Are you an author, poet, or just a bookseller trying to boost your sales by creating an online bookstore? If yes, take a look at these free WordPress themes for a perfect e-commerce site.
Today, having a website for your business is significant.
So, why not start with a free theme?
Let’s be honest. When it comes to a free WordPress theme, we’re all kind of skeptical about its quality at first.
But not all free themes compromise on quality. Some free WordPress themes provide great functionality, like WooCommerce compatibility, good design, and portfolio support.
Now, let’s talk more about such free themes that cater to authors and booksellers right away.
Table of Contents
What to Look for in Free WordPress Themes for Selling Books?
When selecting a WordPress theme for a sports website, there are several important criteria to consider to ensure the theme meets your needs effectively. Here’s a list of key criteria:
1. Responsive Design
A responsive design is non-negotiable. It ensures your website adapts to various devices, which is crucial for reaching a broader audience.
2. WooCommerce Compatible
For seamless online sales, choose themes that integrate with WooCommerce, transforming your site into a dynamic e-commerce platform.
3. High-Quality Images and Descriptions
Elevate product appeal with high-resolution images of book covers and comprehensive descriptions. You can include author information, publication details, genre, and a synopsis.
4. Search Functionality
Streamline book discovery using a robust search feature with filters (by genre, author, price, etc.) to help users find specific books easily.
5. Secure Shopping Cart and Checkout Process
Facilitate a secure, straightforward shopping cart and checkout process. It includes multiple payment options (credit/debit cards, PayPal, etc.) and indicates shipping costs and delivery times.
6. Newsletter Sign-Up
Engage and retain customers by encouraging customers to sign up for newsletters to receive updates on new releases, special offers, and events.
7. Built-In SEO
Themes with built-in SEO features help attract more traffic and boost sales by improving your site’s visibility on search engines.
8. Multiple Call-To-Action Options
Effective Call-To-Action (CTA) buttons are vital for converting visitors into buyers enhancing user engagement and sales.
9. Customization Features
Themes offering customization allow you to tailor the site to your brand, ensuring a unique and memorable user experience.
10. Plugin Support
Extend your website’s functionality or add a completely new function to your website with themes that support a wide range of plugins.
11. Support Team
A dedicated support team is invaluable for resolving technical issues and ensuring your site runs smoothly.
Top Free WordPress Themes for Selling Books
Each of these themes has been selected for its unique features and suitability for online bookstores:
1. Book Landing Page
If you’re an aspiring author, Book Landing Page should undoubtedly be your go-to WordPress theme. This beautiful theme is not only a great online portfolio but also a smart way to promote your book.
This theme offers a high-converting landing page ideal for authors and is optimized for both speed and SEO.
Aside from SEO and speed optimization, this theme is also WooCommerce compatible. With this feature, you can set up a complete marketplace within your website. You can sell books and other products and earn money online.
Also, this theme boasts another important feature: Calls to Action (CTAs). You can use strategic CTAs to encourage your visitors to land on a specific page or product you want. It boosts engagement and turns visitors into customers.
As a whole, this theme is like an online portfolio and a savvy book promoter rolled into one.
- SEO-optimization
- Optimized for fast performance
- WooCommerce compatibility
- Strategically placed CTAs
- Free one-click demo import
- Gutenberg compatible
2. Digital Download
Digital Download is a versatile theme that supports digital product sales, including e-books and multimedia content.
This theme is compatible with the Easy Digital Download plugin. With this feature, you can create an online store within your website. You can easily sell digital products like eBooks through your website.
Also, this theme includes six sections on the homepage. Among these sections, one particular section called the Download Section increases your website’s functionality. Through this section, you can display up to nine of your recent products along with the link to these products. It encourages our visitors’ engagement and boosts sales.
- Fully responsive/mobile-friendly design
- Easy Digital Downloads compatible
- Free one-click demo content import
- Attractive banner section
- Call to action section
- Speed optimized
- SEO optimized
- Schema.org integration
3. Rishi Theme
Known for its stunning shop layouts and compatibility with WooCommerce, this theme is perfect for a stylish online bookstore.
Rishi Theme stands out with its lightning-fast performance. As a result, you can create a website that loads in under 500 ms and boasts a Zero Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) score for top-notch stability.
Additionally, you can easily craft any header and footer style using its intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Moreover, effortlessly add your copyright text, page links, buttons, logos, and social sharing icons.
Most importantly, you can get your site up and running quickly with Rishi’s library of ready-to-import starter templates, designed for elegance and ease of use.
The following is the starter template designed specially for selling books:
1. Author
This starter template is designed for independent writers, entrepreneurs, teachers, students, and book lovers. It offers a versatile and engaging platform to showcase their work and passion.
This starter template boasts multi-device readability. Hence, you can ensure your content is accessible across various platforms, from print to eBook apps. You can significantly expand your audience by catering to their preferred reading devices.
