This is what makes an author site look like a children's book author site.
The problem: most of your visitors are a parent or teacher on a phone with about eight seconds of patience, often standing in a corridor.
The fix: large text, large buttons, buy link visible without scrolling, and nothing that requires a mouse to work.
The problem: "contact for pricing" gets far fewer enquiries than a stated range. Schools work to fixed budgets and skip anyone they cannot price.
The fix: publish a range, even a wide one, and note what it includes.
The problem: a dead buy button or a two-year-old "coming soon" tells every visitor you have stopped writing.
The fix: update at every launch, and put a reminder in your calendar twice a year to click every link yourself.
Launch Checklist
- Domain is your author name and registered in your own account
Not your designer's, not your nephew's.
- All six pages exist and none say "coming soon"
An empty page is worse than no page.
- Every book has a working buy link and a stated age range
Click each one yourself on a phone.
- School visit page states age groups, format and a price range
And has a form, not just an email address.
- Email signup offers something free and genuinely useful
Test it with your own address and confirm the file actually arrives.
- Contact form sends to an inbox you check
Then check the spam folder for a week — this is where most enquiries vanish.
- The site loads in under three seconds on mobile data
Large unoptimised illustration files are the usual culprit.
- Your name appears in the page title of every page
So someone searching your name finds you rather than your Amazon listing.
Want a Site Built Around Your Characters?
If Kidillus illustrated your book, we already have your characters, palette and cover files — most of the design work is done. Packages start at $200 one time, and you own the domain and the site.
See Author Website Packages →