Central Hub vs. One Site Per Book: How to Decide for a Broad Catalog
Short answer: if your catalog's topics don't share a reader or search intent, a separate site per niche usually performs better in SEO. If you're building one author/publisher brand that benefits from every title together, a hub with sections per niche makes more sense.
When a separate site per book/niche makes sense
The topics have no relationship to each other (say, a technical book and a romance novel).
You want each site to rank on its own merit, without one topic diluting the other's topical relevance in Google's eyes.
Budget and time allow maintaining several sites independently.
When a central hub makes sense
The books share an author, publisher, or a recognizable throughline.
You'd rather build one domain authority that grows with each new book, instead of starting from zero every time.
Maintaining several independent sites isn't realistic given your current time/budget.
A third option: subdomains per niche under one hosting account
When the catalog is broad but you want everything under one hosting account for simpler management, subdomains (e.g., niche1.yourdomain.com) let you treat each topic as an independent site for SEO purposes, while managing everything from one panel.
Google treats subdomains as relatively independent entities for topical relevance purposes, even when they share hosting infrastructure — a key difference from using subfolders of the same domain.
General SEO architecture practice, 2026