Best Wordpress Themes for Authors: My 9 Top Recommendations

Setting up an author website can be a hassle. If you don't know what you're doing, you can waste hours just trying to make a single page look presentable.

Thankfully, if you are using WordPress, there are some ways to make that a lot easier, and in this article, I will give you a list of nine WordPress themes that will give you a professional looking website that is specifically designed for authors.

For each theme, I've specifically listed who I think that theme is best for, as some themes will work for some people, and others will not.

Disclaimer: some of the links on this post are affiliate links, but that did not influence my selection, and every cent goes to the Kindlepreneur coffee fund.

Why Am I Qualified to Talk to You About Websites?

It's totally understandable to ask, why is this guy talking to me about building a website? How can he prove the he knows what he's talking about?

Totally understandable question.

Well, for one, I've been the content manager for Kindlepreneur for many years now, and in that time I've learned from the best, and built Kindlepreneur up to the point where it gets more than double the organic traffic that it received when I started.

Additionally, I've built a variety of author websites in my time, including MythBank, which is for my fiction audience.

But before Dave and I even started writing this article and all of the other related articles, we put our heads together to figure out the best approach, then surveyed hundreds of thousands of authors to learn what they do when building author websites.

When putting all that expertise together, I believe I have a good idea of the best routes authors should take to build their website.

So let's dive in.

First, Have a Wordpress-friendly Hosting Service

Before I get into discussing the actual themes you should use, let's first discuss hosting. Because some hosts make it more difficult to run WordPress on their server.

Additionally, some hosts may appear cheap on the surface, but they will nickel and dime you for every service you need, including easier WordPress installation.

What you want is a host that makes WordPress hosting simple, will install WordPress for you (ideally with one click), and makes it easy to set up your website.

That is why I recommend Siteground as the number one hosting service for authors. It is affordable, yet still has everything you need as an author, including all of the perks that you would want anyway such as:

• WordPress hosting
• Automatic backups
• Really great support
• And more

So if you are looking for a great place to host your web WordPress website, look no further than Siteground.

The 9 Best Wordpress Themes for Authors

I’ve got 8 Wordpress themes that I’ve selected for authors, and they include:

1. Odrin
2. Bookwise
3. Auteur
4. Johannes
5. Narratium
6. Booklovers
7. Blog for Writers and Journalists
8. GeneratePress

Let’s walk through each of them to discuss why I put them on this list, and what type of author they are best for, starting with my #1…

1. Odrin – Book Selling WordPress Theme for Writers

Starting Price: $64

Ease of Use: Intermediate

Best For: Fantasy authors (but can be adapted)

Odrin is my #1 Wordpress theme recommendation for authors. Period. Full Stop.

It is not only gorgeous, but it is fairly easy to use. It may require some tinkering to get it like you want it, but you can trust that your end result will be highly professional.

This theme is also designed for authors looking to sell books. It is easy to showcase your books, integrate Woocommerce, and more. Plus, it has everything else that you need for blogging if that is something you also want to do.

At first glance, this looks like a theme designed specifically for fantasy authors, mostly due to the fonts and artwork that they use in the demos.

However, this is fairly easy to change. It is absolutely possible to change the font to something more suitable of your genre on the backend in the theme settings.

Overall, this is what I recommend for most authors unless you have specific needs that dictate otherwise.

Bookwise – Conversion-focused Wordpress Theme for Indie Authors

Starting Price: $99/year

Ease of Use: Beginner

Best For: The beginner author who wants a beautiful website.

Bookwise, when it comes to features, is one of the best WordPress themes for authors, specifically for self-published authors.

This theme is specifically built and targeted at authors who want to sell books. It helps you create landing pages, has some beautiful templates to choose from, and is very simple to use.

The downside to this theme is the cost. Since this is using the Thrive Suite, which is a series of useful tools and themes that you can choose from, there is no way to simply by this theme and leave it at that. You have to buy a package that includes this theme.

The price starts at $99/year, and the full Thrive Suite costs $299/year. Unless you have a lot of websites, that does not seem cost-effective to me.

But in terms of functionality and overall design, I would place this one at the top the list.

Auteur – WordPress Theme for Authors and Publishers

Starting Price: $60

Ease of Use: Beginner

Best For: The average author

If you are looking for an average, run-of-the-mill WordPress theme, then Auteur is the one I would go with.

