Writers in the Storm

A Christmas Day Call to Action

By Lisa Norman

Merry Christmas! As you sip your cocoa (or something stronger—I won’t judge), let’s talk about giving your author website the gift of attention. Yes, the holidays are for relaxation, but they’re also a perfect time to think about fresh starts.

Your author website is one of your most important tools, but too often, it gets ignored in the whirlwind of writing, publishing, and life. Today, I want to challenge you to disrupt the status quo.

Don’t panic—this isn’t about flipping everything upside down overnight. Small changes can breathe new life into your online presence and make a significant impact in the year ahead.

WordPress: To Stay or Go?

WordPress has been the go-to for author websites for years, but let’s face it: the ecosystem is devolving. If you haven't heard about the WordPress Drama, grab some popcorn and go look it up. Just remember: DON’T PANIC. This is the biggest disruption I've seen in the author website space in at least 10 years.

Hopefully, we'll have new Content Management Systems (CMS) in the next year that may replace WordPress. Unfortunately, my crystal snow globe isn’t giving me the full picture, but I do predict exciting new toys in our future.

In the meantime, take a hard look at your current setup. Are you paying for features you don’t need? Is your hosting plan more hassle than it’s worth?

If WordPress is still serving you well, stay with it—but be aware of changes. Keep an eye out for alternatives and be ready to pivot if something better comes along.

AI Disruptions in Discoverability

Have you noticed a drop in traffic to your website? Feeling like you’re alone in the universe?

Not everyone is affected by this, but with the rise of AI powered search results, how people find and interact with websites is changing. What worked wonderfully a year ago may not work next year.

We could look at these changes as a disaster. Or, we can look at them as a powerful shift in the universe that will benefit both writers and readers.

Think about it: When’s the last time you saw a website and were filled with the delight and joy of a Christmas morning discovery? What if we could have that?

Where Are You Now?

First, what type of a website do you have?

Author websites fall into three general categories:

• A simple online presence with the essentials—a bio, books, and social media links. Cheap and low-maintenance but limited.
• A dynamic website with a blog or news section designed to engage readers and build a fan base. Requires regular updates to shine.
• A powerhouse designed for authors who are selling books, services, or merchandise. Costly and time-intensive but often worth it. (If this type of website isn't paying for itself, take time and review your analytics or other data to try and figure out why not.) These websites often include store software (a simplified store is called a shopping cart). People can buy their products and books right on the site.

Where does your site fall? Be honest. Is it serving your needs and your fans? Or is it overdue for an upgrade?

Disrupting Each Type of Website

No matter what kind of site you have, there’s always room for improvement. Let’s check out some creative options tailored to each category.

Basic Business Card

Keep it simple, but make it smart. One platform I've been exploring is Carrd.io. It offers beautiful, professional templates at an incredibly affordable price ($10–$20/year). Integrate MailerLite or other email management program for list-building. This way, you can start connecting with fans without a heavy investment in time or money.

Here's a beautiful example: https://amywintersvoss.com/

These sites won't perform as well with search engines as larger sites, but let's be real: a bigger website that you haven't updated in two years or more isn't performing well, either. Why spend hundreds of dollars each year on something that isn't working? Maybe it's time to downsize!

Blogging Platform

Blogging takes dedication, but tools like Substack can simplify the process. Substack combines blogging with newsletter functionality and even lets you make money on your content. It’s mostly free, with a one-time $50 fee to integrate your domain name.

If you’re not consistent with your blog, maybe it’s time to streamline and focus on connecting with readers in a new way.

And because Substack doesn't make money if you don't, they have tools to help readers find you.

Want an example? https://www.lifeoffiction.com/

Pro Business Site

If you’re selling books, courses, or other products, your site needs to work as hard as you do.

Consider upgrading to Shopify for a dedicated e-commerce (online store) solution. Or, if you’re sticking with WordPress, pair it with a shopping cart like PayHip or ThriveCart to handle sales.

