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If you have a story that’s just waiting to be told, you no longer have to rely on a publisher to print and promote it on your behalf. Armed with a suitable website, any author can publish an eBook and distribute it directly to their readers with no intermediaries involved.
To get a great website working in your favor, you need a great theme that packs in features that are specific to your requirements as an author. The usual way to go about building such a website would be to combine a general-use WordPress theme with an eCommerce plugin. However, promoting and selling a book is really much easier with a theme designed specially to create and sell eBooks.
As you’d expect, such themes come packed with particularly useful features for authors and online bookstores, including review sections to feature readers’ comments, call-to-action buttons to help with conversions, a built-in payment gateway to process payments securely, and much, much more.
Here’s our pick of the best WordPress themes for selling books (or really any similar product) online:
Book Guide
Standout features:
- Multiple homepage layouts in different trending colors.
- Many premium plugins and 5 different sliders included.
- 3 different header and footer styles.
- Different book styles, advanced background and typography options.
- Can create affiliate sites linking to stores like Amazon.
– by KodeForest
Papirus
Standout features:
- Sleek design suitable for online store, book store demo included.
- Revolution Slider, Visual Composer, shortcodes for Visual Composer included.
- Built in pagination, support for WPML.
- Back up option, 9 widget spots.
- Search using categories and filters.
– by Tokokoo
The Novelist
Standout features:
- Responsive portfolio theme for authors.
- Full screen image backgrounds, slide out widget panel.
- Translation ready.
- Ajax pagination, left/right arrow key support.
- Supports Google custom font library.
- Optimized for iPad and iPhone.
– by The MOLITOR
BE Theme
Standout features:
- 12 pre-made skins, one click skin generator, awesome layout generator.
- 3 templates devoted to authors and eBooks.
- Custom font uploader
- Built-in translator, WPML support and RTL ready, WooCommerce ready.
- 200+ shortcodes and muffin builder items
– by Muffin Group
Bookshelf
Standout features:
- One-click demo import for bookstores.
- 4 ready made color schemes.
- Visual Composer, WooCommerce, PO Composer, Emailer, Tribe Events Calendar, and Revolution Slider included.
- Rating / Review mechanism.
- bbPress, BuddyPress and WPML compatible.
– by ThemeREX
Book Lovers
Standout features:
- 4 homepage layouts, intuitive visual interface helps to build many layouts.
- Advanced demo data install.
- Translation ready, WPML compatible.
- Many awesome hover effects.
- Compatible with WooCommerce, Revolution Slider, Essential Grid, Visual Composer and PO Composer.
- Custom widget sets and custom shortcodes.
– by Ancora Themes
Incubator
Standout features:
- Fast Loading one page theme.
- Smooth scrolling and parallax effects.
- 12 homepage templates, including one for eBooks.
- Coming soon page included.
– by Key-Design
Author Pro Theme
Standout features:
- Designed to help published authors build online library of books.
- Display book details in single and archive views as well as in any widget area.
- Pre-styled for WooCommerce, landing page included.
- 5 homepage widget areas that you can customize to fit your brand.
– by StudioPress
Book Store
Standout features:
- Book flip slider, featured author and best seller formats.
- Multiple portfolio layouts.
- Multilingual support using WPML.
- WooCommerce ready.
– by CrunchPress
Brown
Standout features:
- Customized version of Visual Composer included.
- Easily create and import custom font with fontello.com.
- WPML and translation ready.
- Unique book preview mode.
- All sections support dark and light backgrounds.
– by LeafThemes
Total
Standout features:
- Multipurpose frontend drag and drop theme with importable demo for eBooks.
- Visual Composer included with 40 exclusive custom page builder elements.
- Compatible with WooCommerce, WPML, Polylang, bbPress, The Events Calendar and more.
– by WPExplorer
Off The Shelf
Standout features:
- A marketing theme that’s designed to convert, includes a demo for eBooks.
- Assign each product a unique look.
- Create multiple pages and assign profiles to them.
- Flexible banner system.
- Video support, parallax backgrounds and animated buttons.
- Supports MailChimp, AWeber and WPML.
– by Shaping Rain
Booker
Standout features:
- Interactive flip-book component, build a working sample book.
