DISCOVERY by Jellybooks

peek-inside book samples for better book discovery

Nothing gets a reader hooked on a book like a highly engaging book sample!

DISCOVERY is our cloud-hosted platform for book samples designed to help book publishers with book discoverability, sales, marketing, and engaging with a diverse retail ecosystem.

  1. Stimulate reader interest with click & read book excerpts on your own website, email newsletters, blog, author pages, or social media posts
  2. Convert browsers into buyers with our cloud-hosted book samples featured on the product pages for bookshops and retailers
  3. Increase pre-orders, print and digital sales by accessible book samples in your marketing and publicity outreach

According to Nielsen, samples are one of the three major influencers - along with covers and book descriptions - based on which customers decide on whether to buy or read a book.

Most online book pages feature covers and book descriptions, but lack samples and excerpts. Jellybooks fills this gap with its online click & read book samples for publishers and retailers!

Our mobile-friendly, cloud-hosted, accessible book samples are suitable for all of your marketing and sales channels.

  1. Sales: Ecommerce sites, product pages, and any website featuring books
  2. Marketing: Email newsletters, and direct-to-consumer (D2C) messaging
  3. Author support: Websites, blogs, and social media posts by authors
  4. Publicity: samples with click-to-request-ARC button for emails sent to editors, reviewers and other influencers

DISCOVERY for Sales

Jellybooks distributes cloud-hosted peek-inside samples on behalf of more than 150 UK and Irish publishers to retailers and bookshops in the UK, Ireland and beyond This ensures improved discoverability and deeper customer engagement with your books via independent bookshops and retailers.

Our bookshop and retailer network includes:

England, Scotland and Wales

National chains: Blackwell’s,

Archway Bookshop, Bell Bookshop, Bert’s Books, Bookbugs & Dragontails, Bookhaus Bristol, Book-ish, Cambridge University Press Bookshop, Coles Books, Falmouth Bookseller, Gaelic Book Council, House of Book & friends, John Carpenter Bookshop La Biblioteka, Mostly Books, Next Page Books, Nickel Books, P & G Wells, Padstow Bookseller, Quokka Bookstore, Red Lion Book, Rossiter Books, Siop Cwlwn, The Guardian Bookshop, Truman Books, The Borzoi Bookshop, The Good Book Club, The Little Bookshop, The Old Queeriosity Shop, The Violet Bookshop Truman Books, and Woodbridge Books. Many more coming soon!

Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

National chains: Dubray Books, (soon) Easons

indie bookshops: Woodbine Books, Bridge Street Books, O’Mahony's, Vibes & Scribes, BridgeBooks Dromore, and Books at One with more indie bookshops being added continuously.

Unless otherwise specified, samples are distributed from publication day onwards.

Testimonials from booksellers:

Kieron Smith - Digital Director, Blackwell's & Wordery, and Head of Online Operations, Waterstones, Foyles & Hatchards:

“Good bookselling sites should offer as rich an experience as possible, you would likely look at a book’s back cover and perhaps read the first page or so of a title you were interested in a bookshop – this isn’t any different. DISCOVERY helps increase sales as people are more confident that the book they’re buying meets their needs, but also reduces returns for the same reasons.

I’ve found that over the last 15 years or so that people are happier browsing online for books – that it’s not as purely search based as it was in the early days of the web. DISCOVERY is an opportunity to better present titles to be browsed – and samples are a crucial part of this.”

Frank O'Mahony, owner and managing director of O'Mahony's Booksellers:

“Our experience with book previews has been overwhelmingly positive. They have enhanced the online shopping experience by allowing customers to engage with a book before making a purchase. This feature has been easy to integrate into our existing systems and has proven to be an effective tool in increasing user engagement.”

Ciarán Delaney, eCommerce & Digital Manager, Eason and Dubray Books, Republic of Ireland:

“Our experience with book previews on dubraybooks.ie has been highly positive, both from a technical and customer-focused perspective. The integration process was relatively smooth, as the solution was designed to work seamlessly with our existing website infrastructure. The impact on our customers has been particularly rewarding. The "Sneak Peek" feature has significantly enhanced the online browsing experience by giving customers a chance to explore a book's content before committing to a purchase. This has led to longer time spent on product pages, as users engage more deeply with the titles that interest them. We’ve also received overwhelmingly positive feedback from customers, who appreciate the added confidence this feature provides when making a purchase. Overall, the addition of book previews has not only supported an improved customer experience but has also contributed to increased engagement and satisfaction, aligning perfectly with our commitment to fostering a love for reading.”

Bookseller Case Studies

DISCOVERY for Marketing

DISCOVERY book samples help publishers better engage with readers!

Publisher’s Website

With our WordPress and WordPress for Woocommerce plug-in we offer publishers an easy way to include excerpts and book samples on all their book pages.

Publishers looking for a more bespoke solution can use the Jellybooks API or work with one of our digital partners such as BookSwarm.

Book samples help create interest in a book and grow the audience.

Samples also help convert book browsers into book buyers for those publishers who run their own direct-to-consumer ecommerce sites.

We help publishers (and bookshops) comply with the European Accessibility Act (EAA) that comes into force in June 202 by making sure our samples comply with and exceed best practice for accessibility. The Jellybooks Cloud Reader natively supports not only blind readers but also for those with colour blindness, poor eyesight, dyslexia, autism and other forms of reading disability.

Email Newsletters

One of the best ways of generating sustained interest in pre-orders, new releases and back catalogue titles is through email newsletters. Blackwell’s uses samples in its Saturday email newsletters with great success and many publishers are adopting the practice and are witnessing increased email open rates and improved engagement.

Social Media

DISCOVERY samples – being delivered as simple URLs – can also be used across social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Threads, and so on. The integrated Open Graph features ensure that a copy of the cover is automatically displayed when embedding a sample link in a social media post.