Customers want to see tax and shipping during checkout, and adding these functions to your store can add costs to your setup.

PayHip has a free forever plan that lets you set up your products in their system. They take a small percentage of each sale. They'll handle pesky things like shipping and tax charges while integrating with options like BookVault (physical books) or BookFunnel (epubs).

These platforms are versatile and scalable (start small and grow), making them ideal for professional authors looking to grow their sales.

Examples: https://nancywarrenauthor.com/ and https://aliciamccalla.com/

Want to Build Something Immersive?

For authors dreaming of creating a world fans can truly dive into, World Anvil is a game-changer. It’s more than a website—it’s a platform for crafting detailed, interactive worlds.

The Sage plan ($300/year) supports a custom domain and offers additional features like writing software and a vibrant community that includes motivation and education for authors. World Anvil is your story bible come to life. Lifetime memberships are available, so keep an eye out for sales. There's a free version that you can experiment with, and other cheaper options if you are comfortable not attaching a domain to your world.

Creativity is your friend. For example, you could connect a free world to a Carrd.io site! Add a free Pay-Hip store, and you'll have a powerful presence without a lot of expense.

Imagine your readers exploring character backstories, maps, and alternate story paths. These websites are beautiful and offer a refreshing change from everyday author websites.

For authors who love world-building, this is the ultimate gift to your fans—and yourself.

Check out the best of World Anvil to see what can be done. And don't miss the most beautiful world category. https://www.worldanvil.com/w/hoist-the-colors-kummer-wolfe is a fantastic example of a site that will be a gift for the ideal readers of that author's work.

A Checklist for Disruption

Ready to take action? Here’s your to-do list for shaking things up:

1. Update your bio, add your latest books, and prune old posts that no longer serve your goals.
2. Your readers are on their phones. Make sure your site looks and works great on small screens.
3. Review hosting costs, add-ons, and any unnecessary expenses.
4. Add a poll, interactive map, or signup bonus for your readers. Small changes can make a big impact.
5. Set clear goals for your site. Do you want to grow your email list, boost sales, or engage more deeply with fans?

The Gift of Renewal

Your author website is more than just an online presence—it’s a tool for connection, growth, and storytelling. This Christmas, give it a little love. Disrupt what’s not working, embrace what is, and set yourself up for a stronger, brighter year ahead.

What’s one small (or big!) change you’ll make to your website? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Merry Christmas, and here’s to a wonderfully disruptive 2025!

Note: No Stress Writing academy offers a class in Substack for authors and a series of classes for World Anvil. The Press Kits class includes an introduction to Carrd.io. We'll be adding new classes in the new year covering other options as well.

About Lisa

Lisa Norman's passion has been writing since she could hold a pencil. While that is a cliché, she is unique in that her first novel was written on gum wrappers. As a young woman, she learned to program and discovered she has a talent for helping people and computers learn to work together and play nice. When she's not playing with her daughter, writing, or designing for the web, she can be found wandering the local beaches.

Lisa writes as Deleyna Marr and is the owner of Deleyna's Dynamic Designs, a web development company focused on helping writers, and Heart Ally Books, LLC, an indie publishing firm.

Interested in learning more from Lisa? Sign up for her newsletter or check out her school, No Stress Writing Academy, where she teaches social media, organization, technical skills, and marketing for authors!

Top image by Deleyna via Midjourney.

By Kris Maze

Being an indie author is a hellava lotta work, my friends. Passion for crafting great stories and knowing how to sell them as an indie author is just the beginning. You might have solid advice, a dream team to set up your store, and books your audience will devour, but that's only part of the puzzle. To truly make waves, to make a disruption in the publishing world as an indie author, there are other factors to consider. Read on for an inside look at my experience using WooCommerce to sell physical books from my author website, complete with its promises and woes.

The Hosting Nightmare

My website journey began years ago with Bluehost. Back then, my site was just a single page, and I was taking a class to improve my author platform. I fumbled my way through setting it up and, in an effort to save money, purchased a three-year hosting plan for a bargain price. Then Bluehost was sold to another entity. I figured, what difference does it make who hosts my site? As long as my books had an online home, I was good to go.

