Web Hosting

You need someone to hold on to the website for you, since you can't really serve up all those pages from your own laptop.

Making a decision about who to host your site will really depend on what you're going to put on it. If you want to use WordPress, you'll need a host who provides that as a service.
If you pick someone like Wix, Weebly or Squarespace, they do the hosting --- you don't get to choose.

Hosting isn't glamourous, ideally the hosting service just gets on with it and never causes you any problems.

Again, this depends on what you're hosting. Helpful, I know.

If you're literally just starting out, you won't need much. Wordpress might well be overkill, in fact. For that reason, I'm going to suggest a very economical, very simple setup.

Simple is best - the more complex it is, the less likely you are to update it or use it. Over time you'll forget how to do it, and you'll come to dread the idea of updating it.

Once you get more readers, have more books out, and figure out what you want to do with your site, then you can expand it, grow it and even change it completely.

I won't lock you in to one platform for life.