# Why do author websites cost money? (A 3-minute video) - URL: https://zenpage.io/blog/why-author-websites-cost-money - Published: 2026-09-23 - Updated: 2026-09-23 - Category: Costs & tools - Reading time: 4 min > Author websites cost money because site builders set their prices for restaurants, dentists, and plumbers with steady revenue, not for authors. An author website is a few static pages that cost between nothing and a few cents a month to serve from a CDN, but the price never fell, and intro rates, domain renewals, and sales cuts add more. We made a short animated film about a question most authors never get a straight answer to: why does an author website cost money at all? It runs three minutes, has no voiceover, and every number in it is sourced below. If you'd rather read than watch, the whole story is written out on this page. Full disclosure, same as in the video: we make Zenpage, a [free website builder for authors](https://zenpage.io/features). So check our math. ## Why websites used to cost money In 2003, a website lived on a physical server that ran day and night. Someone had to keep it running, someone had to fix it when it broke, and someone had to design it. That was genuinely expensive, and the price made sense. Then site builders came along and made it easy. Their customers were restaurants, dentists, and plumbers: businesses with revenue, where a website brings in customers every week. The builders priced their plans for them, which was reasonable. Authors walked into the same store and got the same price. ## What an author website really is An author website is a few pages. Your books, your bio, where to buy. Those pages look the same for every visitor, so they can be made once and handed out as copies. The copies wait on servers close to readers all over the world (this is what a CDN does), and serving them costs somewhere between nothing and a few cents a month. That's the whole technical story. There's no shopping cart to keep in sync, no booking system, no accounts to manage. It is one of the cheapest things on the internet to run. ## The gap, and four traps The cost of running a small website fell to almost nothing. The price didn't. And on top of the subscription, four patterns quietly add to the bill: - **The intro rate.** A hosting plan at $2.99 a month renews at $17.99 a month. Same service, six times the price. - **The free domain.** The domain that comes "free" with an annual plan renews at around $20 a year. At an at-cost registrar, the same .com costs about $11. - **The shrinking free plan.** Mailchimp's free plan held 2,000 contacts. Then 500. Now it holds 250. Free tiers tend to shrink once your list is inside them, which is why Zenpage [connects to several newsletter providers](https://zenpage.io/newsletter). - **The cut of your sales.** Platforms take 2% to 10% of every sale: Squarespace Basic takes 2%, Gumroad takes 10% plus 50 cents. Selling ebooks directly is the best margin an author has, so this one stings. (Zenpage lets you [sell ebooks with no commission](https://zenpage.io/sell-ebooks).) ## Counting it in books Prices are easier to feel when you count them in books. A basic Squarespace site costs about $248 a year once the domain renews in year two. A $4.99 ebook on Amazon earns its author about $3.30 after the 70% royalty and delivery fee. That's **75 books sold every year, just to stay online**. For context, the Authors Guild's most recent income survey found that the median author earns $2,000 a year from books. At that income, a $248 website takes one dollar in every eight. That isn't a criticism of anyone who pays for a website today. It's just a price that was never set with writers in mind. For a platform-by-platform breakdown, including Wix, WordPress, and the author-specific services, see our full post on [how much an author website costs](https://zenpage.io/blog/author-website-cost). ## So what's the catch? Fair question, and we'd ask it too. Zenpage is free: no ads, no cut of your sales. It costs us pennies to host, so we don't charge rent. Your site shows a small "Powered by Zenpage" link in the footer, and you can turn it off. We explain the rest on our [pricing page](https://zenpage.io/pricing), and we've tested [which free author website builders](https://zenpage.io/blog/author-website-builders-compared#free-author-website-builders-tested) hide ads or lock your domain. And whatever you end up using, ours or anyone else's, two pieces of advice hold: buy your own domain, and keep copies of your words. Both are portable, and both stay yours. Then spend the money on the next book. ## Sources Figures checked in September 2026. - Squarespace Basic: $19 a month billed annually, about $248 in year two with the $20 domain renewal. [Squarespace pricing](https://www.squarespace.com/pricing) - A $4.99 Kindle ebook at the 70% royalty earns about $3.30 after the delivery fee (2 MB file). [KDP eBook royalty options](https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500) - Median book income for all authors: $2,000 (2022 income). [Authors Guild 2023 Author Income Survey](https://authorsguild.org/news/key-takeaways-from-2023-author-income-survey/) - Intro rate: SiteGround StartUp, $2.99 a month to start, $17.99 a month at renewal. [SiteGround pricing](https://www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm) - Mailchimp free plan: 2,000 contacts, then 500 (2023), now 250. [Mailchimp pricing](https://mailchimp.com/pricing/) - Domain renewals: Squarespace $20, Wix about $21, GoDaddy about $23. At cost, a .com is about $10.50 a year at Cloudflare Registrar, rising to about $11.20 on November 1, 2026. [Cloudflare Registrar](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/) - Cuts of sales: Squarespace Basic 2%, Gumroad 10% plus $0.50 per sale. - Hosting a small static site: $0 to a few cents a month on Cloudflare and Netlify pricing. Ready to stop paying rent? Pick a [template](https://zenpage.io/templates), add your books, and be live in 15 minutes. [Create your free author website →](https://zenpage.io)