Target Partners with Librify to Create Virtual Book Clubs

Chelsea Handler signs the Target exclusive edition of her newly released book “Uganda Be Kidding Me” for a crowd of fans at Westwood City Target on March 10, 2014 in Westwood, California. (Photo: Getty Images)

Target wants to help host your book club — online.

As the retailer works to build a more competitive e-commerce experience, it’s partnering with a startup e-book subscription service called Librify to give customers an online platform for buying, sharing, and discussing their favorite books.

The official launch is still several months off, but the announcement comes ahead of BookExpo in New York City this week, the biggest event of the year for the publishing industry.

Librify, which started beta testing with select users in March, offers a social-subscription service for e-books. For $8.99 a month, you get access to a recommended book each month, and a 10%-20% discount on all other e-books. Librify has more than 500,000 titles available for purchase so far — that’s about half of what Amazon offers through the Kindle.

But Librify also offers a social platform built around the idea of creating a virtual book club-type experience. Users can create bookshelves based on their favorite categories, such as beach reads or classics. Signing up for the service through Facebook alerts users to which of their friends are also on Librify; they can follow their friends’ bookshelves or copy those bookshelves and build on them with their own picks. And you can still access these features if you don’t opt for the subscription.

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SOURCE: Hadley Malcolm
USA TODAY