Whether you’re a casual blogger who’s just getting started, or a seasoned novelist looking to reach a wider audience, you’ll want to show off your latest works. This means having a professional website that will keep people reading for hours.
Finding the perfect theme will put you on track to building a site that shows off your writing in the best possible light. The right one will put the focus on your words, but still let your unique personality come through. Fortunately, there are plenty of excellent options that will help both you and your work shine.
As a writer, you’ll have a few special considerations in mind while hunting for the perfect theme. For example, a blog that is stylish without being distracting is an absolute must. Beautiful typography will help to make your words even more expressive. And of course, integration with WooCommerce can get your next book onto the bestseller list.
In this roundup, we’ll look at nine of the best WordPress themes for writers, authors, journalists, bloggers, and those in similar professions. We’ll take a close look at what makes each of these themes especially well-suited for writers. Let’s get started!
Foreal is a clean, black and white theme with a striking appearance. Its light and dark options both set off your words nicely. What’s more, Foreal is an excellent choice if you want to include a lot of visuals along with your text.
One area where Foreal shines is its About pages. For those who want to learn more about who you are, you can introduce yourself with one of three pre-built layouts. You can keep the page very simple, or include lots of images and even a media slider.
Foreal also includes a streamlined approach to blogging. The one-page format will load additional content as your reader scrolls down, ensuring that their experience won’t be interrupted. You can further customize your blog to be full-width, or include a sidebar on either the left or right side of the page. There are also more traditional column layouts if you prefer.
Price: A license for Foreal starts at $59.
Whether you’ve just finished your first novel or you have a bookshelf’s worth of work under your belt, Odrin has something for you. This theme is designed to sell books. Each feature is optimized to ensure that you’ll need a second printing in no time.
Odrin’s ‘Book Preview’ option includes beautiful typography and a page flip animation. It’s a wonderful way to enhance your readers’ experience. You can set up your website as a landing page with a book preview and a buy button, or create a shop where fans can purchase all of your work.
Speaking of your fans, Odrin’s ‘Coming Soon Book Timer’ will keep them counting the days to your next novel release. Once your book is out, the Events page displays all of your upcoming signings, readings, and workshops. You can even add a social media widget, so your readers can connect with you while they’re waiting for your next event.
Price: A license for Odrin starts at $64.
Auteur’s versatility makes it an exceptional choice for anyone from professional bloggers to publishers. This graceful theme comes with many customization options, without sacrificing ease of use. Whatever you plan to do with it, Auteur has a lot to be excited about.
To get you started, Auteur boasts ten different layouts. Seven of these are single page, and the others are archive style blogs. If you choose the latter, you can display your past posts in a list or grid layout. Auteur also offers multiple options for post formats, including a standard design as well as videos and quotes.
Despite the abundance of options, Auteur is simple to install and customize. The theme ships with four demos that you can import with a single click. From there, the included WPBakery Page Builder is an intuitive way to make changes to your selected demo, or even build content completely from scratch.
Price: A license for Auteur starts at $60.
If you enjoy integrating visuals and text, you might want to have a look at Hooray. This modern, visually-exciting theme expertly displays all of your content. You can confidently add your visuals, without worrying that they will overpower your words.
Hooray’s menu features help it stand out from the crowd. The ‘mega menu’ gives you plenty of room to include images alongside your various links. You can also set icons for each of the items in your main menu. The included Font Awesome icon set will give you plenty of options to choose from.
As for blog features, Hooray offers several that we think your users will appreciate. For instance, this theme makes it easy to provide an estimated reading time on each of your posts. You can also display a reading progress bar, to show readers how far along they are in your article.
Price: A license for Hooray starts at $37.
Next up, The Thinker is a simpler option for an author website. This theme places the spotlight firmly on your written content, while still providing plenty of ways to play with images. Overall, it’s a balanced theme that makes reading a pleasure.
To help keep your writer website interesting, The Thinker comes with a thorough selection of page templates. You’ll find layouts from full-width to grid, and a few options in between. The Thinker also makes use of WordPress’ post formats feature to give you added flexibility.
