The Hachette Book Group is partnering with Gumroad, an e-commerce venture that enables creators to sell content via social media, to sell print books by Amanda Palmer, Chris Hadfield and The Onion.
Gumroad is a “native commerce” venture, meaning a platform that enables artists of all kinds to send out links with buy buttons embedded in their tweets and Facebook posts. The Hachette push will launch on December 11, with buy links sent out via Twitter for Palmer's The Art of Asking, Hadfield's You Are Here, and The Onion's The Onion Magazine: The Iconic Covers That Transformed an Undeserving World.
The push is part of a promotion that will make these titles available for sale for a limited time in limited quantities. Each title sold will also come with a special bonus for customers. Palmer’s book, for example, will include a manuscript page with notes by, among others, her husband, novelist Neil Gaiman. This effort with Hachette marks Gumroad’s first partnership with a major book publisher.
A Hachette spokesperson said that, if successful, the program will be expanded.
Sahil Lavingia, founder and CEO of Gumroad, said, his company has been "impressed by Hachette’s commitment to exploring new opportunities for their authors to make money, and engage directly with readers through social commerce.”
Michael Pietsch, CEO of Hachette Book Group, said: “With so much of our book marketing done socially now, in-stream Twitter purchasing is a natural next step. Gumroad’s success working with music labels and artists to enable sales to fans, and their partnership with Twitter, put them at the forefront of social media commerce.”