Key Features
- Lightning Fast Performance
- Zero CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
- Loads in Less Than 500ms
- Integration with Favorite Plugins
- Library of Pre-built Starter Templates
- Colors & Typography Customization
4. The Minimal
The Minimal is a content-focused theme that offers heavy customization, ideal for blogs and book sales.
Although it has a minimalist design, it offers heavy customization options. The Minimal theme can auto-adjust various screen sizes, from desktops to phones.
The Minimal” theme’s advanced slider/carousel feature prominently displays your key content, engaging readers and drawing attention to your most important posts and articles.
With its social media integration, “The Minimal” theme effortlessly connects your content to a wider audience, enhancing engagement and sharing across various social platforms.
- Responsive design
- Advance slider/carousel
- Beautiful typography
- SEO optimized
- Fast loading
- Social media integration
- Clean code
- Translation ready
5. Ziri
Designed to create a striking online presence, Ziri is ideal for booksellers who demand rapid website performance and SEO optimization.
Ziri stands out in WordPress themes with its core web vitals optimization, ensuring your book-selling site loads quickly.
A notable feature is its perfect Google PageSpeed Score of 100, translating to exceptionally fast loading times across various browsers and enhancing the overall user experience.
Ziri’s array of over 20 ready-to-use block designs and five preset page templates make it particularly suitable for booksellers. These customizable elements allow you to craft a website that perfectly aligns with your bookstore’s branding and identity.
- Core web vitals optimized
- Mobile-friendly design
- 20 predefined block patterns
- Predefined page templates
- Color customization options
- Multiple block pattern variations
- SEO optimized
- One-click homepage setup
- Clean block categorization
6. Zakra Book Author
Zakra Book Author is a fast, flexible theme with premium features suitable for authors and writers.
Zakra’s compatibility with Elementor, Brizy, BlockArt, and Gutenberg allows you to unleash your creativity, designing unique layouts that enhance your site’s visual appeal and functionality.
Optimized for speed, Zakra ensures your website loads quickly, offering an improved user experience and better search engine rankings.
With over 40 pre-designed starter demo sites, Zakra provides a wide array of customizable templates, enabling you to build a unique and perfectly suited site quickly.
- Integration with Popular Page Builders (Elementor, Brizy, BlockArt, Gutenberg)
- Optimized for speed
- Mobile-friendly responsive design
- Built with block-based technology
- SEO optimized
7. Book Shop
This theme is specially designed for bookstores, collectibles stores, e-commerce Retailers, Independent Authors and Publishers.
With this theme, you can customize the header, website layout, single pages, online store, sidebar, and footer. Not only that, but it also includes built-in styles and color palettes.
One advanced feature of Book Shop is WooCommerce compatibility. This feature allows you to create a professional e-commerce website instantly.
It also allows you to manage your customers and their orders conveniently. This theme also provides 100+ Payment Gateways. So, you can use almost any online payment system to receive payments for your sales.
- One-click demo installation
- Fully responsive and mobile-friendly
- Mobile Offcanvas menu and bottom menu
- Premium extensions compatibility
- Store optimization features
- Customizable design
8. VW Book Store
Minimalistic yet feature-rich, VW Book Store is the perfect companion for online booksellers. This free WordPress theme is super flexible, fast, and reliable. It allows you to create bookstores, libraries, and online/offline reading clubs within your website.
This theme comes with an appealing layout with well-placed sliders and banners. The stylish look is enough to visually satisfy your audience and keep them engaged in your website. If you do not like its default layout, there are many different options to modify it.
Additionally, this theme has direct social media integration, which boosts your marketing reach and increases your book sales.
- Sleek and simple design
- Responsive layout
- Cross-browser compatibility
- Translation ready
- Customization options
- Logo change option
- Slider settings
- SEO friendly
9. Store Lite
Store Lite is a multipurpose WordPress theme designed to build powerful e-commerce websites. With minimal design, this free theme offers superb flexibility and adjustability. It comes with a highly responsive layout that auto-adjusts to various screen sizes.
Store Lite features multiple banners and full-width sliders to instantly display and promote the latest arrivals.
Besides, it also includes top-notch pre-build functionalities, such as drag-and-drop homepage blocks and easy-to-adjust theme options. With these functions, you can easily customize your website.
Store Lite supports the world’s most advanced page builder plugin, Elementor Page Builder. Thus, you can design your website from scratch without a single line of code.
- Fast page loading and SEO-friendly
- Flexible and modular design
- Professional minimalist multipurpose design
- Responsive WooCommerce integration
- Easy setup and installation
- Multiple demos available
10. VW Writer Blog
VW Writer Blog is a powerful theme for writers, authors, editors, or teachers. With a highly intuitive and modern design, this template is built precisely for creating online bookstores, reading clubs, libraries, and eBook portals.
This template is relatively easy to configure and customize, even if you have zero coding knowledge. Although a free WordPress theme, it includes four slides, three template pages, and a home page template.
One unique feature that makes this theme ideal for selling books is its compatibility with the e-commerce plugin WooCommerce. With this feature, you can add an online store to your website and sell your books.
