Shopify or Wix For Authors Website?
Every budding author/writer needs a website. A place where readers can get to know more about you and your products and services. This is no longer a "nice-have" but rather an absolute necessity. So unless you are a published well-known author, you will be correctly inclined to save your hard earned cash and create one yourself. A couple of years ago, this was a very bad idea. Your most likely route was to hire a professional website developer with a cost starting point of $1000 north for a basic website. However, thanks to technological advancement, you can easily do this yourself and get your website up and running with just a few hours work. I say "work", in truth it's more like "plug and play" with the design and different ready to use themes. The minimum cost you will be looking at is approximately $14 for the domain name and then a $29 recurring monthly charge (basic store plan - more than good enough). Doing it yourself is a no-brainer and it's a lot easier than you think, thanks to Shopify and Wix.
Both of these companies are excellent, so the choice can be a hard if you haven't used them in the past. Without boring you guys about the technical differences between each of these services, which for author's don't make much of a difference anyhow, let's going to cut straight to the point:
If you are planning on offering multiple products and services on your Authors website, Shopify is definitely the preferred choice. It will offer your potential customers a better storefront experience. Its free ready-to-use customizable themes are excellent in creating a visually appealing multi product store.
For a basic author website with possibly just one or two products, then the Wix themes and services will be the way to go. Its user friendly platform and excellent customer support will ensure that you get your goals done fast.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Both platform are great and you can't go wrong with either. My suggestion is that if you are unsure about how many products you will be offering at this stage, go with Shopify. It will give you the option of expanding into a proper storefront in the future. Always better to keep your options open.
I hope that you find some of these tips useful and more importantly happy writing and reading, because that's what we do.