Book samples convert browsers into buyers. Use them to boost book sales!
This page provides details on the different means by which bookshops and retailers with their own web presence can use the Jellybooks DISCOVERY platform and the Jellybooks API to give readers the ability to peek inside books on bookshop web pages.
Integrating Online Book Samples into Online Book pages
Online book samples can be included in several ways such as:
- Plain text links such as “click here to read an excerpt” placed at the end of the short or long book description.
- Buttons such as “read sample”, “peek inside”, or “view excerpt” below the short description.
- Linked cover images with a sample opening when the reader clicks on the cover image – these may include call-too-action buttons to ‘peek inside’ or ‘book preview’.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
Experimenting with Online Samples
The easiest way to experiment with online samples is to access the Jellybooks bookshop portal to look up titles of interest and retrieve the relevant sample links.
No registration required - simply visit our EXPRESS Sample Page.
Bulk Access to Online Sample Links
We also have a range of options for bulk access to online samples, as well as programmatic access via our API or a range of third-party plug-ins.
(1) Bookshop Portal – Bulk export
By registering as a bookshop and logging into our bookshop partner portal [account required], bookshops can create a list of books they wish to import using our filters and then export this list as a CSV or XML file into their content management system (CMS).
(2) Plug-ins
Jellybooks provides a free WordPress plug-in for Woocommerce sites that is also available through the official WordPress market place.
Batch Services (a commercial subsidiary of the Bookseller Association) offers support for Jellybooks samples as part of its plugin for the Batchline book importer tool (BCS plugin) from version 1.6 onwards
(3) Jellybooks API
This is the most powerful and flexible way – offering the most choice in terms of user experience (UX) options – for programmatically importing sample links from Jellybooks. Each bookshop receives, on request, a bookshop-specific API key to access the API. Read the Jellybooks DISCOVERY API documentation for more information.
New books are added daily but most new books drop at 24:00 GMT on Wednesday. We therefore recommend that bookshops who update their website only weekly do so on Thursday mornings.
Popup/Modal Mode
Bookshop customers can read samples without leaving the bookshop website if the ‘modal mode’ provided by the Jellybooks DISCOVERY platform is enabled by the bookshop.
To enable ‘modal mode’ bookshops need to insert a piece of JavaScript code in the head section of the BOOKSHOP website.
Sample Links with Bookshop-specific Buy Links
Sample links can be customised individually via the Jellybooks bookshop portal. However, Jellybooks also offers registered Jellybooks API users the option to programmatically insert buy links, if the
bookshop’s ecommerce pages follow a predictable pattern such as www.bookshop.co.uk/book/ISBN or similar
(title and author information in the link structure should be avoided because they can lead to ambiguous
link structures). Jellybooks can provide sample links pre-configured with the relevant buy buttons where
bookshops follow predictable ISBN-based link structure. More details are provided on the sample
customisation page for bookshops.
Additional information for bookshops:
- How to use online samples in bookshop newsletters
- How bookshops can use cloud-hosted book samples for social media
- How retailers can create their own bespoke book samples for readers
- Express Sample Page for bookshops
