Publisher’s Guide to Jellybooks DISCOVERY

peek-inside book samples for better book discovery

The Jellybooks DISCOVERY platform offers publishers the opportunity to improve book discovery. The platform provides high-street bookshops and independent retailers with online book excerpts and audiobook snippets from participating publishers either as web modals or as links. This book preview service rivals and exceeds Amazon’s look-inside feature.

The platform also provides publishers with an opportunity to enrich their own product pages with an accessible “click & read” solution, which can also be used for social media marketing, to improve the customer journey from discovery to purchase.

Discovery samples are distributed from publication date onwards and are tailored by Jellybooks to the requirements of each bookshop, retailer, publisher or partner with customised purchase paths (buy buttons) unique to each.

The platform was developed by Jellybooks in partnership with UK bookshop chain Blackwell’s and with financial support by the UK government through Innovate UK, the UK’s Innovation agency.

The platforms helps independent and chain bookshops to level up technologically, strengthens the UK high street, and creates a more diverse ecosystem for book buying by providing all bookshops with best-in class digital tools for merchandising books.

The service supports books across a range of formats including narrative, illustrated and audio titles providing access to each sample, excerpt or audio snippet via a URL linked to the Jellybooks Cloud Reader. It has been designed with accessibility in mind to ensure no reader is left behind

Top Ten Benefits and Features of the Jellybooks DISCOVERY service for publishers

1 - Boost Your Book Sales

Product pages with book samples, excerpts or snippets that give readers the option to look inside the book make it more likely that user will buy the book.

2 - Support a Diverse Retail Ecosystem

Jellybooks DISCOVERY offers a best-in-class digital service for local, regional and national booksellers providing access to digital samples for online marketing and web pages, with look-inside and in-store QR-code functionality.

3 - Improved Visibility across Trade Channels

Improve visibility and discoverability of your titles at independent and chain retailers such as Blackwell’s and gain insights into the user journey. A list of participating retailers can be found here.

4 - Ideal for Audience Development and Direct to Consumer Marketing

DISCOVERY is an ideal tool to employ in reader marketing and direct to consumer campaigns. Engage readers more deeply on your website or product pages and use in your email and social media campaigns. All samples have customisable buy buttons pre-populated with links to participating retailers.

5 - Better Author Support

DISCOVERY is easy to use and can be employed by authors to engage their followers with previews on homepages, blogs and as part of their social media outreach. Instead of repeatedly prompting readers to “buy my book”, they can nudge followers into sampling the book, with a buy button to all major retailers discreetly positioned at the end of the sample.

6 - Unified Distribution Platform for Multiple Content Formats

The platform supports multiple formats including narrative, illustrated and audio titles using industry standard content formats: ePUB, ePUB FXL and MP3.

7 - Easy-to-use and Accessible

Jellybooks DISCOVERY is based on the Jellybooks Cloud Reader offering “click & read” access to books. Built for speed to cater to even the most impatient user, the platform is designed for exploring content with ease.

8 - Affordable and Excellent ROI

With prices starting from as low as three pounds per title, publishers can afford to use the DISCOVERY service for their entire front- and backlist. Publishers just need to sell handful of additional copies of a title each year to generate a positive return on investment (ROI).

9 - Cross-industry Solution

Jellybooks DISCOVERY is a cross-industry solution to address the needs of both publishers and retailers.

10 - Support for Accessibility

Jellybooks DISCOVERY supports the needs of a diverse group of users whether sight impaired, dyslexic or other special needs.

Features and Benefits of the DISCOVERY Service

Reader Features and Benefits

Try before you buy – consumers can explore content before making a purchase.
One-click access to sample chapters, excerpts and snippets.
Instant and personal access, similar to playing a YouTube video, where play starts instantly with no files to download, no app to install, and no registration required.
All the accessibility and user benefits of ePUB including variable fonts and night/day mode, without the drawbacks of static PDF and HTML based excerpts and snippets.
Browser-based reading system leveraging the Jellybooks Cloud Reader.
Accessible on any browser-enabled device such as smartphones, tablets, PCs, laptops, Internet kiosks, and similar.
Supports narrative books (re-flowable ePub), illustrated books (fixed layout ePub) and audiobooks (MP3).

