Text "Harry"; Get Book
By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 8/6/2007 9:05:00 AM
Of all the ways book buyers got their hands on the last Harry Potter book this summer, ShopText may be the most novel. The process does not involve going to a bookstore, calling one on the phone, or sitting down at a computer. You don’t have to stand in line or use a fancy wireless e-mail device to place the order. All it takes is a simple text message.
The Manhattan company ShopText, founded in 2005, lets people buy products instantly using SMS (i.e., Short Message Service, or cellphone text message), and has just started selling books. Jeff Larche, who bought HP7 using ShopText said, "This is a system that deserves to succeed, and it probably will, considering what big, pampered kids I and my fellow boomers have become."
Here’s how it works: a person registers at the ShopText site and provides his or her name, shipping address, credit card information, e-mail address and cell phone number. ShopText then sends the person a receipt via e-mail and text. It includes a short password, necessary to avoid ordering fraud. Then, the person sends a text with a keyword—e.g., "HARRY" for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—in the message body to ShopText. ShopText sends a message confirming the product’s price and requesting the security password. The person approves this, ShopText sends the product to the customer and the transaction is complete.
ShopText relies 
on ads in print magazines to make readers aware that they can purchase the items via text; so far, Brides, CosmoGIRL!, Details, Glamour, Lucky and New York magazine have run ads with short codes for text-to-buy transactions. Without the ads—which are a "partnership" between ShopText and the publications, sometimes paid for by the magazines, who may or may not get a cut of sales, depending on the deal—potential customers wouldn’t know what’s for sale through ShopText, since the company’s web site does not display its wares online.
ShopText began in 2005 as a company within the New York ad agency Anomaly and was spun off as its own company in November 2006. Since its launch, it has sold beauty products, clothing, jewelry, perfume, CDs and movie tickets. The New York magazine ad that ran in the magazine’s June 4 issue (above left) was the first one offering books; in addition to HP7 (priced at $25.99) it featured The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins) for $21.99 and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead) for $19.99. The ad also offered free shipping. ShopText bought the books from a distributor and warehoused them. Shop Text did not pay for the ad that ran in New York, save for a nominal book sales guarantee to cover production costs for the page on which the ad appeared. "We set up this partnership as a test run for possible future use of the Shop Text technology—to sell books, magazine merchandise and advertisers’ products," said Mark Kaplan, ShopText founder and chief marketing officer. Serena Torrey, of New York, said ShopText offered the magazine a percentage of each book sale or a flat fee, whichever was greater. "We waived the usual space costs with an eye toward future, even more lucrative applications of this technology," she said.
Kaplan said ShopText is looking to partner with bookstores, but has not done so yet. Ideally, a bookstore would run ShopText codes in its book advertisements, and either ShopText or the bookstore would fulfill the order. Kaplan also said he is interested in partnering with book publishers on co-op advertising. He declined to say how many copies ShopText has sold of any of book so far.
Text messaging is a wildly popular form of communication; according to the technology consultancy Forrester Research, some 35% of cellphone users send or receive text messages, and three-quarters of 18- to 24-year olds text. SMS has made its way into major enterprises; more than 63 million viewers voted for their favorite American Idol via text; and the analyst firm Gartner estimates that by 2010, the volume of text messaging will reach an estimated 2.3 trillion, which certainly puts sales of the latest Potter book into perspective.
