I’ve been messing around with the website headers and how the site looks on WordPress. This is a snippet of its current new look.
It’s temporary because I will hopefully have some romance covers to share soon. I love all shades of purple, so this appealed to me and the sunshine reminds me of the happiness of spring.
What I’m finding really difficult is getting a look that says I’m a writer of both fantasy and romance. Maybe I need to split the header into two and showcase both sides of my writing. It could end up looking messy, so I will do some experiments and maybe share the results here to get feedback.
The next few months will be all about defining my author brand ahead of the launch of The Mermaid Hotel Series.
Whilst experimenting on Canva with graphics, I will need to ask myself: should I come away from my fantasy books completely for now and rebrand as a romance author? Is it viable to do both on the same website? Should I have two websites dedicated to each genre? These are hard questions, and I’d love to know what other authors have done.
Also, what other softwares are out? I’ve dabbled with the free versions of Canva and Book Brush. Is it worth the monthly subscription?
I thought it would be fun to look back on the banners my website has used over the years, starting at the beginning. When I first started out, I used my own pictures to make banners. These were a couple I played with.
When I started publishing books, they took centre stage for a while.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the evolution of my website. It’s been fun looking back, especially seeing all the pictures I’ve used and being reminded of the posts they relate to. I hope to do a post looking back at those favourite images soon.
Until next time…
Suzanne Rogerson Author 
I can imagine it’s difficult with branding when you write multiple genres.
I would like to see the split banner
Also, you could make the banner mainly your name/logo and maybe a tag line text about being a multi-genre author.
And then have the books, smaller, in a line at the bottom, in their specific clusters.
As to Canva, I have a paid subscription. Personally, I have considered going back to the Free version. I had a paid subscription for the extra images, more fonts and being able to add a team member (easier for Rachel and I do create imagery for the podcast). I also use it for my business so I use Canva A LOT
However, now they have AI images, which I don’t want to use (worried I might accidantally pick one). Also, you can get free images from Pexels, Pixabay and Unsplash and then upload them into Canva if you want more imagery.
You can do a lot with the free version, so if you aren’t using it constantly, it might not be worth paying.
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Thanks Ari, they are some great suggestions and it sounds like I have plenty of options with image creation without needing to buy a subscription.
I’m looking forward to playing around some more and maybe coming up with a logo for my author brand. That hadn’t occurred to me before!.
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