Understanding what you want and need from book clubs can help you decide which clubs to approach and how
From both an industry and author perspective, book clubs have played a key role in bookselling for decades—and are still looking hot today, often headed up by media stars such as Jimmy Fallon, whose first Tonight Show Summer Reads program featured Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone; Reese Witherspoon (Hello Sunshine); and Jenna Bush Hager (Read with Jenna on The Today Show).
The original retail book clubs were great for publishers. Kris Kliemann—a former Wiley vice president and global rights director whose background includes work with Random House, Hyperion/Disney, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux—points out that the original Book of the Month Club (established in 1926) and the Literary Guild (established in 1927 and owned at various points by Doubleday and Bertelsmann) owned their own printing presses and produced rather low-quality editions, but sold them at a discount to members. “The clubs paid good money for rights,” she says, sometimes “with huge auctions that could lead to really big advances from the clubs to the publishers, which helped earn out whatever the clubs had paid to the authors or agents to the rights to a book in the first place.”
By around 2008, however, these clubs were pushed out of business. Even after Book-of-the-Month and Literary Guild merged, they couldn’t hold out as bookstores became more prevalent and as online retail, led by Amazon, surpassed book-club discounts.
Today’s “book groups,” as Kliemann calls them, are more heavily driven by the endorsements of stars whose interests may be driven by building an audience for an eventual film adaptation. (Here’s a list of “celebrity book clubs and bookish celebrities” from Book Riot.)
But there are non-celebrity efforts, too. Kliemann points out that Goodreads has become a generator of book clubs, in terms of connecting people with similar tastes. You can also find book-box subscriptions (such as Amazon’s subscription for kids) that send out themed offerings. Another breakthrough example is TAG Livros, the huge club from Gustavo Lembert in Brazil.
Author and marketer MJ Rose is adamant about the importance of clubs today. She says, “On my Top Five list of how books take off is getting attention from book clubs,” she says. “They are the holy-grail get for anyone writing smart upmarket fiction and narrative nonfiction.” MJ Rose runs the AuthorBuzz marketing program; since 2005 it has been selling promotions at Book Movement, a major resource for clubs, with the number-one book club app and more than 60,000 registered book clubs representing 600,000 readers.
Rose says, “As an author, I have never and will never turn down an invitation to Skype with a club or visit one in person if it’s possible,” Rose says. “No author should. I don’t mean just the amazing giant ones” of the Oprah-Reese-Jenna mode, “I mean any group that has chosen your book to read. Be it an online club. Or an in-person club. Be it five people or 40. Not only is it a compliment, it’s one of the best ways to get word of mouth. Book club members are book lovers. They talk about the books they’re reading with friends, family, other club members, and on social media.”
Rose adds that clubs can help an author outsell others, even those with more pre-order velocity. She says that club readers are loyal: “Once they find you, they often will read your next book and the one after that, even if the club doesn’t pick you.”
Bottom line: Rose advises authors not to shoot for big, visible clubs at first. Instead, talk to your local bookseller; offer to give books to one club free in exchange for the bookseller recommending the book to other clubs and readers, if the first club likes it. Visit your local library, she says: talk to them about clubs that meet there, and offer to speak to those clubs. (Note: You can contact Rose at AuthorBuzzCo@gmail.com and get a discount on book club promos by mentioning The Hot Sheet.) And Kris Kliemann? “My daughter,” she says, “is crazy about Reese Witherspoon’s club.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
