Official Websites for Books

[Neonriser]

Someone suggested that I should make a website for a children's book we've been planning to publish (I did the illustrations), and I've in the search for official websites for books (e.g. Scholastic). Do you know any good ones?

[manrevisited]

I don't think I know of any websites for children's books, specifically, especially of the scale of effort you're probably asking about. FunBrain at one point in time had a lot of stuff for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, since they were published there as a webcomic first, but I think it's more common for authors to have websites that have pages about their various books. Dan Pilkey has a nice page for each Captain Underpants book with the cover, the blurb, a preview button for the first chapter, and a couple of little coloring book pages. That feels very doable to me.

But this post did remind me of my very favorite promotional material for any book ever: the interactive browser game (created by Failbetter Games) that preceded the publishing of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. The original link is dead now, and probably a lot of the custom formatting along with it, but it does look like they're still hosting a version of it on the interactive story-game-maker they came out with later on down the line. It's just such a fun world, and concept, and the visuals combined with the mysterious air of the Night Circus were pretty incredible.

I do feel like that sort of thing used to be more common for book and movie releases alike, in the old web days, with fun little extras and character blogs and even flash games, but I'm having a hard time remembering any of them now. Oh! Other than Warrior Cats! (Not sure what age you've written the book for, but everybody loves a personality quiz. ;) )

[starbreaker]

Someone suggested that I should make a website for a children's book we've been planning to publish (I did the illustrations), and I've in the search for official websites for books (e.g. Scholastic). Do you know any good ones?

Wait, isn't Scholastic a publisher? It makes sense that a publisher would have a website, with pages for authors and their books.

[_ghost_]

This is a really old thread, but you typically wouldn't have a website for an individual book. It's more common for the author to have a website where they list their basic information (think the "About the Author" section in the back of a book), all of their books (and where to buy them), and their contact information. You might also include reviews of your books or any awards you might have for writing.

There are a few exceptions where there's a website for a series as a whole, but as far as I'm aware, that's more common with long-running children's series; there are a ton of children's series that are ghostwritten or written by a group of authors, so it makes more sense to put everything on one website instead of the authors' sites individually, especially if they're ghostwriters using the same name and no one is supposed to know who the ghostwriters are.

[candycanearter07]

There is this one book i had as a kid called "cheesy mac" or something like that where the main character advertised their website like every 5 pages. i found it annoying but thats the only example i can think of