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Uncharted symbiosis
There’s still a wealth of untapped opportunity in the relationship between digital platforms and physical bookshops.
Since Readmagine’s inaugural year in 2006, Madrid’s Casa del Lector has hosted the annual week of digital innovation in reading, books and libraries. With invitees from across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia and the US, the gathering pulls in publishers, distributors and retailers to participate in conversations, workshops and keynotes for the exchange of ideas around the process of transformation reading and books. As part of this year’s iteration, Beat Technology was invited to run a sandbox workshop on the benefits and symbioses of print/digital and physical/digital retail.
Beat operates its market-leading retail solutions and direct-to-consumer publisher apps and across 10 European markets and this experience provides insight on consumer behaviours, reading habits and purchase tendencies. Although historically not the norm in western Europe, in other parts of the continent it is common that the publisher may also be a bookshop chain. It’s always seemed to me that the potential convergence of print and digital consumption and retail has some severely underserved potential — now the maturity is there to explore product concepts and marketing ideas for how physical shops can benefit from stronger digital app experiences and how those app user-bases can drive footfall into physical shops.
The sandbox itself was a speed session involving 40 guests from different countries representing varying areas of publishing. It was simply split into two groups tasked with getting creative on two simple statements:
Print and digital don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Physical and digital retail can co-exist and complement.
The ideas generated ranged from the simple to the multi-faceted. Two things that became clear were the multitude of possibilities to be drawn from the data harvested from digital platforms and how actually many ideas from traditional book marketing can be morphed and appropriated for the modern reader.
Imagine a world where readers are incentivised to finish books or complete author canons in return for recognition and reward from their bookshops
Digital platforms are an ongoing golden tap of insight with millions on datasets generated daily. Way beyond sales figures, revenue and the odd email address, there is consumer insight that’s simply not available to traditional retailers or about print book sales – unless the two worlds co-operate.
Imagine a world where readers are incentivised to finish books or complete author canons in return for recognition and reward from their bookshops – even just discounts against promoted individual titles or off the buyer’s total bill in-store. Picture author super-fans being offered exclusive physical products or priority ticket access to exclusive in-shop readings and signings. Too far-fetched? Far from it, our friends at Spotify are a prime example of this. Recognising insight-driven fandom sales is now commonplace. Being upsold T-shirts, exclusive formats and events tickets by my favourite artists is now a perfectly familiar experience to complement my listening habits.
The ante can be upped a level or two higher by introducing super-deluxe print edition books into the mix. Platforms know everything. Their capacity to carve data is unsurpassable. Knowledge on completion rates is base level info, but mix that in with various measures on “enjoyment” factors (speed read, number of titles in a canon completed, purchase history, social shares, time spent etc) and suddenly a platform can predict the purchase or interest likelihood in new products. I know if I’m offered an open-spined, wibalin-bound, gold-leaf, debossed, limited signed edition with exclusive illustrations and notes by my favourite author – and only available because I’m the super-fan, the completist — I’m sold. But here’s the thing, these formats aren’t new—it’s just the manner of marrying the product to a buyer that’s a new opportunity.
At Readmagine, the ideas of these symbiotic benefits flowed in both directions as we considered the passions of the print book buyer and bookshop lover. Much like the loyalty card from your favourite coffee chain, regular book buyers potentially could earn free minutes to listen to audiobooks, or online credit and guest passes for app trials. Such an idea closes the loop for a shop/platform ecosystem allowing benefits to flow in both directions and readers benefits from offers, better recommendations and ease of access to their reading libraries.
Furthermore, those bookshops recognising the potential of a robust digital presence can also look way beyond the reading and listening experiences and extend their customer relationships by including functions such nearest shop locators and stock checkers.
The enthusiasm for the topic was clear, the desire from retailers evident and the abilities of digital platforms to facilitate the ideas, abundantly clear. A wealth of creative concepts was generated in just 45 minutes.The ideas were practical, affordable and easily implementable. We know the problems and the opportunities, and seemingly, we know some solutions. The only question remaining was: what’s stopping us?
