This post was written back in March to coincide with the March selections for Book of the Month Club. Unfortunately, it was never published for reasons unclear to us at Bookfinds but that which can be blamed on the temperamental gods of the wild world of the world wide web.
Expect a post tomorrow on the JULY selections of Book of the Month because…well…it’s July. Not March. But this post does give some interesting information on the creation and backstory to the Book of the Month Club so we will leave it in its original state.
Enjoy!
We are such fans of the Book of the Month Club.
There are so many things to love about it that we really don’t even know where to begin. We love that it puts new titles on your radar simply by delivering them to your door. We love that each month brings selections from different judges and reviews from BOTM Ambassadors.
Keep in mind that the BOTM Club is not a new concept. This club has been around since 1926!
According to Wikipedia, Harry Scherman was a copywriter for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in 1916 when he set out to create the “Little Leather Library”. With his partners Max Sackheim, and Charles and Albert Boni, Scherman began a mail order service that offered “30 Great Books For $2.98” (miniature reprints “bound in limp Redcroft”) and sold 40,000,000 copies in its first five years. Sackheim and Scherman then founded their own ad agency devoted entirely to marketing books.
The problems of building interest in a new book led Scherman to create, along with Sackheim and Robert Haas, the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1926. As Scherman explained it, the club itself would be a “standard brand”. “It establishes itself as a sound selector of good books and sells by means of its own prestige. Thus, the prestige of each new title need not be built up before becoming acceptable,” he explained later. After starting with 4,000 subscribers, the club had more than 550,000 within twenty years. The size of the club did, in fact, create the Book of the Month Club as a brand. Being a “Book of the Month Club” selection was used to promote books to the general public.
In late 2015, in concert with the club’s 90th year, the club announced a major relaunch in its current iteration. Within two years, the club had grown its membership to more than 100,000 members, primarily millennial women, and the club’s presence on social media grew to over 300,000 Instagram followers. Approximately 75% of the club’s titles are by up-and-coming authors, and 80% of titles are fiction. The club has also worked with a series of celebrity guest judges who bring broader awareness to new titles, and continues producing its own versions of books that feature special endpapers and casings. In 2016, the club launched a Book of the Year award. In 2017, the club debuted its first ever television advertisement called “Monthly”.
The club has a tradition of focusing on debut and emerging writers, and is known for having helped launch the careers of some of the most acclaimed authors in American literary history. In 1926 (its first year in operation), the Club featured Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. In 1936 (its tenth year), the Club selected Gone with the Wind by unknown author Margaret Mitchell. Today, the book remains the second favorite of American readers (after the Bible). Mitchell wrote: “I wanted to thank [Book of the Month] from the bottom of my heart for selecting my book. It was quite the most exciting and unexpected thing that ever happened to me.” In 1951 (its 25th year), the club distributed its 100 millionth book and selected J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, which becomes both the most-censored and the most-taught book in America. In 1978, the Club selected By the Rivers of Babylon, the first book by Nelson DeMille, who later wrote: “I will be forever grateful to Book of the Month for ensuring that my first book, By the Rivers of Babylon, was not my last. When the Club selected Babylon in 1978, it reached hundreds of thousands of additional readers and became an instant best-seller.”
Here are the March 2018 selections for Book of the Month:
Not That I Could Tell by Jessica Strawser
The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan (Debut)
Other People’s Houses by Abbi Waxman (Exclusive)
Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan (Debut)
The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs (Debut)
Our selection for this month is Other People’s Houses. We may also pick up Not That I Could Tell. We will check back in with you next month on our thoughts and our picks for April. (This did not happen but the July titles are just so good, there is no way we aren’t going to provide detailed updates on all of the selections.) Stay tuned!
Quick take
This tale of four families in a tight-knit suburban community gets real about love, love affairs, and what’s really going on inside your neighbor’s house.
