In case you’ve missed the exciting news, Amazon has now made possible to embed book previews on sites (only self-hosted ones) and apps.
Kindle instant previews are similar to the “Look Inside” feature that Amazon offers on their website that lets customers preview samples of most books.
Here’s how it works:
If you click the embed option (see image above), you get a custom code that you then paste into your page. This works on your blog, website, forum, or even an app.
The book preview widgets are available in custom sizes, and come with a couple of settings, like the option to hide the buy button, open the preview in a new window, and even add an Amazon affiliate ID.
Below is an example of the new book preview feature in action. Note the option to go full screen, the sample percentage indicator, and the option to read using a Kindle app. If you click on the widget you can increase and decrease font size. You can also quickly turn pages by hovering the mouse over the widget and using the mouse wheel.
Hi, I just released my book and heard about the Kindle Instant Preview option. For two days, I researched different sites to explain it. Your site was the ONLY one that simplified the method of locating the “embed” feature. Thanks.
Yay! I’m so glad to hear that. Thank you for letting me know 🙂
Another advantage to going self-hosted.
True. That’s how I’ve ended up having two blogs, mind you… 🙂
That is fantastic, if everyone can get it to work.
Yep. Amazon needs to enable it for all books, too 🙂
Wasn’t aware of this… Cheers, Nick! ?
Hope you find it useful 🙂
Thanks Nick. I’m going to try it.
Great tip Nicholas thanks for sharing. 🙂
Thanks! Glad you found it useful 🙂
Another fantastic tip! Thanks for reminding me about this feature!
Question for you: Do you know whether the resulting “buy” links (or “share” links) are globalized or support link globalization? I’ve globalized the links on my blog. I’d love to make use of this new feature, but I don’t know if it will have a negative impact on my international sales.
I’m afraid I don’t know. I suspect they’re not globalized, but can’t be sure. This is the sort of question one would ask Amazon through the KDP help board 😉
Thanks for tips, Nicholas. ?
A pleasure, as always 🙂
Really don’t know how you find time to:
a) find all this stuff out
b) tell us all about it
…and you have a baby in the house!
Well done, though. Keep it up
Lol – thanks! To be honest, I had a head start. I’d scheduled dozens of post prior to the new arrival. However, I’ve now almost run out – I’ve only got 3 more posts scheduled. So, I might repost some of my very first posts or switch to posting every 3 days 🙂
Yes, I had missed this one, Nicholas, so thanks for sharing. I had read about the facility to be able to run giveaways with them, but not this. I tried the link out on one of my books last night and will now be adding this widget to all my novels on my website today.
Yay! Congrats 🙂
This is awesome! Thanks as always Nicholas for keeping us abreast! 🙂
A pleasure! Thanks for the kind, as always, comment 🙂
🙂
Wow–dynamite! Thanks for sharing, Nicholas.
A pleasure, as always! Thanks for reading, John 🙂
Interesting. I like the option to read full-screen so it’s not so squished. Will you put these on your side bar eventually, or do they need to go in the body of a post?
They can go anywhere. I’m not sure whether they’d be too distracting on the side bar, but I have inserted them on my book pages 🙂
My website isn’t self-hosted (I don’t think? Websites confuse me, lol), but I did manage to insert a link to an online previewer. So it’s not directly embedded in the website, but a single click takes you to check out the book. Yay!
I seem to remember you moving to a self-hosted solution at some point. But I see that your address still has the .wordpress.com part intact, so no. Yay for ingenuity, though 🙂
Great idea! Too bad it’s not for non-self hosted WP sites. 🙂
I know… 🙁
Very cool!!! Y’know, I saw your books had “start reading” underneath them but didn’t realize you could actually start reading without leaving the site. Readers don’t need to leave the site, right? Or does it merely redirect to Amazon?
Never mind. I got my answers. Thanks for sharing!
No, that’s the beauty of it. People can start reading right on your site!
Thanks so much, Nicholas! Very helpful…
A pleasure! Thanks for reading 🙂
Someone needs to find a hack to make this work on non-self hosted WordPress sites. There’s another Amazon widget that doesn’t work on wordpress.com, but can’t remember what it is… Might have been a slideshow of the books you have available.
The thing is that WP.com is very careful about security, hence their distrust of plugins etc. I don’t see that changing any time soon, I’m afraid 🙁