The book club may have been around for hundreds of years, but in 2018, it's succeeding in a myriad of different ways.
Which makes sense: Book clubs mesh well with today's online world. They become more profitable the more they scale up, and the internet proritizes building audiences. Any influencer with a following on social media, their podcast, or an email newsletter is perfectly positioned to distribute a digital book recommendation with the click of a mouse. Granted, the actual book is usually physical, but that's the other factor behind book clubs' rising power: In a world of Netflix binges and mobile games, getting to crack the spine of a physical book has become a treat.
The form of media at the heart of a book club may be less popular than TV overall, but that just improves the experience of reading a curated book each month from a trusted source. Book clubs are another spoke in the subscription economy, an internet model that has worked for everyone from Dollar Shave Club to Birchbox to the New York Times. The subscription e-commerce market has actually grown by more than 100% percent year-over-year for the past five years, with the biggest retailers in the market earning sales in excess of $2.6B in 2016, up from just $57.0M in 2011.
And on top of all that, running a book club is simply cool. Being bookish is a way of life for the niche audience these clubs serve.
From Celebrities To Micro-Influencers
Actor and entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon's Instagram-powered book club Hello Sunshine, launched informally in 2015, has grown to over 800,000 followers and is hugely influential. Books like The Alice Network and Little Fires Everywhere have become bestsellers after being featured. Hello Sunshine is more than a book club, however: The media company is adapting Little Fires Everywhere for Hulu, has other TV projects in the works at NBC and Apple TV, is creating a film at TriStar/Sony Pictures, and has a multiyear partnership with Audible for monthly audiobooks of its picks.
Other successful celebrity-led book clubs include Florence Welch’s Between Two Books, Emma Watson's Our Shared Shelf, and Belletrist, from Emma Roberts and Karah Preiss. Themed book clubs or book-centric subscription boxes are also taking off without the need for celebrity star power: WILDWOMAN, which launched in August, aims to deliver a subscription box that includes one non-fiction self-help book each month. Homemade micro-influencer book clubs can be found everywhere on social media, particularly the cover-art-friendly Instagram, where the hashtag #bookstagram has 26 million posts and counting.
Some book clubs come from media outlets newly invested in books coverage; Examples include Now Read This from PBS NewsHour and the New York Times or The BuzzFeed Book Club, which just launched in October 2018. These clubs supply expert book recommendations, a communal Facebook group discussion space, and, in Buzzfeed's case, Amazon affiliate links that deliver Buzzfeed a kickback for every book purchased.
Affordable Book Clubs Are Available, Too
Perhaps the best indicator of the book club's prominence is the rise of the affordable alternative. The traditional book club might be a retreat into a community of like-minded book lovers, but at an average of $25 per hard copy, it's not an accessible one. Book clubbers on a budget will need to wait through lengthy library hold times, assuming they have the free time to make it to a physical library.
One big book club resource just launched last month to meet this need: Digital lending service Hoopla Digital partners with public library systems to bring a catalog of 670,000 ebooks to library patrons, and its new Book Club Hub brings a selection of curated titles to the fingers of anyone with a smartphone. The resource offers one main book selection and eight additional recommended titles each quarter, letting any smaller community book clubs chose their favorite. All titles are available through Hoopla as free digital downloads for their more than 1,600 public library partners across North America, along with a kit of digital reading group materials and in some locations, live author events.
"Hoopla set out to modernize the book club experience -- redefining what a book club can be," says the service's Content Strategist, Tara Carberry, who spearheaded the program and club research. "Even in the digital age, there was no book club model that could offer a well-rounded, truly accessible experience. That inspired us to create our own reading community: a hub that removes the barriers for people to read and connect with other readers around today’s most compelling titles."
Carberry agrees that book clubs are on the rise, attributing it partially to celebrity book club culture and partially to the unique community the clubs attract. "Book clubs are really having a moment right now, and we don’t anticipate that moment fading in the near future," she says. "What was traditionally a local gathering of neighbors, is now its own culture. It’s on social media, it’s at the office, it’s a part of our day-to-day conversations."
In 2019, Book Clubs Will Be Big
Book club interest is unlikely to die down anytime soon, and certainly won't across the next few months. The holiday season is a great time to join up with a book club, particularly as the new year draws near. "January and February are historically among our strongest months in sales for eBooks and audiobooks," Carberry says. "New Years resolutions to read more, connect more, spend less—participating in a book club is a resolution for readers of all levels and abilities."
In 2018, the general public grew weary of the constant churn of online news and preformative social media. According to Pew Research Center, more than a quarter of adult American Facebook users deleted the app from their phone in the last year.
It appears that 2019 will mark a turn towards the communal space and physical comforts of the book club. Or as Carberry puts it, "to take an hour a month for a book club is a satisfying, enriching release that more and more people are coming to value." Between celebrities, media critics, micro-influencers and Hoopla's accessible digital offerings, we'll have a surprisingly thriving group of diverse types of book clubs to chose from.
