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29 Best WordPress Themes for Authors (2019)

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes for authors?

As an author, you want to offer a great reading experience for users while allowing them to connect with you and purchase your books.

In this article, we will show you some of the best WordPress themes for authors that you can use to build your website.

Building a WordPress Site for Authors

WordPress is the most popular website builder among authors and writers. It allows you the flexibility and freedom to build your website and grow your author profile to connect with readers.

Before you start, you need to make sure that you are using the right type of WordPress. There are two types of WordPress websites including WordPress.com and WordPress.org. You can read our guide on WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for more details.

You’ll need WordPress.org for your website. A self-hosted WordPress.org site gives you the freedom to use all WordPress features.

Next, you will need a domain name (your website’s name) and WordPress hosting (where your website files will be stored).

We recommend using Bluehost. It is one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an official WordPress hosting partner.

They’re offering WPBeginner readers 65% OFF on web hosting and a free domain to start your website.

Once you have signed up for hosting, you are now ready to install WordPress. Follow the instructions in our complete step by step guide on how to start a WordPress blog and you will be up and running in no time.

After installing WordPress, it’s time to choose a WordPress theme. Select a theme from our expert pick below.

Need help installing the theme? See our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress theme.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress themes for authors. This list contains both paid and free themes.

1. Astra

Astra is a multipurpose WordPress theme that can be used to create an author’s website. It has the perfect layout for authors which comes with a separate blog page to connect with readers. The theme comes with a responsive design and crisp typography to help your website stand out.

It supports WooCommerce for adding an online store, multiple theme layouts, and social sharing icons. Astra theme has custom widgets, homepage sections, image gallery, about me section, and more.

What makes Astra really stand out is the speed and performance of the website.

2. Divi

Divi is a WordPress theme and drag & drop page builder that comes with dozens of pre-built templates. Their author layout is perfect for creating an a website to showcase your book and connect with your audience.

You can import the Divi author layout with just a few clicks and have a ready-made website that’s mobile responsive and has all the features like gallery, shop, landing pages, social buttons, and more.

What makes Divi really stand out is the drag & drop feature that lets you build any kind of custom layout without writing any code.

3. Author Pro

Author Pro is a WordPress theme designed specifically for libraries, authors, and ebook stores. It has an intuitive and flat design that makes your library or bookshelf presentable to the audience.

The theme is built on top of the Genesis framework which is known for high coding standards and performance. We built our WPBeginner website template on top of the Genesis framework as well.

It allows you to display the best selling books on the homepage. You can create a custom navigation menu to add landing pages, categories, and tags for the ease of your users. Author Pro is a fully responsive theme and optimized for SEO.

StudioPress is now part of WP Engine, the most popular managed WordPress hosting company. You can get this theme and all 35+ other StudioPress themes if you sign up for WP Engine hosting to build your website.

Bonus: WPBeginner users also get additional 20% off. Get started with WP Engine.

4. OceanWP

OceanWP is a powerful free WordPress theme with multiple ready-made websites. It has a template for authors, writers, and booksellers. The template can be installed in 1-click and needs no coding skills. OceanWP offers beautiful and flexible layout design with eCommerce support to sell your books.

It features some of the amazing web extensions like full screen view, stick anything, Instagram feed, login popup, and more for your website. It’s translation ready and can be used to create a multilingual website.

5. Ultra

Ultra is a modern and powerful WordPress theme to sell your books online. It has a full-width header area on the homepage to add a featured image or display your books in an image slider. It allows you to add a call to action button with your book photos for the users to purchase directly from the homepage.

This theme covers all you need as an author including a testimonial section, so the readers can leave reviews and rate your books. You can also add an author section to share your story professionally.

6. Presence

Presence is designed to help you quickly create your online presence. It works perfectly for bloggers and authors.

It includes 10 demo websites that you can easily import and then just replace the content with your own to build your website.

Presence is 100% mobile responsive, and it comes with many powerful features such as photo gallery, eCommerce support, sliders, and more.

7. Hello Pro

Hello Pro is a WordPress blogging and portfolio theme for authors. Created by the folks at StudioPress, it comes with a widgetized homepage with a number of widget areas and has multiple templates for your blog, homepage, archive, and landing pages.

