So, You Want a Book Excerpt Website

Getting Started

1. Fork this repo.
2. Clone it
3. Run npm install
4. Run eleventy --serve and the site will be up and running locally—by default, at localhost:8080. The built site is in _site, and the source—the stuff you’ll want to change—is in _src

Editing Your Website

Metadata

Most of the information for your site is in /_src/_data/metadata.json. You might need to re-run your local dev server after changing these values.

title It’s the title of your book.

description This is used in the “description” meta tag—it gets used in previews and search results. Use something like “available 1/1/1900!”

cta The text in the big call-to-action link below the excerpt. “Pre-orders start 1/1/1900,” “pre-order it today,” “buy it now,” something along those lines.

url The URL for this excerpt site.

abaurl The canonical URL for the book on abookapart.com

author It’s you.

theme

color Your book cover color.

colordark This color is used for your excerpt page footer and some small accents. When in doubt: black goes with everything.

cover The path to your book cover. You can snag the one from the ABA page for your book and drop it into /_src/_assets/img/.

teaser The preview image that pops up when you drop a link to your excerpt site onto Slack or Twitter. For example:

headings

The headings for the blurbs and bio blocks in the footer.

The Book Excerpt

Contained within /_src/index.md; nothin’ to it.

Your Bio

Contained within /_src/bio.md.

Blurbs

Each one is in a stand-alone markdown file inside /_src/blurbs/. There’s an example file in there now—for multiple blurbs, just copy that file (filenames don’t matter) and fill out the blurber’s name, job title (“author of thing,” “designer at place), and a site to link their name to.