Glaister returns to trade with launch of book recommendation website Litalist

Seni Glaister (pictured below), the co-founder and former chief executive of The Book People, is to return to the book business in 2022 with the launch of the Litalist, a peer-to-peer book recommendations website aiming to “improve discoverability, broaden accessibility and enhance the financial outlook of authors and booksellers alike”.

The site will use machine learning to capture the “emotional quotient” of a book based on reader recommendations, and will enable booksellers to feature and sell books, earning 92% of the fee paid for each title sold, with this fee waived for early adopters. Over time, the site will aggregate reading habits to better inform publishers, booksellers and authors. Glaister said the site’s aim was to “generate that word-of-mouth feeling you get around books, [the feeling] that I miss as a former bookseller”. The site will not feature long-form reviews, but readers can use Litalist to record how a book made them feel and when they read it.

Glaister, who made her reputation in the trade at The Book People, which sold books to people in their workplaces, as well as online and through catalogues, said her intention was not to become a bookseller but to push readers into bookshops. The site will launch in January with a consumer roll-out, and Glaister is encouraging high street booksellers to sign up ahead of that and begin putting their catalogues online. One bookshop per county will be able to use Litalist free of charge with no strings, no catches, no limitation on time or volume, said Glaister.

“The best possible way to be sold a book is in a bookshop,” Glaister told The Bookseller. “I wanted something to physically provide footfall for shops, via click and collect locally; I also wanted to give tech-shy booksellers the easiest possible platform to dip their toes into online. It doesn’t work without bookshop partners, otherwise I will end up doing the bookselling, which isn’t the idea. I want as big a network of booksellers as possible.”

Glaister said she had been mulling over how to use the social buzz around books to better drive book sales, and push customers into bookshops. “I’ve built the platform that I would want for myself, both as a reader and an author. It’s somewhere I can confidently recommend books that I feel passionate about, and I can discover new books that are recommended to me by like-minded people. And with the help of its shoppable shelves, I can buy books locally and ethically.

“One of the fundamental things I wanted to address was discoverability and accessibility. The more it gets handled by the big players, [the more] it becomes a funnel, and then the funnel becomes a bottleneck. I was still only seeing the same books recommended through social, [and] I’ve never effectively been sold a book that way.” She said the site would enable booksellers to promote their own stock, showcase staff picks, and promote exclusive or signed editions. The short-term goal is to get 5,000 users, or “Litalisters”—a “tiny fraction” of the target, according to Glaister.

The Book People was sold in 2014 and Glaister left in 2015, with the business closing in 2020. Glaister has since launched WeFiFo, an online supper club that connects cooks and diners. While sales at The Book People had been driven, at least partly, through price promotion, Glaister stressed the new site was “not a price-driven exercise”. She said: “Our search will not return books in order of price, but location.”

On returning to bookselling, Glaister said: “A few people have said I’m the poacher turned gamekeeper, but I don’t really get that. I was always on the side of the reader, definitely. We were about taking books into places where typical book buyers were not hanging out. [This is] not dissimilar to what I’ve always done: making the good stuff accessible to a wider audience, not just keeping it for the few.”

Anyone can register to sell books with Litalist but the site will give professional status only to verified bookshops. Users will also be able to buy books direct from Litalist with orders supplied by Gardners.

Anyone that wants to join as a bookseller can email booksellers@litalist.com or any other enquiries to seni@litalist.com.