Linktree Alternatives for Authors: 7 Options for 2026

The best Linktree alternative for authors isn't another link-in-bio tool. It's your own page on your own URL, with an email capture above the fold, your book cover visible without scrolling, and buy links that route readers to the retailer they already use.

Linktree is great for Instagram influencers. For selling books and growing an email list, it quietly costs authors money in three places: it doesn't capture emails, it sends traffic off your domain, and every author's Linktree looks exactly the same.

This post covers what Linktree actually gets wrong for authors, the seven alternatives people bring up on r/selfpublish and in indie author Facebook groups, and what your own author page needs to do before any of those alternatives matter.

Table of Contents

• What's actually wrong with Linktree for authors?
• The 7 alternatives authors use in 2026
• Why your own page beats every link-in-bio tool
• What your author page actually needs to do
• Moving off Linktree without losing traffic

What's actually wrong with Linktree for authors?

Linktree wasn't built for authors. It was built so that Instagram creators could turn a single bio link into a menu of links. For a beauty influencer that's perfect. For someone trying to sell a romance series and grow a mailing list, the gaps start showing fast.

No email capture. Linktree's free plan doesn't capture emails. The paid plan has a basic form, but readers have to click off to your actual email service provider to confirm. In the 2025 indie author survey from Written Word Media, authors with an email list earned a median of $300 a month. Authors without a list earned a median of $15 a month. That's a 20x difference [1]. A tool that doesn't help you build the single highest-leverage asset in indie publishing is the wrong tool.

Traffic flows off your domain. Every click on a Linktree link leaves linktr.ee. None of the traffic builds your own site's authority. If you ever want to run Facebook ads to a book page or get picked up in Google search, you're starting from zero because Linktree owns the URL, not you.

You don't control the look. You pick from themes. Your thriller looks like the cozy mystery author's page two rows down. The brand frame around your book, the cover colors, the mood, none of it comes through. Your readers get the same template everyone else gets.

Platform fragility. Joanna Penn's 2026 indie publishing predictions call out platform risk as the defining issue of the year [2]. Linktree has changed its pricing and limits repeatedly. Authors who built their author hub there rebuild it every time the product changes. Your own URL doesn't get rebuilt because someone else raised prices.

It's not a sales surface. Linktree is a link menu. A good author page sells the book. It shows the cover at full size, puts the blurb above the fold, lists every retailer as a real button, and makes the newsletter signup impossible to miss. Stacking nine identical blue pills on top of each other does none of that.

Linktree isn't useless. For a "while I migrate" placeholder, or a stopgap between launches, it does its job. As a permanent marketing asset, it's the wrong shape.

The 7 alternatives authors use in 2026

If you've been looking for a way off Linktree, you've probably seen these names before. Here's the honest rundown.

1. Carrd. A single-page website builder with a paid tier around $19 a year. Authors use it because it's cheap, lets you use your own domain, and gives you more layout control than Linktree. The downside is you're the designer. Carrd hands you a canvas and a library of components. If you're confident with design it's a good tool. If you're not, your page will look like a Carrd page, and Carrd pages have a very recognizable look [3].

2. Beacons. Aimed at creators who want to sell products and accept payments directly. It's closer to a lightweight storefront than a link-in-bio tool. For an author selling courses or signed paperbacks directly, it has real appeal. For an author whose books are sold on Amazon and Bookshop, most of Beacons' feature set is dead weight.

3. Milkshake. A mobile-first tool that builds a mini-site from your phone, styled like Instagram stories. If your entire audience comes from Instagram and TikTok, Milkshake is the most on-brand of the link-in-bio tools for that audience. For authors who also get traffic from Goodreads, Amazon, newsletters, and Google, it's a narrower fit.

4. Campsite.bio. Sits in the same category as Linktree but with a more generous free tier and better customization. It's a "better Linktree" rather than a categorically different thing. All the same structural issues apply, you just get more visual control.

5. Lnk.Bio. Over 700,000 users, decent content block library, fair pricing. Again, solves the "Linktree is too limited" problem but not the "link-in-bio is the wrong tool for selling books" problem.

6. Taplink. Strong at multimedia embeds (video, booking widgets). Niche fit for authors who run writing coaching on the side. For fiction authors, most of what Taplink does well isn't relevant.

