11 Fantasy Author Websites That Take Your Breath Away and Why
There’s a special place in our hearts for the genius of someone who can create entire worlds of outlandish creatures and cultures and make them feel real. It gives us a lot of pleasure to create an online home for an author who does this and makes it feel like an extension of their world on the internet.
We’ve been searching for inspiration on which fantasy authors out there have truly epic author websites and we’ve realized there just aren’t any good posts on this.
So we decided to create our own.
Disclaimer: A few of these sites below are our agency’s own creations so, of course, we’re biased in this regard. We wouldn’t honestly add them if we didn’t think they were excellent.
Here are Top 12 Breathtaking Fantasy Author Websites:
(in no particular order)
orld that loves video, we couldn’t think of a more engaging way to keep new visitors interested. The video is beautifully professionally animated, complete with a compelling voice-over and soundtrack. It’s extremely impressive.
Reni K. Amayo
Single-paged Nobility
Reni’s website is a branding masterpiece. You get a feel for her personality and vibe as soon as you enter her website.
It may not have the atmosphere that the covers of her books, but it still makes you want to read her works while sipping on a cup of coffee in your favorite book-reading spot.
Her entire website is confined to one page, but boy is this one page done well. It’s sophisticated, almost regal, with professional design elements and a cozy brown color palate.
If you’re going to spend time on a page, this is the page to spend it on.
Melissa McPhail
Fan-love Central
Okay, full disclaimer here, we’re a little biased about this fantasy author website. We designed it. I won’t tell you how great we think it is because well, that just seems like bragging.
What we will tell you are the features we built into it that we think make it work. Then you can decide for yourself what you think of it.
Rich, aesthetic visuals meet you as soon as you arrive. Her books are presented boldly and tastefully in a revolving splash banner as soon as you enter giving you immediate access to explore each further on their own pages.
Melissa’s gorgeous cover artwork is used throughout the site to give it a feel in harmony with her branding. Typography is consistent with her book covers so the site feels like an extension of her world and her books. Her cover artwork colors are also carried throughout the site: Dark tones with dramatic contrasts, with a rich teal-blue accent color.
The site is clearly made for her fans. We can personally attest to the deep love she had for her fans. Her blog posts, often with close to 200 in-depth comments are evidence of this. Also, the depth with which she engaged in her replies sometimes paragraphs long, shows how much she cared about really engaging with her readers.
We carried this fan-love ethic through into her site in general. We produced 3 painstakingly, detailed, digitally painted world maps across 3 different continents of her series’ world. The maps can be downloaded directly from the website, giving even more value to her fans and visitors.
We also created several interesting fan resource pages to house important world lore, glossaries, and character information.
And of course, we made it incredibly easy for readers and fans to join her email list and connect to her on socials with email signups and social links on virtually every page. We also added a pop-up offering a special quote anthology from her books displaying once a day to new users. This all paid off. Signups instantly shot up to several times the rate they were on her previous website and continued at this rate months later.
All in all, we’re really proud of this fantasy author website as you can tell. We did everything we could to carry through Melissa’s branding used in her books and her general aesthetic preferences.
If you’d like to know more about the design process, we’ve written a full case study on this website.
Susan Dennard
Tasteful Personal Branding
What we really like about Susan’s site is the unique branding throughout the site. It’s elegant and different. The subtle sunshine graphic is used on every page to bring texture and interest to the site.
This creative, unique branding for her site is a clever solution for a fantasy author website that features several different series each with its own branding. The branding feels more like Susan’s style than any one of her books or series. It feels like an extension of her personality, something we might not otherwise see from a style more centered on her work.
Fonda Lee
Dark and Gritty
What we love about this site is the simple, punchy color scheme and style used throughout the site. It feels dark and gritty. You can tell you’ve arrived somewhere unique, with its own distinct online personality.
A slider banner greets you as you arrive showcasing Fonda’s books with invitations to learn more about each.
Apart from the cool style the website is essentially quite simple, leaning on the edgy backgrounds to create interest. Little imagery is needed past the already established gritty look and feel.
This simplicity of design gets the job done well though and for that reason, I’ve included it in this list.
Ronald Wilcox
Portal into another realm
This is another site made by yours truly.
The intro to the website fits the book perfectly and the dark imagery provides a great focal point for the man walking through a magical portal as well as the book.
And of course, the stand-out feature of this website is the Explore page. Fans can browse through the various characters from Ronald’s books and the many terms under Glossary.
The maps are super easy to read and immersive. If you hover over the pins you can read some text about specific areas. So much focus was put into making this site enjoyable for fans so they’ll always want to come back for more.
The reader magnet will tempt fans and new readers alike as the author offers a sneak peak at his upcoming novel.
Trang Thanh Tran
Moody sophistication
Trang keeps her website simplistic, gracing the tops and bottoms with lovely artwork.
This allows her unique book covers to stand out and grab attention – and wow are they fascinating to look at.
Although the website can give off a spooky vibe, you feel a personalization with it too. Trang has up playlists for her books, a FAQ page where she even pronounces her name in an audio log, and more stuff for users to discover.
