Hunting for the Right Book
Overview
This site is dedicated to showcasing books by indie authors since typical book sites are usually dominated by big publishers with big marketing budgets. With the target audience being readers, the aim of the site is to make it easy for visitors to find the books that interest them by authors that may be new to them.
Challenge
With hundreds of books in the database, it was easy to get lost in endless lists of books. The point of the site wasn’t to go straight to the book you knew, but to discover books that matched your tastes. When a default WordPress installation and its presentation methodologies aren’t enough, how is this goal to be achieved?Process & Insights
WordPress’s default search function is not very robust, resulting in disappointing results. It needs to be conducive to the way a reader thinks. They want to be able to search for tropes and subject matters that appeal to them, whether it be found family, dragons, or spicy content. Typical book sites don’t have the ability to pinpoint these things, so this site would stand out if it could. If there isn’t a means to browse books outside of the usual genre categories you find on Amazon, then why bother? Readers would just use Amazon.Solution
There are custom post type plugins that allow for searchable taxonomies to be added, so I found one that was flexible and accommodated whatever custom fields were needed. A search plugin that enabled the filtering of search results allowed readers to zero in on exactly what they desired. If a reader wanted to search for books featuring post-apocolyptic vampires (technically two separate subjects), they could. A searchable “spice level” field was added to the database, allowing each book to be rated on its sexual content, since many romance readers have particular preferences. Finally, PHP files were edited as part of a child theme in order to accommodate the desired layout and functionality. Couple these features with an easy-to-navigate UI, and you have a site that helps readers to find new books to love with ease and also helps indie authors get discovered.Results
“Such a valuable resource.” — Henry Scott, Author of the Redemption seriesResponse has been tremendous, with hundreds of authors submitting their books to the site, resulting in a rich database of close to a thousand books. Readers enjoy being able to find niche books and being able to see what it’s about at a glance.