The Threshing Day Website, Book Microsites, and Building an Author Website of Your Own

Threshing Day is a short-story collection in Rebecca Yarros's Empyrean series — thirteen stories set around one legendary day, in the publisher's words. Around its launch, searches for the Threshing Day website rose sharply, which is why this article exists.

The official site is threshingday.com — a compact campaign site with events, a quiz, and links to the books. The author's main site, rebeccayarros.com, carries a Threshing Day page of its own with the synopsis. We are not affiliated with the author or publisher; if you came here looking for the official site, those two links are where to go.

If you are an author or publisher yourself, the more interesting question is why a book gets its own website at all — and whether your next launch should have one. That is the rest of this article.

A book launch is a short, intense campaign: a pre-order window, launch week, events, then a long tail. A dedicated microsite gives that campaign one shareable URL that is not buried inside the author's full catalog. The Threshing Day site uses it for events and an interactive quiz — pieces a single page on the main author site would struggle to carry.

It also isolates the visual identity. The Empyrean books have a strong look, and the microsite can go all-in on it while the author's main site stays a durable home for the whole catalog.

The pattern is not reserved for bestsellers. Any launch with a date, an audience and a few events can justify a small campaign site — the question is what it takes to build one.

Around popular releases, fan-built hubs appear — wikis, quizzes, reading guides. The good ones are clear about being unofficial and link to the official site where readers can buy the book.

Two things trip fan projects up. First, copyright: cover art, interior art and quotes belong to the publisher — use them sparingly within commentary, or make your own graphics. Second, clarity: make it obvious on every page that the site is unofficial. Search engines increasingly try to surface official results first for book-title queries, and a site that reads as official invites both reader confusion and takedown requests.

Whether it is a launch microsite or a permanent author site, the essential structure is similar — five pages do most of the work. Home: what you write and who you are, in one screen. Books: each title with its own page — cover, synopsis, retailer links. About: the short professional bio and the longer one. Events or news: signings, releases, announcements. Contact: a way to be reached — a form, or links to your newsletter tool and socials.

Resist the urge to add more until you need it. A five-page site that is finished beats a twelve-page site that is half-written — and search engines tend to agree.

You do not need a custom development project for this. A website builder with an author template gets the structure above in place in an afternoon: pick the template, replace the copy, swap in your covers, and publish.

This is the workflow Cogo Site is built for. Our author template gives you the book, about and event page structure out of the box; sites are real multi-page sites — 10 pages on the Free plan, 50 on Startup, unlimited on Pro. An AI assistant in the editor drafts and revises pages with you on paid plans. Forms — a reader survey, an event RSVP — can be added to any site; receiving submissions needs a Pro or Team plan. Publishing goes to an included subdomain, with custom domains on paid plans.

If you do build a launch microsite, publish it before the pre-order window opens: the site needs to be indexable before people start searching for it. Keep the evergreen author site as the permanent home, and let the campaign URL do its one job.

After launch week, decide deliberately whether the microsite stays up as an archive or folds into the main site — an abandoned campaign site with stale event dates is worse than no campaign site.