Embeddable Stores - First Alpha of 2012

Part of the joy of having a blog is gratitously testing alpha code, and then sometimes inflicting it on my readers.

Like this: Mini-site and bundle of joy.

Ok, my thought processes weren't exactly enlightened (along the lines of "Why does Amazon have embeddable stores and not Smashwords?") but the end result looks kind of OK.

Why is it an alpha? The print and audio book links don't work. The Amazon links are dead, and may be removed - I'm not sure how Smashwords feels about Amazon at the moment. There needs to be a version for Smashwords users who don't apply for premium distribution. The site doesn't collapse width-wise gracefully for smaller blogs...

The version here is the minisite, not the embeddable version. Firefox, for example, will break it where it is embedded in this blog, due to width.

On the other hand, it looks pretty cool. And there isn't currently an alternative.

Why do I think it's needed?
- To stop authors losing sales from readers who aren't smashwords users, but are on Sony/B&N etc.
- Because not everyone is web savvy enough to have a homepage, or webspace.
- To give an alternate URL. I'll probably get shot for this one, but Smashwords adult content means it is blocked at many of the places I've worked, and through child-safe filters. This is a problem for children's and YA authors, as well as anyone after sales from lunchbreak readers. In the US this stuff may be deemed OK for 13-year-olds, but in the UK it's strictly eighteen-plus and the responsibility is on the provider to enforce it. Yes, this would mean registering a family-friendly URL for the minisites. (Our hoster's rules are equally strict on this, so we don't have a lot of choice.)

In practice if there is a lot of interest, this would be more likely to become a directory of family-friendly Smashwords books rather than an ecommerce store. All this depends entirely on whether anyone else wants to use it, and if anyone is interested.

Testing, feedback, or general comments on the alpha all very welcome here.