Editor’s Desk: Kindle Instant Previews – Allow readers to preview your book on your site. Plus FREE book giveaway!

You may have used Amazon’s previewer tool in the past, where you were able to embed a preview link on your website or blog post. If you had, you will have realized that the widget was starting to show it’s age, didn’t always work the way it was suppose to, or at all.

That has all changed.

Amazon has updated its Kindle Instant Preview tool and it is wonderful. See below for a sample.

BookGorilla is giving away 50 free copies of
by Anne Hillerman!

 Click here to enter for your chance to win!

Normally $9.99
On sale now $0.99

Beautiful, right?

covers_exampleThere is so much to love. The look has been updated and the embed is mobile ready. Now, people can easily share your book! Add your Amazon affiliate ID during set up, and when they do share your preview, your affiliate link goes along with it. All while on your author site.

At the top of the embed you have the “Buy” button which opens a new window on Amazon to purchase the book. The “Share” button allows people to either email your preview, post on Facebook,  or tweet on Twitter. They even have a short link that can be shared anywhere, which includes your affiliate link. The bottom section lets you know how much of the free sample is left and will allow you to adjust the font size. Very helpful for small screens!  On computer or tablets, if you click on the “Preview” link, the sample is opened as the same size as the image. However, if you click on the text, it will toggle the bottom options and allow you to view the sample full screen.

Amazon_reader_3The best part is that Amazon has made this so very easy to set up. First find your book on Amazon. On the right side of the screen, by the share buttons is the <embed> link. Click on that embed link and customize.  You have a choice to create a link that will go to the opened preview pane on Amazon, or the ability to “Embed on your site (HTML)”. Here is where you add your Amazon affiliate tag, and make other customizations such as the size of the image.

Not every book may be available, but so far I haven’t found one that isn’t. If you are already selling the your book(s) directly yourself,  this may not be an ideal option for you. But for many authors, the pain of having to deal with setting up a store to deal with purchases makes this a wonderful alternative. See Amazon for more details.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

 

How To Build Your Own Self-Hosted Author Website In Under 30 Minutes

This post by Joanna Penn originally appeared on her The Creative Penn site on 8/13/15.

Your website is one of the most important things to get sorted if you’re taking your career as an author seriously.

It’s your home on the internet and the hub for your books.

It’s how readers, agents, publishers, journalists, bloggers and podcasters judge how professional you are.

It’s where you can start to build an email list of readers.

A free site is not good enough if you want to take your author career onwards and upwards.

But your own site doesn’t have to be a big deal. It’s not expensive and it won’t take long to set up.

In [a video on the linked page below, written transcript also provided there], I take you through why having your own site is important, how to get a hosting account and set up your wordpress site, as well as using an example theme and how to start your email list.

 

Read the full post on The Creative Penn.

 

3 Vital Questions to Build Website Impact

This post by Donna K. Fitch originally appeared on D’Vorah Lansky’s Build A Business With Your Book.

Why do you have a website? What a silly question. We have websites because we’re supposed to. Everyone else does, right?

But a website without thought behind it, without intentionality, may be doing you more harm than good. Professional web designers ask their clients a series of questions before they do any design work. Improve your website by asking yourself these three questions:

 

1. What do you want to accomplish with your website?

It’s so tempting to pile cool widgets and generic text (“Welcome to my website, I hope you enjoy it”) on your site without considering the purpose. Besides overwhelming the site visitor, the items may be sending mixed messages—or give the impression you’re not sure what business you’re in. If you aren’t sure what you’re trying to achieve, you won’t know when you’ve arrived.

 

Read the full post on Build A Business With Your Book.