
Physical Books Are a Hit with Digital Natives
For all the handwringing about how social media is chipping away at our mental health, digital social platforms are driving at least one type of analog media: physical books. As in the kind, where you flip actual pages by lamp light. No scrolling. No clicking. Just honest-to-God printed words on paper.
And the delicious irony of what drives the popularity of physical books among younger readers is that they post photos of the books they are reading on places like Instagram and TikTok to bolster their bookworm creds, according to Barbara Hagen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at ThriftBooks, whose tagline is “Read more, spend less.”
Established in 2003, the company bills itself as “the world’s largest online independent used book seller.” It is also privately held, which is why Hagen could not clarify “largest” based on number of customers.
But suffice to say, its pool of customers is big enough that ThriftBooks recently added a top-tier loyalty program, Literati Elite, to its ReadingRewards® program. Members can redeem points earned for free books. Hagen sat down with StreetFight to discuss why the joys of reading physical books never went away.
What was the impetus behind starting a reading rewards program and adding this newest tier?
ReadingRewards® rewards was started as a way to give back to our customers. We’re obsessive about books, and we want to read as many as we can. And one of the great things about ReadingRewards® is you earn points, and those points can be redeemed for books. Book lovers like to explore. Maybe a new genre, a new author. It’s a low-risk way for them to expand their repertoire of reading. A free book is a great way for us to connect with our customers. Who doesn’t love free books?
Where does ThriftBooks get its supply for resale?
We have partnerships with libraries across the country. When they weed through their books, we sell those on our site and participating libraries get a percentage of the profit, which allows them to go back and purchase new books. It’s great to have this long-term relationship with libraries, to take books off their hands and then give them some money. You can donate your books at Goodwill where we buy those by the pound. We don’t know what we’re getting. We just buy a big loads of books.
We have five processing centers across the U.S. that separate the books and figure out which ones are sellable and in good condition.
What are some of the most popular titles that ThriftBooks is moving out to customers?
Bestsellers are always popular, but we also do really well with just the classics, like 1984, The Outsiders, The Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter. Those classics are still very popular. Hunger Games and Harry Potter have the strongest staying power.
Can you talk a little bit about any technology that ThriftBooks uses to manage its loyalty program?
We manage it all in-house. That allows us to have more flexibility on developing the features and offerings our customers will like. We survey customers to try to understand what they’re interested in, what would be of value to them. Then we’re able to build it ourselves. We’re not limited by any off-the-shelf software.
We focus on personalization. The more we learn about you through your reading habits and what you share with us, the better–no matter where you are. The experience you may have shopping on the site is much different from my experience shopping on site because we have different reading habits and behaviors and different favorite authors we each follow. For our readers, discovery is really important. We have 19 million titles in our catalog.
What are you finding that that resonates with younger people in terms of physical books?
The pandemic was a game changer for the younger audience [18-34], connecting with each other on social media and the whole Booktalk space and Bookstagram. Romantasy [romantic fantasy] has been a real big genre for that younger audience. Especially authors like Rebecca Yarros [Iron Flame] and Sarah J. Maas [Throne of Glass]. Those are big thick, 800-to-1,000-page books. That that these younger audiences are devouring them is a beautiful thing to see.
Are you able to segment literary tastes by region in the US?
We do something called Books by State once a year. It usually comes out around the first quarter. So we take the prior year’s data. We segment what were the top books by state. It’s really interesting to see how that resonates with people. We don’t go deep into all of them. But you can get a sense for some of the regional differences. It’s really fun to dig into this data.
How does social media support physical book reading?
Booktalk is section of TikTok with people out there posting, sharing their favorite books. We have a presence there. We share some recommendations and book-related memes with audiences. We’re getting towards the end of the year. People may be celebrating the books that they’ve read this year, or as we head into 2025, what’s on their reading list. It’s just a great little space where you can post some videos or show off your bookshelves and kind of brag a little bit about books that you’ve read. The social space has been great to get this younger audience really enjoying printed books. There’s a lot of special editions that have painted edges on the physical books that make it you want to show that off on your bookcase.