A website as enchanted
as your books.

Yes, all in the ways that count: the domain is registered to you, and you can export the entire site, a ready-to-host zip with setup guides, whenever you like, for any reason, free. If you leave, it's a ten-minute DNS change (which is one of the guides).

Hosting on a global edge network, every content update you publish, and the CMS you publish them with. It's the $5-a-month promise, billed annually. What it buys is editability. The free handoff also exists if you'd rather host the files yourself.

You see a fully designed homepage concept before I build anything, and two rounds of revisions are included at that stage. If we work through both and it still isn't right, you can end the project there and I refund your deposit in full. I would rather lose a deposit than give you something you're not proud to send readers to.

Honestly? For a few books, maybe not enough to matter. Their sites often look lovely, and I'd rather say so than pretend otherwise.

What you're paying for is what happens at book nine. On a page builder every book is a page somebody typed, which is how author sites end up with a duplicated page nobody renamed, a nav item pointing at the homepage, an events page still headed 2025, and a buy button aimed at a shop that closed months ago. None of that is bad design. It's a catalogue being maintained as pages.

This is a database with a design on top. Reading order generates itself. Past events file themselves away at midnight. A buy link can carry an expiry date and swap to a fallback on its own. Every link is checked weekly, so you hear about a dead one before a reader does.

If you have one book and no catalogue yet, use one. I mean that. Spend the money on your cover artist instead and come back when you have three books.

Here's what changes by then. Free builders are general-purpose, so they build what every author needs and nothing that only romance authors need. There's no field for content warnings, so those end up in a Google Doc. Same for tropes, spice level, a shared universe that outgrew one series list, or a signed edition that just sold out. Each one becomes a page you update by hand, until the day you stop.

Here those are records. You fill in a field once and every page that mentions it is correct, including the filters your readers use to find their next book.

Preview is instant. Publishing rebuilds your site and goes live in about five minutes: the tradeoff that makes your pages faster than any database-driven site your readers visit.

Yours. The signup form is built native to your site and feeds whatever you already use: Mailerlite, Kit, or anything with a form endpoint. No third-party widget, nothing slowing your pages down.

If you already have a shop anywhere at all, Shopify, Etsy, Big Cartel, TikTok Shop, IngramSpark, every book points straight at it. Your shop keeps working exactly as it does today. Nothing moves, nothing breaks, and you keep the payment setup and postage rules you already know.

If you don't have a shop and just want signed copies available now and then, any book can carry a Stripe buy button. Readers get a proper button in your design, Stripe takes the card and the shipping address, and the money lands in your account with no monthly fee. It won't hold a basket or count your stock, so it suits an occasional signed drop rather than a busy shop.

If you work signings and conventions, start with Beventi. It was built for authors selling books rather than adapted from general retail, so event preorders with pickup at the table, virtual signings and wholesale to indie bookstores are the product itself, and it arrives with readers already on it. Whichever you land on, the shop stays where it is and your site points at it correctly, which is my half of the job. The selling guide walks through all of them, including the cases where the answer is to keep exactly what you have.

You'll see a designed homepage concept within 7 business days of starting. Once you approve it, five weeks to launch-ready, then 30 days of refinement. Slow feedback pauses the clock; the schedule is honest in both directions.

It means your site works for readers who don't browse the way you do. Some of your readers have low vision and zoom to 200%. Some use a screen reader that speaks the page aloud. Some can't use a mouse and move through a site entirely by keyboard. Some get migraines or motion sickness from animation. They all buy books.

WCAG AA is the standard that covers this, and it's the floor on every site I build. In practice: text always has enough contrast against its background, every image carries a description, the whole site can be operated by keyboard with a visible outline showing where you are, and anyone whose device asks for reduced motion gets a still page automatically.

Two things worth knowing. Your colours stay yours: if a shade you love is too pale to read, I change where and how it's used rather than swapping it out, and the site won't publish until it passes. And this is the same standard US federal sites are held to, so it goes in from the first day of the design rather than getting bolted on afterwards.

AAA, the stricter tier, is available on request. It's genuinely hard on dark palettes, so I'll tell you what it would cost your design before you decide.

For writing code, yes, and openly. For your art, your design, your words, or your readers' data: never. The full stance is just above, and the invitation stands: ask what touched your project and I'll tell you.