Advanced users also have the option to customise the Open Graph image with their own image assets for improved engagement and click-through.

Pricing

DISCOVERY Basic

This is our free service tier for publishers wanting to try out DISCOVERY for the first time and those publishers with limited marketing and sales-support budgets.

Features and limitations:

  1. Fully automated distribution of samples to all bookshops and retailers in our network
  2. Manual integration of sample links into the publisher’s website
  3. Cumulative viewing limit of 100 to 250 views per title (depending on category),
  4. manual title withdrawal (email notification to Jellybooks)
  5. annual report sent out by Jellybooks
  6. standard sample size of 10% (min/max rules apply) only, no custom samples
  7. any buy links in the samples need to be created by publishers through the publisher dashboard
  8. after Q2’26 samples will no longer be included in our pre-order program with retailers

DISCOVERY Light

This is our paid service tier for publishers who wish to make maximum use of retailer distribution, but do not wish to use the service for their own website, email newsletter or social media.

Features

  1. Fully automated distribution to all bookshops and retailers in our network
  2. unlimited sample views (no viewing limit)
  3. unlimited number of titles (no title limit – the publisher’s entire catalogue can be enrolled)
  4. automated ONIX updates and programmatic title withdrawal
  5. (by agreement) automated creation of buy buttons at the End of Sample page
  6. (by agreement) monthly summary reports on opens/views by channel
  7. (by agreement) custom sample sizes
  8. Standard customer support

Pricing:

Fee Band Publisher's Sales Annual service fee
(exclusive of VAT)
Band A < £0.25 million £250
Band B £0.25 million – £0.5 million £350
Band C £0.5 million – £1 million £490
Band D £1 million – £5 million £890
Band E £5 million – £10 million £1690
Band F £10 million – £20 million £2490

The service fee increases by £800 for every additional ten million in publisher revenues.

Note: With regards to university presses, academic and professional publishers, only revenue derived from book sales is counted. Revenue from journal sales, testing services and similar is excluded.

DISCOVERY Professional

This is our paid service tier for publishers serious about engaging readers, boosting sales, and supporting a diverse retail ecosystem.

Features:

  1. unlimited sample views (no viewing limit)
  2. unlimited number of titles (no title limit – the publisher’s entire catalogue can be enrolled)
  3. look inside for publisher websites through our API and WordPress/WooCommerce plug-in, either directly or through our partners BookSwarm, supadu, etc.
  4. support for embeddable iframes
  5. automated ONIX updates and programmatic title withdrawal
  6. (by agreement) automated creation of buy buttons at the End of Sample page
  7. (by agreement) monthly summary reports on opens/views by channel
  8. (by agreement) submission of assets that are already samples
  9. (by agreement) submission of Open Access (OA) files that are to be treated as full-length samples
  10. priority customer support
Fee Band Publisher's Sales Annual service fee
(exclusive of VAT)
Band A < £0.25 million £290
Band B £0.25 million – £0.5 million £390
Band C £0.5 million – £1 million £590
Band D £1 million – £5 million £990
Band E £5 million – £10 million £1990
Band F £10 million – £20 million £2990

The service fee increases by £1,000 for every additional ten million in publisher revenues.

Note: With regards to university presses, academic and professional publishers, only revenue derived from book sales is counted.

Discovery Enterprise

This is our paid service tier for publishers who require a bespoke solution.

Features:

  1. unlimited sample views (no viewing limit)
  2. unlimited number of titles (no title limit – the publisher’s entire catalogue can be enrolled)
  3. look inside for publisher websites through our API and WordPress/WooCommerce plug-in either directly or through our partners BookSwarm, supadu, and others; support for Shopify and other ecommerce platforms can be added on request and is subject to a non-recurring engineering fee (NRE)
  4. support for embeddable iframes
  5. automated ONIX updates and programmatic title withdrawal
  6. automated creation of buy buttons at the End of Sample page
  7. monthly summary reports on opens/views by channel, as well as an API to import data into the publisher’s data management system
  8. custom sample generation rules
  9. submission of Open Access (OA) files that are to be treated as full-length samples
  10. support for multi-tier user privileges
  11. Publisher-branded version of the Jellybooks Cloud reader
  12. Support for publisher’s DNS, i.e. all samples use publisher’s domain name
  13. VIP customer support

The fee for this service is tailored to each customer’s requirements and dependent on the number of custom features required.

Asset Submission and Technical Details

Supported formats

  • Re-flowable ePub for novels, poetry, short story collections, narrative non-fiction, chapter books, middle grade (MG) and young adult (YA) fiction and nonfiction.
  • Fixed Layout (FXL) ePub for illustrated children’s books, highly illustrated non-fiction books, graphic novels, comics, manga, etc.
  • MP3 for audiobooks

Asset submission:

  • ePub files, cover images and ONIX meta-data can be sent via Faber factory, Ingram Coresource, Codemantra, Consonance, or Turnaround Services
  • there is also an SFTP path available for those publishers who wish to manage the distribution themselves
  • micro-publishers with a small number of titles can also use our web-based submission portal

Sample Access

  • sample URLs can be retrieved manually via the Jellybooks partner portal,
  • or automatically via our WordPress and WordPress for Woocommerce plug-ins,
  • or via our API

Documentation on the API, including support for modal mode and embedded iframes, can be found here: https://www.jellybooks.com/about/apis/excerpts

Documentation on the WordPress plug-ins is available here: https://www.jellybooks.com/about/plugins/discovery_wordpress_plugin

Jellybooks is an associate member of the following industry associations:

The Jellybooks DISCOVERY service was developed with financial support from Innovate UK and Arts Council England.