- BuzzFeed News is launching a book club in its continuing bid to diversify its revenue streams.
- The BuzzFeed Book Club offers members access to an exclusive newsletter, a closed Facebook group, and discounts on books.
- BuzzFeed News says it will monetize the book club with affiliate partnerships.
BuzzFeed News is starting a new chapter in its bid to diversify its revenue streams.
The digital publisher is launching a book club in November, offering members a dedicated place for reading and discovering new books while it tries to figure out a new way of generating revenue in line with its editorial perspective.
The BuzzFeed Book Club offers access to an exclusive newsletter and a closed Facebook group, essentially serving as a virtual book club, where members can discuss the book of the month and get access to events with authors. Members will receive exclusive discounts on the book of the month and other titles. There is no membership fee to become a member, at least for now.
What's in it for BuzzFeed News? The publisher will get a cut of the sale whenever a reader clicks through and purchases a book through its newsletter or its social platforms, thanks to affiliate relationships it is inking with various partners. Amazon is the launch partner; the first month's book will be "Family Trust" by Kathy Wang.
The book club was a natural next step, BuzzFeed Books editor Arianna Rebolini said, and it is catered at the highly engaged audience of BuzzFeed News' books section. The BuzzFeed Books newsletter, for instance, has 160,000 subscribers, who are some of the most engaged readers of BuzzFeed News and respond regularly to surveys.
BuzzFeed Books has more than 1.2 million followers on Facebook and 145,000 on Twitter.
"Our books audience is very enthusiastic and eager, so a club has made sense for a while," she told Business Insider. "And from a business standpoint, it benefits both the members and us — showing revenue coming in lets us prove that books coverage is worthwhile."
The move comes as the publisher looks to diversify and grow its revenue streams. Over the years, BuzzFeed has expanded from a website into distributed video, studio development, and, steadily, e-commerce.
In 2018, it embraced programmatic advertising after eschewing it for years. More recently, it began piloting a membership model based on soliciting donations from readers. And just today, its health and wellness brand Goodful announced a partnership with Macy's to release a line of home products.
BuzzFeed Books worked closely with its commerce team, led by Ben Kaufman, to develop the book club. Kaufman's team takes the lead on everything from licensing deals, such as the Tasty kitchenware line at Walmart, to merchandize based on hit BuzzFeed shows like "Unsolved" and "Worth It." BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti has listed commerce among the revenue streams he wants to focus on growing as BuzzFeed moves away from socially distributed branded content.
"BuzzFeed News is building a business for the long term in line with our journalism," BuzzFeed News editor in chief Ben Smith said. "We're excited to be working with our commerce team to lower the barrier of entry for members, while adding a new revenue stream for News."
At the same time, affiliate marketing has become a major staple for most digital-media companies. The New York Times purchased Wirecutter for $30 million last year, hoping to cash in on the site's niche audience and affiliate revenue.
"It's always encouraging — and, frankly, important — to see publishers diversify their offerings," Janet Levine, managing director of Invention+ at Mindshare North America, added. "That said, there's always challenges for publishers when they push outside their main proposition."
Levine said BuzzFeed's partnership with Amazon would help it learn more about e-commerce.
"The big win will be if Amazon shares deeper audience data as part of the partnership. That's something that Amazon’s partners would love, and it could help BuzzFeed build richer audience profiles," she said.
The BuzzFeed Books team will be tracking a variety of metrics, including click-through rates on the newsletter and engagement on the Facebook Group.
Depending on how it takes off, charging a membership fee is not off the table either.
"There is certainly a world in which we would look to taking it to a higher level with a membership fee," Rebolini said.
