Background

Lantern Independent has been producing and distributing audiobooks for independent authors for over 20 years. With 700+ titles across 550+ authors and 20+ genres, they needed a storefront that matched the quality of their catalogue — not a generic template. The brief: build a complete custom Shopify experience from scratch, ship a branded audiobook player, launch a podcast hub, and create an author acquisition funnel — all in a single codebase.

The Problem

The existing Shopify store ran on an unmodified Dawn theme. It was functional but had no brand identity, no way for customers to preview audio before buying, and nothing to differentiate Lantern Independent from any other Shopify store. The For Authors section — a key revenue driver — was buried on a generic page with no visual impact. There was also no podcast infrastructure despite Lantern Independent having an active and growing podcast library, and no mechanism to capture email leads for upcoming product lines.

What Was Built

Custom Shopify theme

A fully custom theme was built on Dawn v15.4.1 with 9 bespoke homepage sections: a cinematic hero with book cover mosaic, content-type tab hub, genre category carousel, featured audiobooks grid, how-it-works steps, production teaser for authors, testimonials, app promo, and an author spotlight. Full custom templates were built for product pages, collections, cart, 404, and 5 static pages.

  • AJAX cart drawer — add to cart without a page reload, cart badge sync, quantity controls
  • Dark-first design with localStorage persistence across sessions
  • Typography: Fraunces 900 for headings, Jost for body

AWS audio preview infrastructure

An AWS Lambda function generates short-lived presigned S3 URLs so audio files are never publicly exposed. Every product page has an inline audio sample player — waveform visualisation, scrubber, play/pause — and collection cards play previews directly without leaving the page. No third-party audio app required.

Podcast player and RSS proxy

A second Lambda function proxies RSS feeds cross-origin. A floating player bar with play/pause, scrubber, episode list, and playback speed cycling (1× to 2×) powers the podcast experience. Genre filtering, skeleton shimmer loading on podcast cards, and a genre sidebar on collection pages were all built in.

Lead capture and content hub

A homepage tab hub switches between Audiobooks, Podcasts, and Ebooks panels. The Ebooks tab captures email notify sign-ups via a native Shopify customer form — no app required. The For Authors section targets indie authors with a full production services landing page.

Results

  • 700+ audiobook titles across 550+ authors live on launch with full audio preview on every product
  • Complete podcast streaming infrastructure — floating player, genre filtering, and RSS proxy — built without a third-party app
  • Author acquisition funnel live from day one — production services page targeting the indie author market
  • Zero third-party apps for any core functionality: audio, podcast, lead capture, and cart all built natively