there is a story behind every book

Introduction

PRO status is free.

PRO status gives Jellybooks users special privileges and is by invitation only.

Jellybooks PRO membership is designed for authors, reviewers, bloggers, journalists, agents and publishers to help them place widgets for book samples on their homepage, blog or webpage and thus help readers discover new books. Sweet isn’t it?

Jellybooks Widgets

Samples help readers decide, if they actually like a book, so help readers sample books without the retailer lock-in!

Jellybooks widgets are designed to make sampling a book as simple, as tweeting a good story.

Our book samples are device-neutral and retailer-neutral. They can be read on a Kindle, but also on any other device. Freedom to the reader! These are not online previews, but ebook samples that can be downloaded for later reading.

All samples are in ePub format and are DRM-free. There is no lock-in and no limit on sharing. Sharing of samples is actually encouraged, because it supports word-of-mouth marketing for the book and/or your review of the book!

The samples are carefully crafted from the master files and include the first 10% of the book by word count. Samples always finish at the end of a paragraph. We don’t cut mid-sentence, but we may cut mid-chapter. Each sample is created with the publisher’s permission, or if self-published, with the author’s permission.

Invites

To become a PRO user you have to be invited.

Invites are available from any existing PRO users.

Search

Why is search available only to PRO users and not to everyone at jellybooks.com?

Ah, because…

  1. jellybooks.com was designed to help readers discover new books, not find what readers have already discovered. We think that, if readers already know what they are looking for that they will head over to Google, Amazon or Goodreads, not Jellybooks.
  2. The Jellybooks catalogue is still limited to tens of thousands as opposed to millions of books. The reason is that we obtain permission from each publisher and then create well-formatted samples form the master file provided. Thus, we don’t have all the books available a normal reader might search for.
  3. Last but not least jellybooks.com was designed to recreate online some of the serendipity of browsing a physical book store. A bookstore has no search button and jellybooks.com has no search button either.

The search button for PRO users appears automatically in the main navigation menu when you log-in with your PRO credentials. It is located right next to the PRO button with the purple boundary. You can search all titles available from the Jellyfactory by author, publisher, title or ISBN .

Creating Widgets

The embed button replaces the purple “buy” button, if you are a registered PRO user and appears in the book detail page on the Jellybooks home page, in your personal cloud library of books you have samples and in the search results when you click on a cover.

The embed button links you to the button creation page, where you can select the widget design of your choice and create the widget code with a single click.

Placing Widgets

To create a book widget, like this:

you will need to copy the code from the book detail page onto the target page.

There are 6 options available: the widgets come in 3 sizes with and without covers.

You can see of a preview of each option. Once you have decided on the design that is right for you, copy the code to the target destination where you want to use the button or widget.

Fear not, you can use these widgets even without knowing anything about HTML or front-end development.

Here is a simple step-by step guide for using Jellybooks widgets on Tumblr like we have done on the Jellybooks blog:

  1. Copy the widget code for the book and widget version you have selected
  2. Click on the Dashboard profile of your Tumblr blog
  3. Click on the “Aa” text button
  4. Click on the “html” button
  5. Paste the widget code into the box
  6. Click publish

Here is the same process but with some intro text and using a widget with no cover:

  1. Copy the widget code for the book and widget version you have selected
  2. Click on the Dashboard profile of your Tumblr blog
  3. Click on the “Aa” text button
  4. Click on the “html” button
  5. Paste the widget code into the box
  6. Click a second time on the “html” button to leave the editor mode
  7. Type in the text above (or below the button)
  8. Click publish

Note: you need to copy the widget/button code before you write your post!

Here is the same step-by step guide for using Jellybooks widgets with Wordpress:

  1. Copy the widget code for the book and widget version you have selected
  2. Log into Wordpress and create a new post
  3. Select the “Text” mode
  4. Paste the widget code into the desired position within the post
  5. Click publish

See, this required zero programming knowledge!

Happy Sharing!