Marketing Benefits of Jellybooks DISCOVERY for Publishers

Samples, excerpts and snippets boost book sales.
Improve sales of key titles across participating retailers, both in-store and online.
Support a diverse retail ecosystem.
Improve discoverability and demand on your own product pages and across your email and social media marketing efforts.

Workflow Benefits for Publishers

A single platform to deploy in-house and through retail channels.
Cloud-based interface supporting remote working.
API-based content ingestion both direct and via digital asset distributors (Ingram Coresource and others) for large- and medium-sized publishers and a simple, easy-to-upload portal for small and micro publishers.
An easy-to-use tool for authors to use in their own social media and direct-to-reader activities.

Cost Benefits for Publishers

A combined solution for in-house and external use.
Affordable with prices from two to ten pounds per file, depending on tier.
Highly flexible — use for your entire front-and back-catalogue or just a selection of your lead titles.
Requires only a small number of incremental sales per year to generate a return-on-investment (ROI).
No long-term lock-in, flexible agreements based on quarterly or annual contracts.
Free trial for first ten titles.

Audience Insight Benefits for Publishers

Track how often samples are being viewed, as well as reader engagement with those samples.
Check the sampling frequency and conversion effectiveness of your titles.

Technical Details for Jellybooks DISCOVERY

Click & Read

The Jellybooks Cloud Reader is a one click and start reading the ebook solution. It does not require the user to install any app and requires no files to be downloaded. Samples are accessible at the click of a button on almost any browser-enabled device supporting the latest browser specifications (we support the last two generation of all major browsers, such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.).

Supported Formats

The Jellybooks DISCOVERY platform supports narrative books, illustrated books and audiobooks.

Accessibility Support

The Jellybooks DISCOVERY service leverages the Jellybooks Cloud Reader and with its comprehensive range of inbuilt accessibility features.

Definition of Sample

A Jellybooks DISCOVERY sample is defined as an extract developed from a narrative, illustrated or audio title with sample chapters representing the first 10% by word count in narrative books, page count in illustrated books or playback duration in audiobooks.

Reader Registration

Readers can sample, read or listen to excerpts and snippets anonymously. We use a randomly generated session ID to enable the recording of user’s (anonymous) reading data whilst ensuring the integrity of reading sessions and associated reading data. For more detail, see our privacy and data processing policies.

As part of our “read later” feature, readers have the option to register or sign-in to add a sample to their cloud library. This allows readers to store and retrieve samples across retailers and publishers providing readers with a single repository of all the books they have been sampling (their personal cloud library).

Jellybooks DISCOVERY Pricing

Basic Plan

£10 per month
10 titles included (can be front- or back-list)
£1 per month for every additional title enrolled

Value Plans

Plan	XS	S	M	L	XL	Enterprise
Monthly service fee	£39	£59	£99	£149	£249	Bespoke
Title allowance¹	50	100	250	500	1000	> 1000
Fee per extra title²	£1	£0.90	£0.80	£0.70	£0.60	TBA
¹ Basic title allowance includes a maximum of 20% front list – that is titles published in past 24 months.
² The fee is per month - additional allowance purchased can be back or front list.

Key Terms regarding Jellybooks DISCOVERY

Publishers paying upfront for one year (annual plan) will receive two months free service, i.e. the S Plan is £590 per year and the S Plan with 10 extra titles is £680 per year (£590 + £90).

All plans include retailer and bookshop distribution, use of online samples for publishers own website, SMART links, and an unlimited number of readers.

The number of titles is derived from the number of unique ebook files submitted. If the hardback and paperback are represented by the same file with the same cover then that counts as one single title, but if separate (ebook) files are submitted for hardback and paperback (for example because of a cover change) then this counts as two files.

Samples are distributed from publication date onwards only. For pre-publication distribution use the Jellybooks PREVIEW service instead.

All prices are exclusive of VAT.

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.