It turns out, it does make a difference.

Under new ownership, Bluehost’s quality dropped significantly, particularly when it came to supporting small, independent businesses like mine. Customer service became nearly impossible to reach, and when I did get through, the answers were vague or included upsells for add-ons I didn’t need. Billing was a mess—I once received an invoice for an additional three years of hosting that totaled nearly a thousand dollars.

WooCommerce Woes

My website itself was a disaster. I had set up WooCommerce on my own (full disclosure: I had no idea what I was doing), and it was cluttered with free and recommended plugins that often conflicted with one another. Unknowingly, I'd followed the advice of affiliates who were more concerned with their success than mine. My eBook links failed more often than they worked. Instead of a professional storefront, I had a clunky site that whimpered "amateur," eroding any buying confidence my audience had.

It's interesting in hindsight, but as authors we know that we need to disclose our affiliate links. But seeing those affiliate links in how-to videos, I believed that each one of those plugins was the solution to a problem, just like the YouTuber said it would be. I didn't understand that they could conflict with each other and cause even more problems... that other YouTubers would be happy to tell me how to fix by adding yet another plugin.

The real fly in my fondue? Customers were trying to buy my books. One particularly frustrated reader emailed, “I am literally trying to give you money. Why can’t I do that?” Imagine hearing that after months of sweat, investment, and energy spent trying to make this store functional. And for every customer who reached out, how many gave up after hitting the first broken link?

After two years of frustration, I knew it was time to call in the experts. I needed a website that actually worked—a clean, professional store that could sell my books reliably.

A Professional Website

I began working with Lisa Norman, our resident website expert at WITS that other authors highly recommended to me. Together, we rebuilt my site from the ground up. We designed a clean, polished store that could sell both eBooks and paperbacks. Lisa added logos for my two pen names. She set up analytics so I could track my sales, and installed essential security and spam protection. She removed the unnecessary and expensive fluff. I even got designated emails to make my storefront communications more professional.

At that time, Lisa warned me about my hosting company, and while I wasn’t thrilled with my long-term commitment, we decided to stick it out for the final year. The site looked fantastic, and I was excited to share it with my audience.

I ran a sale, prepped my email list of then 1,500 double opt-in subscribers, blogged, and created promotional materials. My readers were engaged—they interacted with my emails, commented on social media, and clicked my Calls to Action. Statistically speaking, someone should have been buying.

But I wasn’t selling books. Worse, during a big launch week, a broken URL greeted my customers. All the effort, momentum, and excitement vanished. I received confused emails from readers saying my site was flagged as “suspicious” or “spam,” despite having every privacy and security box checked. I had done everything right, but it still wasn’t working. My website was literally pushing customers away. When Lisa checked, she found that pieces of my website were randomly vanishing due to some problem with the hosting setup. As soon as she fixed one thing, another would break. We were both exhausted.

Discovering WooCommerce’s Hidden Costs

When setting up my store, I wanted customers to be able to buy paperback books, which meant navigating shipping rates and taxes. WooCommerce offered a supposedly new payment plugin that looked promising—until I tested it. My test customer couldn’t buy the book at all.

Next I learned that WooCommerce doesn’t automatically calculate shipping fees and taxes. You can set up flat rates and shipping zones, and as long as no one buys more than one book, it might work. But for taxes, you’re on your own. Each tax rate has to be added manually, state by state. For many authors, this is something an accountant handles. But as an indie author who wears all the hats, I decided to track taxes myself. Sadly, but within a realistic expectation as a small, growing business, the lack of sales made this less of an issue.

To cover my bases, I set flat shipping rates and added a note at checkout asking customers outside the continental U.S. to contact me directly. While this kept my costs in check, it didn’t give me the confidence to run promotions. I was constantly worried about orders falling apart or losing money on paperback sales. I've since learned that for shipping and taxes to work well in WooCommerce you'll need to invest in a costly plugin with an annual fee, annual fees that have been going up a lot lately.

