Your new book is about to launch and you want to build a book landing page to help you promote and sell — both pre-order copies and copies once the book is officially released!
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. There are lots of book landing page examples you can follow — borrowing elements that will work for your release, ditching elements that aren’t relevant, and adding whatever else you may need to support your pre-orders and orders.
What Is a Book Landing Page
The commonplace use of a book landing page is to help promote the release and subsequent sale of a latest book effort. Most book releases will utilize a specific webpage for the months leading up to the book release and in the months following the release.
While you’ll maintain a page for people to purchase your book over the long haul, the landing page itself will be retired within a year or so of the release.
Using a book landing page allows you to:
- Have a central location to refer people to for all things related to your book.
- Market special promotions people can access if they pre-order your book.
- Offer special downloads to anyone who purchases your book within the first year.
- Drive email traffic to one centralized location as you work to promote the release.
There are other reasons to utilize a book landing page, these just tend to be the most common reasons.
Designing Your Ideal Book Landing Page
Your book landing page design should coincide with your goals for your book release. There isn’t a one size fits all and any examples you look at are simply that for you… examples.
So what are you hoping to get out of your book landing page?
- Pre-sales?
- Speaking engagements?
- Email subscriptions?
- Launch party RSVPs?
- Customers beyond the book?
There is also the question of WHO is going to be visiting this page.
- Is this book to a new audience unfamiliar with you and your work?
- Maybe this book is to a very specific audience already familiar with you.
- You’re really writing this book to appeal to those hiring keynote speakers.
- Friends and family will be the primary audience to purchase your book.
Your audience and purpose for the book will determine what should go on this page. Having a vision for this BEFORE you look at examples will help you identify which elements from the examples will help you achieve your goals.
End the end, there are no rules, just best practices, and relevant content and you will be the best person to decide what your page looks like.
Examples of Book Landing Pages
There are ENDLESS examples you could follow — I have chosen just a few to share as examples.
First, these examples contain many of the elements you might be considering. Second, they are designed beautifully with visual excellence, highlighting the peak delivery of each element.
There is no need to explore hundreds or event dozens of examples of book landing pages because chances are you already know what you want or need and all that’s left is to help articulate to your ‘web guy’ what you would like your page to look like.
That’s what I am hoping to help you with in this post.
Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking by Jon Acuff
You Are The Brand by Mike Kim
Rich Girl Nation by Katie Gatti Tassin
Elements of a Book Landing Page
Not every book landing page will have the same content. You can see in the examples above that Rich Girl Nation featured speaking dates while the other two pages did not have this section.
Again, the point of this post is to help you bring to life your ideal version of a book landing page for your project —whether it be your own book or a book you’re marketing on behalf of a client.
While I am not going to go into a deep dive on book landing page elements, I want to call out the elements above to help you develop a vocabulary to articulate your desires for your page. This vocabulary will help you communicate with clients, conduct web searches for other examples, and put together a strong design with intetion.
Hero Section
The very top of the page is the hero section. This is what appears above the fold. This will typically be a picture of your book, a headline, and short description. Here are the hero sections of the three example pages.
Quotes and Endorsements
You are probably already planning on putting endorsements on your book landing page. Here are some of the types of endorsements you can share.
- Official endorsements from the book itself.
- Reviews that capture the overall quality and merits of your work.
- Quotes related to past work you’ve created.
Bottom line, you can include more than just endorsements for you new book. Yes, it’d probably be best to have endorsements for the book you’re selling on the page, but if you don’t you can still add reviews and testimonials.
Purchase Bonuses
Bonuses are things that people get for pre-ordering or purchasing your book. These are often done for pre-orders because authors want their book to launch at the top of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any other chart they are aiming for.
Typically someone will purchase a book, send a copy of the email to the author, and then receive the bonuses either digitally or through the mail when the book launches.
About the Author
While the top hero section is about the book, there should be a section on the book landing page that is specifically about the author. This may be the same biography included in the book itself or slightly modified to allow for more content.
Make Your Own Decisions for Your Book Launch Landing Page
You are the person most qualified to make decisions about your book landing page. This doesn’t mean you have to make the decisions in a silo. Nor should you.
This simply means that you can set the tone for what you believe your book landing page should look like and what content should be found on the page. If you’re working with a team of people, take your desires to your team, let them know what your goals are for the page, and together come up with a layout and design that suits your needs and will help you accomplish your goals.
In the end, you should have a book landing page that represents you and your work in the best light possible and that won’t happen with a cookie cutter approach. Design a page that allows your uniqueness to shine through.
