Create a website for an author name in one step, find your way around the builder and its checklist, publish, change your address, and know what the site serves, what the free plan shows, and how subscribers and deletion work.
Last updated October 19, 20265 min read
An author website is a one-page site for one of your author names at an address like yourauthorname.booksparker.com, with your books, your bio, signup buttons for your mailing list and your contact details, built from what is already in your account. This article covers creating and publishing it; how to shape each section is in customising your author website.
What you need first
An author name. Each author name can have one website, and websites are free on every plan; what a paid plan changes is the small Made with BookSparker note in the footer and the option of a custom domain. New author website on the Author Websites page is grayed out until you have an author name, and again once every author name has a site; hover it and it tells you which. With no author name yet, the page offers Create an Author Name First, which opens the form and brings you back to create the site once the name is saved.
Create your site
Choose your author
Each author name can have one website. Pick who this site is for.
J.R. Blackwood
Mara Vance
Has a website
Elena Marsh
Web address
jr-blackwood
.booksparker.com
jr-blackwood.booksparker.com is available
We build the site instantly with all 6 of J.R. Blackwood's books and their profile, and you shape everything in the builder with a live preview. Nothing goes public until you publish.
Create my website
Creating a site: the author-name cards with one already taken, the web address prefilled and available, and the note about what is built.
Choose your author from the cards; an author name that already has a site is grayed out and marked as such. The Web address fills itself from the name, lowercased with dashes, and you can change it: lowercase letters, numbers and single dashes, up to 63 characters, and not one of the reserved words such as www, blog or shop. As you type, BookSparker checks whether the address is free and says so in green. Create my website builds the site at once with every book of that author name, the largest mailing list connected to that author name as its signup list, and the bio, contact email and social links from the author name's profile, then opens the builder.
Your first visit to the builder
The builder has two panes. On the left, the Content and Settings tabs hold the cards you edit; on the right, Live preview shows the page as it will look, in Desktop or Mobile width, updating as you type. Nothing you change reaches readers until you press Save Changes, and a bar reminds you while there are unsaved changes.
Set up your site
2 of 6 done. Your site stays private until you publish.
Feature a book at the topOptional
Set up your newsletter signup
Check your books and their order
Pick your look and colors
Fine-tune the design in your own wordsOptional
Publish your site
The first-run checklist with two of five items done: the ones that complete themselves once a featured book and a mailing list are set.
On that first visit a Set up your site checklist sits at the top with six items. Clicking an item opens the matching card and scrolls the preview to it. Feature a book, which is optional, and Set up your newsletter signup tick themselves once a featured book and a mailing list or free book are set; Fine-tune the design in your own words, also optional, opens the Custom styles card and ticks itself once you have a change there; and Publish your site ticks itself when you publish. Check your books and their order and Pick your look and colors you tick by hand. When the author name has no books yet, the books item reads Add your first book instead: the Books section then has an Add a book button, which opens the book form with your author name already chosen and brings you back with the book on your site once you save it. On a published site the new book still waits for Save Changes, like any other change. The checklist lives in this browser only, you can hide it any time, and it goes away for good once the site is published.
Publish
A new site is a Draft: only you can see it, and its address shows nothing to anyone else. Publish, in the builder header, makes it live and turns the pill green; View site opens it in a new tab, and Unpublish hides it again. Publishing is separate from saving. Press Save Changes first, or the published site will not include what you just changed.
Your address
Your web address, under Settings, is where you change the subdomain later, with the same availability check. Do it with care: the old address stops working the moment you save, there is no forwarding, and anything you shared, from newsletter links to your Amazon author page, points at nothing. A Copy link button under the field gives you the full address to share.
What lives on your site
Your address serves the page itself and, under /privacy, a privacy page BookSparker writes for you, links in the footer and shows in English or German to match the visitor. When you group books by series, each series gets its own page too. Everything else at that address returns a not-found page; the site never mirrors the rest of BookSparker. On the free plan every page carries a Made with BookSparker note in the footer, which paid plans remove.
Subscribers and removing the site
Signups through the site are listed under Settings with a count and an Export CSV button, and go to your email provider as well when a list is chosen, once the reader has confirmed their email; readers still to confirm are shown as waiting and are neither counted nor exported. Delete Website, at the foot of Settings, removes the site, its book selection and those subscribers together; the confirmation offers the CSV download first when there are any, because there is no way back. Deleting frees the address and the author name, which can then get a new site.
Your sites at a glance
J.R. Blackwood
jr-blackwood.booksparker.com
Published
1,284
Views
96
Clicks
37
Subscribers
6 books
EditLink
One site on the Author Websites list: the miniature of the live page, the address, the Published pill, Views, Clicks and Subscribers, and the Edit and Link buttons.
The Author Websites page shows a card per site: a miniature of the live page once published, the address, the Published or Draft pill, lifetime Views and Clicks, the subscriber count and the number of books. Edit opens the builder; Link copies the address, opens it or makes a QR code, and is only available once the site is published.
Common questions
Why is the create button grayed out?
Either you have no author name yet, or every author name already has a site. The tooltip on the button says which. Add an author name under Author Names, or edit the existing site instead.
Can one author name have two websites?
No. An author name has one site, and your number of sites is capped by how many author names your plan allows.
Why does my old address show a not-found page?
You changed the web address. Old addresses are not forwarded, so update every place you shared it, or change the address back.
Where does an edited bio go?
To the author name. The bio, contact email and social links on the site are the author name's own, so a change here appears everywhere that profile is shown.
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