When Stephen Courson set out to self-publish a fantasy novel years in the making, Legacy: Secrets of a Prince, he knew what kind of web site he needed. From sketching drawings on paper to the finished result today, Land of Azzaria truly creates an experience that fits right with the book.
Of the many aspects of the site, first and foremost Stephen wanted two things: allow readers to purchase the book and also learn more about the story he was telling. To begin, we started outlining the characters in the world he had created. Developing not just names and brief histories, but their abilities, their lineage and why you should know about them. The character guide allows the user to quickly get up to speed on new characters introduced throughout the story. This allows for not only an informative part of the site, but also a guide the user can reference as they read.
In addition to the people, the places are what make Azzaria memorable. With such a grand vision, Stephen had actually hand sketched a map of the area and immediately we knew what to do. With the interactive map on the site, the user can learn more about the land of Azzaria, but also know where the characters in the book are in context to the world at large. This brings an even more vivid picture to the reader and was Stephen’s vision come to life.
In addition, we leveraged a live twitter feed, a custom WordPress blog and e-commerce allowing both digital and paperback orders of the book.