A full version of the Soliloquy slider ships with The Thinker. You can use this feature in multiple places on your site, including within widgets. It’s user friendly and easy to set up, so you can add your images quickly and get back to writing. Like the rest of the theme, the slider is highly responsive and should look appealing on any screen.
Price: A license for The Thinker starts at $59.
The Writers and Journalists Blog theme is a practical yet trendy way to show off your work. If your primary drive behind creating a website is getting hired, this option has a lot of features to help you with that goal.
Writers and Journalists Blog places a strong emphasis on functionality. This theme is SEO optimized, and is compatible with Yoast SEO. You can also make it easy for potential clients to reach you with the included Contact Form 7 plugin. If you have products or services you’d like to sell directly from your website, this theme also integrates well with WooCommerce.
With so many features, Writers and Journalists Blog may be a bit trickier to set up than some of the other options on our list. However, don’t let that put you off. There’s plenty of excellent documentation to help you get up and running. If you encounter any issues you can’t resolve, there’s also a top-notch customer service team available.
Price: A license for the Writers and Journalists Blog theme starts at $59.
For a theme with a soft vintage look, Wild Book is the way to go. This theme is content-focused, despite its distinctive style. That makes it a perfect author theme if you want to create a strong visual statement.
Wild Book’s split-page layout stands out, without being flashy. The menu is vertical and can be displayed on the left or right side of the screen. The sidebar size is also customizable, taking up anywhere from 30 percent to 50 percent of the layout. Of course, you can opt for a full-width layout if you prefer.
If translation is important to you, Wild Book is also a top pick. It’s translated into 24 languages, includes Right to Left (RTL) support, and is compatible with the WPML plugin. If your audience is multilingual, they’ll appreciate being able to read your work in their preferred languages.
Price: A license for Wild Book starts at $39.
Typology is a text-based theme, making it an ideal choice for an author’s website. This option is about as content focused as it gets. If you just want to write, the theme has almost everything you need.
For example, Typology enables you to create rich, dynamic content without spending time sourcing images. You’re able to choose the fonts and sizes for all of your text and headings. Those decisions may not be easy, since the included typography is gorgeous.
Even if you choose not to use images at all, this theme offers plenty of customization options. The home page includes several distinct sections that you can manipulate. You’ll also have multiple post layouts to choose from, making it simple to pick the one that best highlights your work.
Price: A license for Typology starts at $59.
For our last pick, Ariel Pro is a fresh, versatile theme with an uncluttered aesthetic that manages to offers a lot of features too. Ariel Pro is worth a look if you’ve been dreaming of a simple website with a contemporary style.
The features you’ll get with Ariel Pro make it a powerful theme for blogging of all types. The built-in author boxes gives you a way to add bios to each post, along with links to your social media profiles. You’ll also be able to feature any guest writers you may invite to contribute to your site.
In addition, you can make use of the quote post format to add some variety to your blog. This feature enables you to share a quote that’s not a part of a larger article. It’s a fun technique you can use to introduce readers to some of your favorite authors.
Social sharing is an effective way to get more eyes on your writing, and Ariel Pro ships with features designed to make that easy. Jetpack powers the theme’s social sharing options.
Social icons are styled to match the theme, and you can decide where they’ll appear. Ariel Pro also integrates with WordPress’ Instagram widget, to give fans a glimpse into your life behind the scenes.
Price: There’s a one-time setup fee of $39, with one month of free support included.
Conclusion
A professional yet elegant website is the best way to package your words and present them to the world. However, getting started is hard with so many themes to choose from. Keeping your desired features in mind as you browse should help you zero in on the option that will best showcase your writing talent.
We’ve narrowed down the sea of choices to a few of our favorite WordPress themes for writers. While they’re all excellent picks, the only way to find the one that’s right for you is to try them out. If you want your site to have a contemporary look, for instance, Writers and Journalists Blog is a theme you’ll want to explore. If you’d prefer to focus on your writing and avoid images, Typology can get the job done.
What theme features are you looking for as a writer? Let us know in the comments section below!
