Embeddable store Update - Publisher version

Status: Alpha (re-version)
Method: Iframe
Type: Embeddable Store (Publisher)
Link: http://www.raggedangel.net/smashwords-tools/booksite/index.phpRemoved 21/02/2012. Please view current version

There is a now a second version of the Embeddable Store on the alpha page. While many of the features are still in development, this is now a tweaked version suitable for publishers.

The changes are purely cosmetic - exchanging "Author" for "Publisher" and rewording certains sections and links to hit a publisher's page not an author's - but it should work better than the existing one for publishers with multi-author accounts.

It still uses the author= parameter for the account name, even though it's actually accepting a publisher's account. This is to speed development, and let us implement revisions and fixes between the two versions more easily.

New Widget - Advanced Single Book Widget

Status: In Alpha
Method: Iframe
Type: Single Book detailed display
Link: http://www.smashingreads.com/widget_advsinglebook.php

A more complex single book widget, meant for premium distribution users, which includes:

• A short description of the book
• A sample of the book (If the user offers more than 5 pages as a sample on Smashwords - if not a buy link shows)
• Buy links to various premium distribution locations
  as well as the standard cover, title, and author.

Price and Rating are not mentioned, as they may vary across retailers.

While there may be undiscovered bugs with this, it works for the books we've tested it on. It is in alpha because it can currently appear odd if the user resizes text in some browsers.

Embeddable Bookstore

Status: In Alpha
Method: Iframes
Type: Pseudo bookstore
Link: http://www.smashingreads.com/int_embedstore.php

• Meant to be an embeddable "bookstore" (actually a link to external bookstores where the book can be found) for use with blogs and other user created sites.
• Designed to be expandable between 350 and 600 pixels, it can go beyond these limits but won't look so good.
• The third party links are currently "best guess" using the book data from Smashwords. As we cannot store data, this needs refining.

Our target was to lead the user from the featured books to the booklist to the author (and their social presence) to the bookstores. Each mention of a book brings up a page with the third party links to purchase that book.

Concerns: Special characters in user data, or tags, which may break the data feed.
Authors with over twenty books in the feed, where the system may slow (a cap is under consideration).

Constraints:
We can't store data, so this needs to be stand alone. This places a strict limit on how much customisation we can offer.
This is also why no referral links are embedded - there are too many third party merchants to handle them all.

As always any volunteers to test it, or general feedback, is useful.

 

About this widget

Currently Live at:
http://vhfolland.blogspot.com/p/bookstore.html