- Scrolling iPad feature, Photoshop templates included for book covers.
- Supports digital downloads for selling eBooks.
- Sell physical paper or hard back books, or digital only.
- Review posts types for book reviews and ratings.
- Supports MailChimp for WordPress to build your readers list.
- Translation ready, multilingual ready, RTL support.
– by ThemeCanon
The7
Standout features:
- Automated installation of plugins and pre-made websites.
- Pre-built dummy website for book store.
- WooCommerce compatible, multilingual and translation ready.
- Advanced template system allows you to add landing pages.
– by Dream-Theme
Cosonix
Standout features:
- Visual Composer and Revolution Slider included.
- MailChimp and AWeber integration.
- Flat design, 2 menu options – sticky and static.
- WPML ready, Multilingual translation ready for left to right languages.
– by Fluent Themes
Novela
Standout features:
- Create preview pages for your book with stylish page flipping animation.
- Compatible with Easy Digital Downloads plugin.
- Clean & minimalist design.
- Advanced Custom Fields – add content by just filling the needed fields.
- Translation ready.
– by Subsolar
Writer
Standout features:
- Advanced demo options that can create an exact copy of preview in one click.
- Two variants of icon display: Fontella Icon set and Images Icons, Google web fonts.
- Interactive Ajax search mechanism.
- Customizable features for sharing the content you select.
- WooCommerce ready and WPML compatible.
– by Ancora Themes
Book
Standout features:
- Drag and drop page builder.
- Live Twitter feed.
- Newsletter integration, one page navigation, Font Awesome icons.
- MailChimp ready, WPML compatible.
– by Xpeed Studio
BEBO
Standout features:
- Landing page to show published and upcoming books.
- Coming Soon page for author included.
- Master Slider and Visual Composer included.
- 3 homepage styles.
– by BeauThemes
Bookish
Standout features:
- Responsive One Page Design, dark & white layouts.
- jQuery enhanced slider and effects.
- 4 well-made skins, Font Awesome icons.
- WooCommerce ready.
– by CrunchPress
Preface
Standout features:
- Custom book post type, including categories.
- WooCommerce compatible.
- Book launch landing page.
- Dynamic book filter to show categories.
- Full control over font sizes using customizer.
- Showcase your book from your 404 page.
– by MeanThemes
Book Store
Standout features:
- 5 different homepage layouts, one click demo installer included.
- Visual Composer and Revolution Slider included.
- WooCommerce Ready, Custom WooCommerce Products Carousel shortcodes.
- WPML compatible.
– by Acmee Themes
Publisher
Standout features:
- Multiple ways to sell eBooks – built-in selling plugin (digital downloads), setup an eJunkie cart or link to Amazon.
- Customizable registration page for visitors to fill out for your book launch website.
- Allow visitors to comment and review on books and moderate comments.
- Setup promotions and coupons, manage orders and reports.
- Category wise product slider.
- Shortcodes to style text, add boxes, callouts and more.
– by Templatic
Bookie
Standout features:
- ECommerce theme for publishers and book stores.
- Visual Composer and Visual Composer add-ons included, WooCommerce ready.
- Translation ready, Codestyling Localization plugin compatible.
- Theme Customizer and child theme ready.
– by Tokopress
Book Store
Standout features:
- 2 homepage variations with multiple pages.
- Equipped with dozens of visual short codes to insert any button, accordions, countdown, dropcaps, etc to your site.
- Visual Composer included and WooCommerce integrated.
- Built-in pagination, localization ready.
-by finelayers
In Short
Here’s a quick list of the features to keep in mind when shopping for the ideal theme to promote and sell your book/books:
- Coming soon page/landing page to promote a book launch.
- Review section to feature readers’ comments.
- Call to action buttons to help with conversions.
- Built-in payment gateway to process secure payments.
- Filters to allow visitors to select books by genre, author, price, etc (particularly for an eBook store).
- Clean typography and crisp illustrations.
- Neat layouts for posts and pages (premade layouts, page builders, etc).
- Attractive fonts and icons sets.
- Sections to display chapters, highlights or a summary of the book.
Using any of the above? Know of any other great themes for selling books online?
WP copywriter by night, data analyst by day 🙂