Give readers a book sample straight from your blog

This is highly cool, and I’m surprised it hasn’t come to my attention till now. (I wish I could find the blog I learned it from!)

You can stick a cover image in your sidebar using the widget tool. That we all know. You can even embed a link in the image so that when readers click on it, they’re taken to the Amazon page. Well, this trick allows you to embed a viewer that immediately puts the reader directly into the book for quick perusing.

All you do is go to the book’s Amazon page, scroll down and look on the right-hand side for sharing options. Click on “Embed,” then copy the URL (I couldn’t get HTML to work for this on WordPress).

Set up your widget with an image box, insert the image, then add the URL you just copied to the link space near the bottom. Save it, and then have a look.

Click on the Town Father image above to see what the viewer looks like.

Nifty, eh?

[Holy crap, I just found out that this is my 1000th post on What The Hell!]

10 comments on “Give readers a book sample straight from your blog”

ericjbaker
June 30, 2016

Can one control the amount of text that is revealed? Like if you wanted to leave off on a cliffhanger moment for example.

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- Kevin Brennan
  June 30, 2016
  
  I’ll have to look into that. I don’t think so. Seems to be a generous chunk though …
  
  Reply
Phillip McCollum
June 30, 2016

Happy 1000th post! And that’s very cool with the Amazon widget.

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- Kevin Brennan
  June 30, 2016
  
  Thanks, Mr. McM! Hard to believe I’ve thrown 1000 brain farts into this pot in a little over 3 years.
  
  Reply
  - Phillip McCollum
    July 1, 2016
    
    If only the rest of our farts could be so brilliant. Have a Happy 4th!
The Opening Sentence
June 30, 2016

It works! The HTML embed code doesn’t work on wordpress.com, but does work on wordpress.org. WordPress.com don’t like iframe thingies unless it links to Youtube for some reason.

Good call. Thanks.

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- Kevin Brennan
  June 30, 2016
  
  I figured it the HTML thing had to do with WordPress. I’ve had other issues with that. I’m glad the URL works, though, and it is pretty dang cool. Hopefully people will press the Buy button once they’re in!
  
  Reply
Audrey Driscoll
June 30, 2016

I saw something about this in the latest KDP newsletter, but filed in away under “later.” Your post made me actually go and do it, and it worked — without any swearing or hair-tearing (hey, that rhymes!). Many thanks, Kevin, and congratulations on post #1000!

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1WriteWay
July 1, 2016

1000 posts!? Well, congratulations! That’s a lot of blogging 😉 Pretty nifty thing you discovered here. I like it and hope it will lead some clicks of the Buy button.

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- Kevin Brennan
  July 2, 2016
  
  Thanks, Marie! Something tells me 2000 posts is a long way off … 😳
  
  Reply