It’s designed to beautifully showcase your content and uses large images with elegant typography to make your content more enjoyable. It has a custom gallery post format with lightbox display of your photos. This theme is highly optimized for speed and performance. It has a quick and straightforward setup.

8. Float

Float is an elegant WordPress theme for authors, writers, and bloggers. It comes with multiple pre-designed demos to quickly launch the website and start adding your content. The homepage has a portfolio section to showcase your books in the masonry style. It has parallax scrolling to improve the user experience on your website.

With the design options, you can use the header layouts, navigation menu styles, transparent header option, and layout design settings to customize the theme. Float has eCommerce support with the integration of WooCommerce and requires no additional settings to create an online store.

9. True North

True North is an elegant WordPress theme with beautiful design. It uses a grid layout on the homepage with a beautiful display of images. It has multiple layout choices and a built-in portfolio section to showcase your work.

It also supports custom background, custom header, and has several custom widgets for social media and content discovery features.

10. Writee

Writee is a free WordPress theme designed for authors, writers, and bloggers. Inside you will find a full-width boxed slider allowing you to showcase your most important content at the top. It pays special attention to readability with beautiful typography and a spacious layout.

It has a navigation menu and a social links menu at the top. It also adds social sharing icons below each article and an excerpt so that your users can easily share content.

11. Magazine

Magazine is a stylish WordPress theme with a magazine-style layout for authors and writers. It comes with over 40 theme designs and supports the Themify drag and drop builder to create your pages. The other features include a slide menu, mega menus, widgetized areas, social share buttons, related posts, footer menu, and amazing typography. It’s a full package theme to start a blog or make a website of your choice.

12. Binder Pro

Binder Pro is a well-crafted WordPress theme designed for publishing. It’s perfect for content rich websites like magazines and blogs. Inside it, you will find 7 ready-made websites that can be installed with 1-click and then you can easily replace content with your own.

It uses modules and allows you to drag and drop them to build your own layouts as well. It has multiple sidebars, header styles, font icons, unlimited custom sidebars, and full WooCommerce support.

13. The Daily Dish Pro

Daily Dish is a WordPress theme for authors and bloggers with a professional design. It’s built on top of the powerful Genesis theme framework. The most notable features of the theme are crisp typography and beautiful display of images.

It has a widgetized homepage layout which is quick and easy to set up. Inside you will also find multiple page templates, custom header, and WooCommerce support.

14. Elegant

Elegant is a WordPress blog and portfolio theme. It features a beautiful layout with the logo and navigation menu on top with a social menu. It has multiple layout options including a grid layout.

It has a built-in portfolio content type, several custom widgets, multiple color schemes, and easy to use theme options panel. It ships with a drag and drop page builder and WooCommerce support.

15. Suarez

Suarez is a stunningly beautiful WordPress blog theme for authors. It features a unique homepage style which is designed to showcase your content prominently using images and text.

It includes beautiful animations, multiple page layouts, and custom content discovery widgets. It also has hero homepage slider for your homepage and comes with a separate slider plugin to use anywhere on your website.

16. Brittany

Brittany is a stylish WordPress blog theme with a beautiful design. The homepage features an intro section at the top followed by your most important content.

It has several layout options and templates for different pages. You will also get several custom widgets for easy social media integration and content discovery features.

17. TheStyle

TheStyle is a modern WordPress theme for authors to showcase their books in a unique style. It has an eye-catching modern and crisp design to get the attention of your audience. The visual experience improves your website traffic and helps in the SEO.

It comes with 5 custom colors, page templates, and theme options panel to for easy customization. TheStyle has shortcodes support to add the content anywhere on your website.

18. Metro Pro

Metro Pro is a powerful WordPress theme built on top of the Genesis theme framework. It includes an easy to setup homepage with multiple sections to share your featured stories beautifully.

It also has built-in social media integration, custom menus, custom widgets, and a theme options panel. With rock solid code, Metro Pro is highly optimized for performance and speed.