We really admire her for adding a commissioned art section on her fantasy author website. She shares art that she’s found on various platforms that are inspired by her work and inspire her further in her writing.
She has built a community and continues to embrace it in every facet of this website.
T.A White
Modern, Professional
We really enjoyed designing this fantasy author website for T.A. White.
We wanted to go for a sleek design that surprised the user as they browsed the website. We did this through simple white space paired with interesting background images that complement their respective sections.
T.A. White gives her fans unseen stories in the form of deleted scenes from her books. She knows how to keep her fans happy!
Karuna Riazi
Contemporary
Karuna’s website opens up with a welcome screen that is so beautiful!
Once you click welcome, you enter her whole website. It actually greets you with a ‘Hello’ which feels very well, welcoming.
It uses white space well to let the content and artwork pop. The art and the content have space to breathe bringing the user a sense of calmness.
Navigation is a journey with this one. It’s easy to find content, but it takes a few more clicks than necessary to finally get to it. Otherwise, this website is pretty satisfying to look at.
This fantasy author website represents the genre and the author herself in a unique way that we haven’t seen too often. There’s just a soft nature that is felt throughout the pages that makes this website stand out.
Gregory Kontaxis
A Greek Beast
We built this Epic Fantasy author website for Gregory – emphasis on the epic.
The intro image feels like you’ve stumbled onto an enchanting cave, begging to be explored – this will be super engaging for fantasy fans.
The mystical atmosphere is supported by moody backgrounds and elements that suit this genre perfectly.
The reader magnet at the top left can’t be missed and the wording, ‘Free Novella’ makes it so enticing – because who wouldn’t want a free book?
But our favorite part of this website is the ability to change the language to Greek. See below!
By clicking the Greece Flag at the top right, the site is transformed. Greek lettering and a stunning variation of the feature book’s cover now appear.
The author’s background and branding are prioritized here. And it’s done in style.
Tomi Adeyemi
Branding in a Moody Atmosphere
Tomi has a few sections on her website that have different functions. We’ll be focusing on her writer’s section.
Tomi takes you on a journey as you move through this section. As you scroll down, you read a few short lines that give you a sense of the world Tomi has built for her popular series. This is very engaging and aptly conveys the tone of her books.
We’re then led into some reviews that sing her praises, establishing her credibility (which makes you want to buy her books even more).
Then at the bottom of the page are her books with amazing animated art on the covers – the cherry on top of the cake.
This page is not over the top but has embellishments that give this website character without going overboard on the theme.
Davis Ashura
Rich Imagery and Contrast
Another one of our own fantasy author websites. Davis’s audiobook series is his most popular, best-selling item. We showcased this front and center with an immediate link to learn more and purchase. Next, we featured all of his books across his 2 series with short book blurbs and links to their own in-depth book pages also with links to purchase of course.
As with Melissa McPhail’s site, we added visual book graphic links to his books in the top menu. We wanted to draw the viewer to these pages more than anything else. Visuals of already beautifully designed books are an easy way to do this.
Davis’s About page is really one of my favorite parts of the site. We made it seem like he was standing in front of a dramatic landscape with a just noticeable dragon flying past in the background. A fancy scroll effect makes it seem like he’s in the foreground and gives this page a dynamic, alive feeling.
We really went to town to make his world maps page amazing. His maps are fully zoomable and scrollable, just like Google Maps are! So readers can intimately study the details of his world and easily track the journeys taken by his characters.
One of Davis’s main objectives was to increase fan engagement. To achieve this we added email sign-up forms on virtually every page. To entice signups further we added the first 6 chapters of his eBook and the first 4 chapters of his audiobook for the first book in his first series. This is really the perfect first offering because if they’re hooked after this they become book buyers and readers. This is easily encouraged with automated follow-up emails to subscribers making it easy to do precisely that.
One thing you can’t see on this author website is how much we beefed it up under the hood compared to the previous website he had. This website literally loads SIX times faster, giving a much more pleasurable user experience. This was a critical upgrade for him because, let’s be honest, who hangs around waiting for things to load these days?
Want to read more? We’ve published a full case study of Davis Ashura’s site here.
Kate Jones
Fantastical, Unique
This is another Rocket Expansion fantasy author website for our list!
The introductory background video screams fantasy, letting users know exactly what they’re in for.
The pops of purples in greens in headings and backgrounds really set the atmosphere for the website while letting the content shine proudly.
A particularly fun section would be the characters page. It’s so unique to have well-known characters from Kate’s books tell you about themselves from their perspective. Fans will love to see these characters in a different format, while others will be tempted to become readers.
Conclusion
We’ve tried to showcase a few different approaches to an awesome fantasy author website. A gorgeous, engaging website is a huge opportunity to differentiate yourself as something special and out of the ordinary. It’s an asset that can keep promoting you and positioning you as a credible, desirable source well into the future.
If you don’t already have a breath-taking author website, consider getting a hand from a professional web design agency. If you like our work, we’d be happy to help you with this.
Want help with your author marketing? Get our FREE ebook and cheat sheet: 6 Steps To Getting More Readers.
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