Integration Issues: Lulu and USPS

I tried working with Lulu to automate paperback fulfillment, but the costs were ridiculous. I was losing money on every sale. So, I decided to manually ship my own paperbacks, which felt more sustainable but far from automated.

My next step was to integrate a USPS shipping plugin. For a $100/year subscription, I hoped to streamline the checkout process. Instead, I found myself trapped in a lucid nightmare. The plugin’s customer service was incomprehensible—one email was a copy-paste from their website, while another was so technical I couldn’t understand what they needed. After two months of frustration and a near-meltdown, I managed to secure a refund. To this day, I don’t know if the USPS plugin would have been a solution because I could never get it to work. I can't even tell you if the problem was with the plugin or my application with the USPS for an account.

The Big Switch

The three-year stint of Bluehost was nearly finished and I switched to the more reliable hosting service Lisa recommended last summer. I am happy to report that since that month, I have not had a crash or email complaint. Even though I have not held a full book launch since this change, I am getting small revenues each month without doing a thing. My confidence to dive into promotions is high. It feels like I finally have the indie website I intended. Had I realized how much the hosting service was impacting the functionality of my site, I would have made a better business decision to cut my losses and ties to the previous company. 

Live and learn. And learn from others. As I tell you my story, I hope you can take from my experience and find an online sales platform that works for you. 

The Takeaway

The combination of bad hosting, unreliable plugins, and unhelpful integrations made my website journey unnecessarily painful. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that Investing in quality hosting and tools isn’t optional—it’s the cost of doing business. As indie authors, we put so much effort into creating great books. Our websites, the places where we sell those books, deserve the same care and attention. Anything less will only cost us time, money, and readers.

Your Turn

What website woes have you had? What tips to indie writers would you share?

About Kris

Kris Maze is an author, blogger, and teacher. She enjoys writing twisty, speculative fiction with character driven plots. After years of reading classic literature from around the world, mysteries, and thrillers, she began to write and publish her own sci-fi and horror books. She also writes for various publications including a regular post at the award-winning Writers in the Storm Blog. 

When she isn’t spending time with her favorite people and stories, Kris Maze is taking pictures, hiking, or pondering the wisdom of Bob Ross. 

And sometimes, she cuts down a natural Christmas Tree.

Scaretastic and Sci-fi Stories

Scaretastic and Sci-fi Stories is a collection of short fiction written to mystify and frighten readers. With stories under the pen names Kris Maze and Krissy Knoxx, these tales span the speculative subgenres of science fiction and light horror. It includes award-winning stories and a preview of a YA science fiction series. Are you brave enough to take the path less traveled?

by Rebecca Forster

Topping my list of things critical to a books success are: a well- crafted story, a great editor, an exciting blurb, and, above all, an exceptional cover. But covers, like books, are not created equal and they serve different masters.

Branding: 3 Types of Covers

Here are three types of book covers with a "branding purpose." You have likely seen all of them.

Corporate Branding

Harlequin is a great example of corporate branding. Graphic elements such as type font and size, logo placement, and central images are as prescribed as the writing guidelines. A mere glance at the covers and the reader’s mind registers some key book elements:

• category romance
• happy for now, or happily ever after ending
• short novel
  and, above all...
• published by Harlequin.

The author is secondary to the brand.

Genre/Series Branding

The Idiots Guide to (insert word) or Chicken Soup for the Soul are fabulous examples of this.  The graphic elements are set in stone, making it simple for the reader to identify the book as being part of the over-arching series. These elements tend to be colorful and bold, the titles self-explanatory and prominent.

Author Branding

John Grisham’s books use a clean, easily read font for his name. His name fills the top third of his covers. The titles are secondary and the images are pleasant but not genre explicit. Grisham is the reason you are picking this book up, period. Many big name authors use this formula, and some indie authors are harnessing the power of distinct author branding.