19. Landing

If you’re looking for a WordPress theme to sell your ebooks, then Landing is a perfect choice. It has many built-in templates designed specifically to help authors, writers, and bloggers to create a website. Landing theme has flexible header options to give a professional first impression to users.

Other features include portfolio post type to create your book shelf, event post type to host your book launching events, and WooCommerce support to sell your books online.

20. Montblanc

Montblanc is a very powerful and highly customizable WordPress theme perfect for authors. It comes with flexible layout choices, multiple homepage styles, custom widgets, page templates, etc.

It can be used for a multi-author magazine website or a single page author profile. It also includes portfolio, photo galleries, and beautiful sliders. It is WooCommerce ready and comes with a powerful page builder plugin.

21. Libretto

Libretto is a free WordPress blog theme with a distraction free layout which makes it an excellent choice for a blog or author’s website. It has a beautiful color scheme with gorgeous typography.

Designed in the traditional one-column blog layout with a navigation menu at the top. It supports custom header and background, social links menu, and footer widget area.

22. Author

Author is a free WordPress theme for authors and publishers. It focuses on improved accessibility with a beautiful design. It loads fast and the code is optimized to improve the performance of your WordPress site.

It uses a simple two-column layout with a sidebar and navigation menu to the right. It’s easy to set up and can be customized using live theme customizer.

23. Relive

Relive is a modern WordPress theme for authors and storytellers. It’s designed to create an immersive experience with the help of audio, video, images, and text.

Ideal for long-form content with beautiful scrolling effects, Relive also comes with a page builder and tons of customization options. It’s easy to set up and ships with 1-click demo content installer.

24. Indigo

Indigo is a gorgeous multipurpose WordPress theme. It comes with easy to use modules that you can just drag and drop to build your homepage layout. It also includes 14 ready-made websites that you can install and then just replace the content with your own. These websites include a blog, magazine, and stories theme that would work perfectly for any blog or author website.

25. Modules

Modules is a beautifully designed WordPress theme perfect for authors and bloggers. It uses a modular approach to design and comes with several ready to use modules that you can drag and drop to build your layouts.

It also includes multiple demo websites that you can install and use as a starting point for your website. Inside the theme, you will find several custom widgets, unlimited sidebars, header styles, video background support, Google Fonts, and WooCommerce support.

26. Extra

Extra is a perfect theme for bloggers and online publications. It is built on top of the Divi page builder by Elegant Themes, so you can easily customize the layout as needed.

Extra gives you a lot of flexibility to create different categories, homepages, and story-driven blog posts.

Like all Elegant Theme designs, Extra is 100% mobile responsive and comes with all the powerful features that you can expect such as galleries, social sharing, sliders, and more.

Flexible is a simple and sleek WordPress theme for authors, writers, and portfolio websites. It’s bundled with powerful font customizer to select the different font variations and font colors. It has an image gallery that loads your photos smoothly. You can display your featured books and stories in the portfolio gallery.

27. Nozama

Nozama is a WooCommerce-based theme that makes it easier for you to sell your books online. Like any other eCommerce theme, it has products page layout and homepage section to display your books professionally. It has a customizable storefront with multiple settings for product layouts, element visibility, and product filters.

This theme supports the Elementor builder to create pages and custom layouts without effecting the original layout. It has flexible customization features to make a website that you need.

28. Unik

Unik is a multipurpose theme for WordPress websites. Authors can use it to display their books beautifully. It comes with a sticky menu, lazy loading images, quick preview portfolio, animations, parallax scrolling, and more.

It features over 500 font icons and stunning typography. With Visual Composer, you can easily create pages on your website. Unik allows you to create a multilingual website with WPML.

29. Boss Pro

Boss Pro is a minimalist WordPress theme designed for authors to connect with their readers. It features stunning typography, full-width background, and sharp colors to catch the eyes.

It’s built on top of the Genesis theme framework which gives it a solid foundation. Boss Pro supports WooCommerce to sell your books online. It can be easily customized to add content, images, and more on your website. You can use the theme options panel to make changes with an ease.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress theme for authors and writers. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide and the list of must have WordPress plugins to grow your website.

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