BuzzFeed News is partnering with Amazon to launch a book club as part of a push to create new revenue streams

BuzzFeed

• BuzzFeed News is launching a book club in its continuing bid to diversify its revenue streams.
• The "BuzzFeed Book Club" entails access to an exclusive newsletter, a closed Facebook group, and discounts on books for members.
• BuzzFeed News will monetize the book club with affiliate partnerships it is inking with various partners.

BuzzFeed News is starting a new chapter in its bid to diversify its revenue streams - literally.

The digital publisher is launching a book club in November, offering its readers a dedicated space for reading and discovering new books together, while it tries to figure out a new way of generating revenue in line with its editorial perspective.

The "BuzzFeed Book Club" entails access to an exclusive newsletter as well as a closed Facebook group, essentially serving as a virtual book club, where members can discuss the book of the month as well as get access to events with authors. Members will also receive exclusive discounts both on the book of the month and other top-selling 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 partnerships it is inking with various partners. The launch partner of the BuzzFeed Book Club is Amazon and the first month's book will be Family Trust by Kathy Wang.

The book club was a natural next step, said BuzzFeed Books Editor Arianna Rebolini, and is catered at the highly engaged audience of BuzzFeed News' books section. The BuzzFeed Books newsletter, for instance, has over 160,000 subscribers already, who are some of the most engaged readers of BuzzFeed News and respond regularly to surveys.

Additionally, BuzzFeed Books also has more than 1.2 million followers on its Facebook page, and 145,000 followers 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, for example, it embraced programmatic advertising after eschewing it for years. More recently, it began piloting a membership model based on soliciting donations from readers.

BuzzFeed Books worked closely in conjunction 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," said BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Ben Smith. "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 The Wirecutter for $30 million last year to that end, 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," said Janet Levine, managing director of Invention+ at Mindshare North America. "That said, there's always challenges for publishers when they push outside their main proposition."

For Levine, BuzzFeed's partnership with Amazon in particular will be very helpful in helping the publisher garner more learnings in the e-commerce space.

"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 whole range of metrics, including clickthrough rates on the newsletter as well as 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.