My Own Cover Journey

My Traditional Years

During my 25 years as a traditionally published author, I wrote for Harlequin, Penguin Putman, Kensington Books, Harper Collins, and other houses. My covers from Harlequin were indistinguishable from other Harlequin authors, as we noted above. At the time, Harlequin is focused on their own corporate brand. My single title covers went from basic to intricate only when my book sales warranted the extra expense of foils and raised fonts.

The Indie Challenge

I entered indie publishing with 20+ books in my inventory, due to all the rights that reverted to me from my previous publishers. I was not, however, free to use the covers that were previously created. My initial efforts to create covers by myself were childish, and did me no great service in terms of sales. But, now that there were no advances on the horizon, my own efforts were all I could afford.

Luckily, my fortunes changed.

I hired a great editor, PR person, and I went in search of a cover designer. I had some luck, but nothing that knocked my socks off. The truth is, a person with a graphic program is not necessarily a cover designer. I discovered that two of these designers were actually using templates. That was fine, but I wanted more.

I just couldn’t quite define what that ‘more’ was.

In-House Again

Over the years, graphic design programs become user-friendly and reasonably priced, so I committed to learning how to create compelling covers. There was a lot of trial and error. Sometimes I succeeded—spot color and stark graphics for The Witness Series have proven successful, with over 3 million books downloaded.

My favorite self-made cover is Before Her Eyes (the book is also a personal favorite.).  Both these efforts are evocative of the stories. 

I was not so successful with the Finn O’Brien Thrillers. I knew what I wanted those covers to look like, I did a decent job of interpreting my ideas, but something kept them from being compelling.

Enter a Master Cover Designer.

I befriended an author, Luke Romyn, online.  I loved his storytelling but I was enamored with his covers. When I asked who designed them, he said that he did. It seems Luke is a graphic artist turned author, and the reason I loved his covers was indefinable. It had to do with depth of color and composition. I was drawn to them, understanding the story before I read a word.

I wanted that feeling for the cover of my books.

He took my "acceptable" Finn O’Brien covers and turned them into spectacular ones. Suddenly, there was an electricity that crackled off my thriller covers. The fonts he chose turned my name and the titles into bold statements. The tilt of a letter or intrusion of a graphic element into the type gave the cover life.

I possess a good eye; Luke has an extraordinary one. Look at the difference between my covers (left) and his covers (right).

The Bottom Line

It is impossible to quantify the soul of a graphic artist. They bring something akin to umami to the design table. Their talent is deep and ethereal. They seem to know more about our stories than we do without ever having read the book. Whatever the magic is, I’m glad Luke has it and am honored that he has me covered. If you want to see what I mean, check out Luke’s books awesome covers.

If you want to shake up your book sales, take a look at your covers.

What do you look for in a book cover, and do you know what cover elements make YOU buy? Do you create your own book covers or hire someone else to do the job? If you use a designer, feel free to recommend them below!

About Rebecca

Rebecca Forster started writing on a crazy dare and found her passion. Now a USA Today and Amazon best selling author, Forster is known for her legal thrillers and police procedurals. Over three million readers have enjoyed her Josie Bates thrillers in the Witness Series alone. With over 40 books to her name, Rebecca had a long career in traditional publishing before becoming an indie author. Her fast-paced tales of law and justice are known for deep characterization and never-see-it-coming endings.

In an effort to make her work as realistic as possible, Rebecca has graduated from the DEA and ATF Citizens academies, landed by tail hook and spent two days on the nuclear submarine U.S.S Nimitz, engaged in police ride-alongs, and continues to court watch whenever possi

Rebecca has taught at the acclaimed UCLA Writers Program and various colleges and universities. She is a sought-after speaker at bar and judges' associations as well as philanthropic groups and writing conferences. Rebecca is also a repeat speaker at the LA Times Festival of Books.

Rebecca has just released The 9th Witness, the final book in her acclaimed Witness Series, Josie Bates Thrillers. Find all her books at any online bookstore or here: https://www.rebeccaforster.com/.

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