A New Chapter in Bookselling: Social Networking Sites By Frank Fortunato
June 24, 2008
Back in 1999, Internet sales accounted for just 5.45 percent of all books sold in the United States, the number grew to 7 percent by 2001, then "stabilized" at 10-12 percent of the total market by 2004, according to analysis by CL King Associated quoted in the New York Times. Since then the market "destabilized" in an upward spiral to the point that Bowkers Pub Track, quoted in Publisher's Weekly, estimated that a full 20 percent of all U. S. book sales in 2007 occurred on the Internet.
While this still leaves 80 percent of book sales occurring elsewhere, (chain and independent brick and mortar stores, live auctions, flea markets, etc.,) the online numbers are formidable: from the $477 million online gross at Barnes & Noble to the $4.63 billion in 2007 sales for Amazon Media, (including books, music and DVDs). Add to this eBay and the other dozen Internet book-selling auction sites, the approximately 20 U. S. and international multi-dealer listing services and the thousands of individual booksellers maintaining their own Web sites, and you have a robust and complicated market.
In fact, a recent Neilsen survey quoted by the BBC indicates that more books are sold on the Internet than any other product. As of early 2008, according to Neilsen, 41 percent of all Internet users have bought books online, a number that is expected to grow going forward.
The success of Internet book selling over the past eight years has exponentially increased the numbers of booksellers and books for sale. To give a sense of the current glut, a recent search for the Da Vinci Code turned up 144 used copies on Amazon, 377 on eBay, and 729 for sale on the Advanced Book Exchange.
The ferocious competition for the book buying dollar has required sellers to be on the constant lookout for an edge. Currently everyone from small to mega-volume online booksellers are compelled to list their stock on multiple fee-based listing services, and most also sell books in the eBay auction and Store formats. Many maintain their own Web stores.
Still, market competition is such that booksellers are constantly looking elsewhere for fresh venues. Some of the latest "elseswhere" sources — and part of a growing trend — are social networking sites, and for good reason.
Online Book selling Meets Social Networking
Simultaneous to the expanding book market has been the explosive growth of social networking sites. While there is controversy regarding the return-on-investment value of social media traffic to pay-per-click advertisers, there is no debate regarding the popularity of Web sites such as MySpace, FaceBook, Bebo, Digg and others. Last August, MySpace alone claimed 174 million members spending an average of over 30 minutes dwelling on the site.
Companies and individual entrepreneurs, including authors, have been establishing their presence on MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube and the rest for years, but book lovers? This begs the question: is social networking and book reading compatible? After all, book reading is a solitary experience, antisocial by definition.
A clue came when imeem, an art, music and pop culture site, was among the fastest growing social media sites in 2007. Another might be seen in the fact that the Phoenix Mars Lander, a spacecraft, days after its successful landing on Mars, earned 9,636 "friends" on Twitter, a micro blogging site to which it sends "tweets" (through a human intermediary we trust,) on its latest romps on Mars. The answer is that book lovers, like most other niche groups, have taken to social networking sites in a big way, in what you could call online book clubs, with booksellers following.
The New Players, the Old Favorites
On May 19, 2008, Bookrabbit.com launched claiming to be the first book selling Web site to put social networking at its core. Born out of a chain of bookstores in the U. K., Bookrabbit is an online bookshop with the stated aim of taking on Amazon, (a formidable goal being that Amazon has 85 percent of the online book market in the U. K. ) "Amazon has no soul," Bookrabbit's CEO Charles Denton said in an interview in FT.com, "it's an efficient book buying service, but there is no community feel." With a staff of 16 at its headquarters in Surrey, and two brick-and-mortar stores, Denton says Bookrabbit will introduce readers to books they did not know existed by personal recommendations from other members rather than computer-driven algorithms. Users can post photos of their bookshelves, view videos by hundreds of authors, meet readers with similar tastes, and — buy books.
Bookrabbit registered over 1,000 users in its first two days, has a widget that allows users to download extracts from Random House books, and plans to launch a niche rival to eBay Auctions, no less.
While Bookrabbit may be the newest site to combine selling and social networking, there are other book-lover sites that are extremely popular that focus more on community than commerce. Still, there are links to online stores, so sellers can register, join in on the discussion, and offer their URL so interested readers could find their Web shops.
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