On the heels of a nasty dispute with Amazon over the sales of e-books, Hachette is cultivating the growth of a new online bookseller: Twitter. Over the course of the month, the pubisher will use Twitter's new "buy button" to sell a limited number of books by musician Amanda Palmer, astronaut Chris Hadfield, and the writers at the Onion. The titles sold over Twitter will come packaged with limited-edition souvenirs, like a signed manuscript page for Palmer's book.
Hachette is the first book publisher to begin using Twitter's as a retail platform, and the limited effort reflects a wider desire to turn social networks into shopping sites. Both Facebook and Twitter are experimenting with buttons that allow users to make purchases directly from their sites, although neither company was able to ramp up for a full-scale launch in time for this holiday season. Twitter's investors, in particular, have been anxious for the company to develop new ways to make money. The makers of books, music and other products with highly-developed fans are dying for social media buy buttons to reach the mainstream.
Anything related to selling books online will inevitably be seen through the prism of Amazon. "I'm not a fan of the idea that Amazon has a stranglehold on any one industry," says Palmer, a singer and performer whose book, The Art of Asking, is currently out of stock on the site. "Giving people an alternative to Amazon is rewarding." Hachette's senior vice president for marketing strategy, Heather Fain, said that the publisher is interested in developing new ways to connect with customers but declined to address Amazon directly.
Major publishers have been looking for ways around Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos for years. Hachette was part of an attempt in 2011 to create an alternative to Amazon for books, a website called Bookish. But the site wasn't launched until 2013 and failed to gain much traction before being sold off in January.
Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of Idea Logical Company, a consultant to publishers, is skeptical that bypassing online stores to sell directly to consumers is a realistic goal. Amazon has come to dominate the book market because people like it. "There's no customer saying, 'Can you replace these guys, they're driving me crazy and they stink,'" says Shatzkin. "There's no customer base to woo away." But this might not hold up when talking about the fans of authors like those that Hachette has picked for its Twitter test. Palmer and Hadfield each have over a million followers on the micro-blogging service, while the Onion has 6.6 million.
Hachette isn't dealing directly with Twitter. Instead, the publisher works with a startup called Gumroad that helping Twitter develop the buy-button pilot. Gumroad also gives artists, musicians, and others tools to sell product directly to consumers from their personal websites. Ryan Gelk of Gumroad, who negotiated the deal, says that content companies stand to make more money through social media because the cost structure is favorable. Gumroad takes a five percent commission plus $0.25 per sale, and Hachette also has to pay a separate fulfillment company to ship books. (Hachette's Fain declined to say whether the publisher's margins would be better selling through social media.)
Gumroad has already gained traction among musicians. Eminem, Wiz Khalifa, and Girl Talk have all used the site to sell directly to fans, and the company has worked with major record labels as well. There's a certain irony to the idea that publishers and music labels are adopting a tool established in part as a way around the traditional gatekeepers of the media industry. Palmer says that large media companies are often at a loss at how to capitalize on the expansive social media prowess of the artists they want to promote. "You can be an artist with broad social reach," she says, "but if your corporation or parent company doesn't know how to leverage it, it's useless."
