5 Digital tools for the hard book industry

We need to give the hard book industry its digital letters. Entering the third millennium for bookstores wasn’t easy, and many did predict their decline facing e-commerce, e-books, e-readers… and pretty much e-everything. Somehow, a lot of them are still there, e-readers’ sales never skyrocketed, and books influencers are reaching millions of followers. Thus, even if Barnes & Noble turnover is decreasing since the early 2010s, a shy potential is still hiding back there, behind TVs and series streaming servers. However, through screens as well, some website and apps are currently rising, they are maybe just meant to connect people around the theme of book and reading, but we might see coming through them a kind of revival of book consumption. So here, for the use of book Writers, Readers and Sellers, are five digital tools focusing on literature or allowing its promotion.

1- Goodreads

Goodreads is leading the position in terms of books focused social media. There you can write or consult a book recommendation, quotations, reviews… But mostly, you can make a list of all the book you did read, of all the books you are currently reading, and of all the books you want to read. And you can update page per page your progress on your reading, if you need social pressure to get done with your books this might be an even better tool for you. Other features include browsing through genres, trends and new releases, as well as interacting with people and groups of people about your last reading, or favorite author… It is owned by Amazon, and it sometimes offers the possibility to redirect to its platform to buy the books, which is apparently not an advantage for bookstores, but Goodreads is overall a good tool for encouraging people to reading thanks to its strong social features.

2- Litsy

Litsy is a literary Insagram. Users post pictures of what they read, comments discuss about the book in the picture, people even share how they read books. Some are using audio books, some sharing the walking journey they took with the book… You got it, it is indeed about interacting about books, but mostly interesting to share the lifestyle. Where and how do you read? In what settings?

It is interesting for inspiring people, giving them the willingness to get a book and read it in a similar setting. Bookstores can create an account, and use posts and hashtags to promote themselves, via gaining followers and so potential customers. Writers can follow the trends, create an account and promote their own publications. 

3- Instagram

Instagram is not literary focused you will say, but influencers such as Reese Witherspoon’s Reese’s Book Club has 1.4M followers, @bookofthemonth has 726K followers, @goodreads 428K followers, @epicreads 661K… and so on. Authors can also brand themselves there, Stephen King has 1.5M followers. Bookstore can as well, Barnes & Noble reached 568K followers. Finally, Bookstagram, which means posting on Instagram only focusing on books consumption, is a real phenomenon.

Thus, it is definitely a place of high potential for publishers, authors, and sellers to brand themselves, gain visibility and thus increase selling.

4- Readfeed

Readfeed is pretty similar to Litsy, but as it is newer, fewer people are using in it. Thus, it is yet missing the network effect that would bring more and more users. However, the appearance looks better, the interface is more user-friendly and instinctive. So it looks great and has a lot of potential, but time will tell if users come.

Yet, it stills allow any reader or writer to have insights of what is going on in the reading sphere, what is popular and what is not, and finally offer a additional way of advertising.

5- Gleeph

Gleeph is similar to Goodreads but in a simplified way. Also, it is French and only available in France yet. Thus, it is attracting mostly people from this country and might be more relevant for sellers to target this market through this app. Indeed, tools that I listed before are mostly popular with English-speaking countries, but France lacked his book reader app. That’s why Gleeph is becoming popular there and will soon be an interesting tool to target specifically French readers.

Finally, an interesting feature of this app is that you can directly place your order to your favorite bookstore!