- WooCommerce support
- Cross-browser smooth loading
- Translation readiness with essential files
- Customizable logo, slider settings
- Detailed documentation for easy setup
- Social media integration
11. Kalium
Kalium is a multipurpose theme suitable for all websites, including bookstore websites. This theme comes with multiple pre-built templates that help you create a perfectly functioning website for your bookstore.
This theme includes a suite of premium plugins at no extra cost, extending its functionality. It enhances your website’s design and interactivity, offering a rich user experience without additional investment.
Kalium provides a variety of portfolio layouts, allowing you to showcase your work in multiple styles. This feature is designed to attract potential clients by displaying your projects professionally and visually appealingly.
- WPBakery Page Builder
- Revolution slider
- Layer slider
- WooCommerce compatible
- Product size guide
- One-Click starter sites installer
- Multisite support
12. BookChoix
The BookChoix theme is ideally suited for online bookstores, modern libraries, educational institutions with online courses, authors and publishers, e-book sellers, etc.
This theme includes an online PDF book reading feature, allowing customers to access and read digital books on your website directly. It enhances the user experience and significantly increases engagement and time spent on the site.
It also offers a showcase for a free e-book library, providing display and download options for free resources. With this feature, you can attract visitors with valuable content, helping to build a loyal customer base and encouraging repeat visits to your website.
- Elementor page builder
- Online PDF book reading capability
- Showcase for free e-Books library
- One click demo installer
- ISBN search functionality
- Responsive design
- 3+ home page variations
13. July
The July eCommerce WordPress Theme is perfectly tailored for bookstores, clothing stores, furniture stores, cosmetics shops, and other e-books related online marketplaces.
The July eCommerce WordPress Theme boasts 36+ unique homepages, 13+ product layouts, and 6+ shop layouts, offering various customizable options. This flexibility and personalization cater to various store types, significantly enhancing the user experience and meeting diverse business needs.
It also features powerful upsell tools like Buy More Save More, Guest Viewing Product, and Stock Countdown, serving as advanced sales and marketing strategies. These features encourage customers to purchase more and build trust, leading to increased sales and improved conversion rates.
- 36+ unique homepages
- 13+ versatile product layouts
- 6+ shop layouts
- 100% fully responsive design
- 3+ product hover styles
- 4+ shop filter layouts/styles
- 5+ product details layouts/styles
14. Bookworm
The Bookworm WooCommerce Theme is ideal for bookstores and bookshops, online book retailers, authors and publishers, independent booksellers, research booksellers, etc.
This theme is Gutenberg compatible, utilizing WordPress’s native builder for easy content management and customization. This feature allows for effortless and efficient website updates, even for those without technical expertise.
It includes dedicated pages for authors and individual author profiles, highlighting authors to attract book enthusiasts.You can effectively increases sales potential by showcasing authors and their works in detail.
- Gutenberg compatibility
- Authors and single author pages
- Responsive and mobile-friendly design
- WooCommerce integration
- SEO friendly
15. Bookshelf
The Bookshelf WordPress Theme is perfectly suited for modern online libraries, bestseller shops, literature blogs, book lovers portals, and online bookstores.
This theme integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce, streamlining the setup and management of online bookstores or media stores. This integration ensures easy and secure transactions, significantly enhancing the overall shopping experience for customers.
It also features an Online Layout Style Switcher, providing the flexibility to change website appearance easily. It allows effortless customization to align the site’s look with your brand identity and user preferences.
- WooCommerce integration
- Online layout style switcher
- Events management and calendar
- Custom hover effects
- Elementor page builder compatibility
- Responsive and mobile-friendly design
- One-click demo installation
- Flexible colors and typography
16. Scientia
The Scientia WordPress Theme is ideal for public libraries, bookstores, publishing houses, book-author official websites, literary clubs, and digital and media online stores.
This theme offers flexible colors and typography, allowing extensive customization to match the site’s look and feel with your brand identity. This personalization not only enhances the aesthetic appeal but also improves the readability and user experience of the site.
It also features advanced blog settings, providing multiple blog styles and a customizable blog feed. This diversity in blogging options engages readers effectively, offering them varied and visually appealing blog layouts that keep them interested and coming back for more.
- WooCommerce compatibility
- Events Calendar compatibility
- WPBakery page builder compatibility
- One-click demo installation
- Responsive and mobile-friendly design
- Flexible colors & typography
- Advanced blog settings
Conclusion
The themes we’ve discussed in this article are ideal for enhancing your online bookstore. They’re designed to make every visit to your site a memorable experience for book enthusiasts.
However, we particularly recommend Book Landing Page and Digital Download for their specialized features designed for bookstores and digital content sellers. These themes are created to showcase your books and streamline the digital selling process.
Lastly, your input is crucial to us. We invite you to share your thoughts about these themes. Also, if you have any themes that we’ve missed listing, suggest them in the comments.
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