7. Your own page on your own domain. This is the one nobody selling a Linktree alternative will tell you to pick. It's the one the indie author ecosystem is actually moving to in 2026. Authors are breaking Amazon exclusivity, rebuilding around owned platforms, and treating their mailing list as their most valuable asset. The link in your bio should be janedoe.com or janedoe.mybookpage.com, not linktr.ee/janedoe.

Why your own page beats every link-in-bio tool

The specific answer is email. The longer answer is ownership.

Email capture is worth more than everything else combined. If you read the Written Word Media survey carefully, the correlation between subscriber count and monthly income is almost linear. Authors making over $10,000 a month have a median of 18,327 subscribers. Authors making under $100 a month have a median of 902 subscribers [1]. Linktree's job is to move readers along. A landing page's job is to capture them. Those are different design goals, and the second one makes 20x more money.

Your own URL compounds. Every backlink to janedoe.com feeds one place. Every time a reviewer mentions your site, a blog links your book, a podcast namechecks you, the authority concentrates. Linktree links don't. Five years in, the author who's had their own site for five years has a five-year head start on anyone still on a link-in-bio service.

Buy-link routing actually works. A good author page detects which retailer someone used last time and defaults to that button. It knows Kobo users live in Canada and tailors the geo-routing. It tracks which retailer converts best for your audience. A pile of blue pills can't do any of that.

Genre personality is retention. A thriller page that looks like the book's moodboard, a romance page in cream and burgundy, a fantasy page with dramatic typography, these do more than look nice. They tell returning readers "you're in the right place." When someone clicks from Instagram and lands on a page that feels like your book, they stay. When they land on a generic page that could be selling dog food, they don't.

What your author page actually needs to do

A page that replaces Linktree without replacing its weaknesses isn't an upgrade. Here's the minimum the new page has to do.

1. Show the book cover above the fold. No scroll. The cover is the single best-converting piece of marketing you own. Make it impossible to miss.
2. One clear primary call to action. "Read the first chapter" or "Get your copy" or "Join the list," pick one. The page is not a menu, it's a conversion surface with one goal.
3. An email capture that does one thing well. Send a free first chapter, bonus novella, or reader magnet, in exchange for an email. Wired to your actual email service so subscribers land where you can email them.
4. Buy links for every retailer you're on. Amazon, Bookshop, Kobo, Apple, Barnes & Noble. Never make a reader hunt. Every retailer they might use should be one tap away.
5. An about-the-author section that sounds like you. Two paragraphs max. Written by you, not a bio-writing template. Photo optional but warmer with one.
6. Social links at the bottom, not the top. The whole reason someone came to your page is to read your book. Social icons belong in the footer, not above the blurb.
7. Your own URL. yourname.com, yourname.mybookpage.com, whatever. Just not a subdomain of a service that might pivot next quarter.

If you're looking at your current Linktree and realizing it does almost none of this, you've found the problem.

Moving off Linktree without losing traffic

Switching from Linktree feels risky because the link is already in your bio. Here's the low-drama way to do it.

First, pick your new URL. Your own domain is ideal. If you don't have one yet, a subdomain on a hosted service (like yourname.mybookpage.com) works immediately and you can add a custom domain later.

Second, build the new page before you change the bio link. Get the cover up, the blurb written, the buy links live, the email capture connected to your email service. Test it on a friend.

Third, switch the bio link. One swap in Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook. Nothing breaks on the old Linktree URL, you just stop driving traffic to it.

Fourth, keep Linktree live for 30 days with a single line at the top: "We moved! Our new home is [yournewurl]." Anyone who has the old link bookmarked gets redirected without confusion.

Fifth, delete the Linktree. You don't need it anymore.

The whole migration takes a weekend. The page you end up with does more for you in a month than Linktree did in a year.

At MyBookPage, we built the product around this exact problem. Every generated page is genre-matched, has the email capture wired up, buy links for every major retailer, and runs on your own subdomain (or custom domain on Pro). If you're ready to get off link-in-bio, start with the 3-day trial. If you want to compare plans first, the pricing page breaks down what's in each tier.

Sources

[1] 2025 Indie Author Survey Results, Written Word Media [2] 2026 Trends and Predictions for Indie Authors, Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn [3] Link Hub Alternatives for Authors, Southern Dragon Publishing