It has an average cost, is very user-friendly, and has a standard design that can be customized for many different authors needs.

There isn't anything particularly fancy about this theme, but it will get the job done. Plus it has a high rating on Theme Forest, which is always a good thing.

This theme has multiple templates specifically for books, and even integrates with Woocommerce to create an author store, if that is something that you want.

Johannes – Personal Blog Theme for Authors and Publishers

Starting Price: $59

Ease of Use: Beginner

Best For: Personal author blogs

Johannes is a simple but elegant theme that can be used for a variety of purposes. Though it is marketed as a blog theme for authors and publishers, there is really nothing specifically unique about it that only authors would use.

That said, it is a beautiful example of a good personal blog theme. If you like to blog about your own life, your process, or anything like that, this would be a really good theme for you.

The theme is perfectly situated to showoff the author, if not as good at showing off the books (but that can be figured out if you're willing to put in the time).

Narratium – Simplicity for authors

Starting Price: $39

Ease of Use: Intermediate

Best For: The design conscious

Narratium might be my favorite on this list, if only for its uniqueness. It has a unique tile layout that can be customized in a number of ways. The tiles, while not specifically designed for books, can actually make a good visual way to showcase posts about your books.

Like Johannes, this theme is designed more for authors who want to blog a lot, rather than as a place to sell books. That said, it is one of the most beautiful on this list, and one I would definitely pay attention to if you are design conscious.

It is also one of the more affordable options on this list, so definitely want to look into.

Booklovers – Publishing House & Book Store WordPress Theme + RTL

Starting Price: $45

Ease of Use: Intermediate

Best For: Larger publishers

This is a theme specifically built for publishers of books. This can be large publishers, but it can also include individual authors as well.

This theme is optimized to sell books, which is one big plus. It integrates with Woocommerce, and you can set up massive stores that look great.

However, if you only have a few books, say under five, then this theme might be more than you need. When you look through their demos, it's very clear that they are catering to publishers and those with a lot of books to sell.

Nevertheless, it is a very clean and useful WordPress theme.

Blog for Writers and Journalists With Bookstore WordPress Theme

Starting Price: $45

Ease of Use: Intermediate

Best For: Online writers

This theme, though it lacks a creative title, is still one of the best ones for individual authors.

Like some of the others on this list, I recommend this more for authors who have something to say online. If you are a journalist, or frequently right online, this one might be a good one for you.

The advantages that this theme also has various built-in templates to showcase and sell books. There is a lot you can do with this theme, which is why I rated it as intermediate, but at a $45 price point, it is definitely a good one.

GeneratePress – A Foundation for Lightning-fast Websites

Starting Price: $59 ($249 for lifetime support on up to 500 websites)

Ease of Use: Advanced

Best For: The minimalist with tech skills

While all of the above WordPress themes are great, they can often be bogged down by a lot of code, which slows down the website and degrades the user experience.

That is why I added GeneratePress to the list. As someone who is been working in the website space for his entire professional career, as of this writing GeneratePress is largely considered the best theme to build a WordPress site on.

Why? Because from a coding perspective, it doesn't beat around the bush. It gives you exactly what you need and nothing more.

What this means is that the themes are lightning fast.

This usually results in a more minimalist website, unless you are a professional designer and you are willing to spend hours on every page template you have to make it fancier.

But the good news is, people like minimalism these days. A lot of the fluff you will see in some of the other above themes is unnecessary. Sometimes people just want to get straight to the information.

The downside to GeneratePress, and why I don't recommend it for everyone, is that it has a very strong learning curve. You will almost certainly need to do a lot of research to figure it out.

That said, this is what I use for all of my websites (including MythBank, pictured above), and I have yet to see a better option. Yes, it takes me time to build the page templates I want, but it is ultimately worth it.

My Top Recommendation: Odrin or GeneratePress

I generally have two recommendations for websites for authors: Odrin or GeneratePres.

Odrin is the theme I recommend for most authors who aren't technically inclined, and want a beautiful theme that is easy to put together.

GeneratePress is what I recommend for those who are up to the technical challenge, and want a theme that is infinitely customizable and really fast. GeneratePress does all of that, with one of the most efficient code bases of any theme out there.

With that in mind, any of the themes on this list will work for most authors, and if you fall into a slightly different category (designer, publisher, etc.) then one of the other themes might work better for you.