Dear LGBT Authors, Fix Your Blog!

Buckle up ladies and gentlemen. Sadly this post isn’t a book review or a post about my latest book cover design. Nope, this is about WordPress for authors.

So, I was stalking my favorite author yesterday… before you ask, I’m sure she doesn’t mind. My love for her reduced slightly on clicking on her author website for once, rather than her Amazon author page or social media account. Yup, that sounded creepy AF.

The point is while I would forever love her books, her website was trying to stand in the way of my love. So I’ve taken it upon myself to help her as well as other LGBT authors with zero WordPress skill and even lesser money to spend.

PS: This only works on a self-hosted WordPress site.

First, let’s start with themes.

Most authors prefer something simple rather than a magazine style layout like mine, also, most premium themes are surprisingly not free! however, I have compiled a list of links to free premium themes.

PS: The company responsible for the theme are not paying me for this, I very much doubt they know I exist.

Customizr: You need this stat! its simple to use, it comes with a top social media menu bar that you can link to ALL your social media profiles. It’s Woocommerce compatible, it’s… ITS AMAZING!
AcessPress: I use one of their themes. They have a lot of free premium themes ranging from simplistic to complicated magazine style. Also, their customer support is awesome, considering the fact that I’m using the free version of their themes and yet I’m constantly bugging them.

There are others but I highly recommend these two because I’ve used them. And yes before you as they both come with sliders.

Next, Email marketing

Mailchimp is awesome, the fact that you get your first two thousand subscribers free is amazing, but you know what? there’s no automated messaging for new subscribers, the fact that I need to create a template before adding it to a campaign pisses me off, maybe I’m missing something but here’s an alternative.

Mailpoet: I use this on my blog so I can recommend it. The subscription bar on the right is it’s widget. it also adds an option for commenters to subscribers to my blog, as well as gives you the option to create lists or add WordPress users/subscribers. Here’s a list of its features.


Drag & drop newsletter editor
Send your latest posts automatically
Autoresponders, i.e. “Send email 3 days after someone subscribes”
Send emails to your WordPress users
Start collecting subscribers in 2-clicks with our sign up widget
Single or double opt-in, your choice
Import subscribers in 2 steps
Get stats for your newsletter: opens, clicks, unsubscribes
Drag and drop subscription form designer
Your newsletters look the same in Gmail, iPhone, Android, Outlook, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.
Send with your web host, Gmail, any SMTP, like SendGrid, Amazon SES Mandrill, etc…
Segment your lists based on unopened, opened and clicked
Selection of over 70 themes. Photoshop files included
Sending newsletters in the free version is limited to 2000 subscribers

That’s all for today, I’ll continue this next week, feel free to comment on features you’d like on your Author website and I can give you some recommendations… After I’ve tried it out of course.

So, dear LGBT book authors you really have no reason to have a crappy author website. For LGBT authors with a wordpress.com blog, I’ll be making a similar blog post although with the limitations of wordpress.com blogs design and feature would depend on the theme. Luckily wordpress.com has several nice themes, you just have to look for it and keep trying them until you find the one that clicks.

For LGBT authors with a wordpress.com blog, I’ll be making a similar blog post although with the limitations of wordpress.com blogs design and feature would depend on the theme. Luckily wordpress.com has several nice themes, you just have to look for it and keep trying them until you find the one that clicks.

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