BOOK CLUBS

A Book a Month

Mass-media and mass-marketing stimulated each other during the 1920s. The most successful publishing development was distribution through book clubs. At the start of the decade most Americans did not have access to bookstores. Many potential members of the emerging reading public did not know what to read or how to obtain books. The founding of the Book-of-the-Month Club (BOMC) by Robert K. Haas and Harry Scherman filled a well-defined need.

Judges

The monthly selections were chosen by a panel of judges—critic Henry Seidel Canby, columnist Heywood Broun, author Dorothy Canfield Fisher, man-of-letters Christopher Morley, and newspaper publisher William Allen White—who exercised complete freedom to pick any current book that was not priced more than three dollars. The first selection, distributed in April 1926, established the integrity of the judges: Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes: or, the Loving Huntsman, an English feminist fantasy that was hardly a crowd pleaser, went to 4,750 members. Subsequent 1926 selections positioned the BOMC as upper middlebrow. In certain social groups membership in the BOMC was regarded as a badge of intelligence; in others, of pretentiousness; in still others, of intellectual conformity.

Literary Guild

The BOMC prospered, rapidly. By the end of its first season there were 46,539 members. Inevitably the BOMC spawned imitators and competitors, of which the most successful was the Literary Guild of America, launched in 1927. The first Guild selection was Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord, by Heywood Broun and Margaret Leech. At first booksellers and some publishers opposed the BOMC. Although the club took away bookstore customers, it also brought in new buyers who wanted a book because it was the BOMC selection. Publishers initially resisted making the price discounts required by the club. Nonetheless, it was clear that the BOMC—and its progeny—put books in the hands of readers who otherwise would not have known about them or purchased them. Both the BOMC and the Literary Guild began on a subscription basis. Members paid an annual fee for twelve books. The negative-option system that allowed members to decline selections was a later improvement. Guild members received special inexpensive editions (twelve books for eighteen dollars), whereas the BOMC distributed copies of the trade edition. The Guild also began with a panel of judges, which was dropped.

Specialization

The next movement in the book-club industry was from general to specialized selections. The hundred-odd American book clubs that eventually emerged were aimed at professions (lawyers), hobbyists (gardeners), and particular fields (history). Their impact on American readers has been prodigious and salutary.

THE 1926 BOMC SELECTIONS

Lolly Willowes, by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Teeftallow, by T. S. Stribling

O Genteel Lady!, by Esther Forbes

The Saga of Billy the Kid, by Walter Noble Burns (nonfiction)

The Silver Spoon, by John Galsworthy

Show Boat, by Edna Ferber

The Time of Man, by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

The Romantic Comedians, by Ellen Glasgow

The Orphan Angel, by Elinor Wylie

Sources:

The Book of the Month: Sixty Years of Books in American Life (Boston: Little, Brown, 1986);

Charles Lee, The Hidden Public: The Story of the Book-of-the-Month Club (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958).

book clubs As a phenomenon in American cultural life, book clubs have made an impact in two periods of history. During the 18th and 19th cent. book clubs were formed for the purposes of discussion and debate. Foremost among these was the Junto, a literary society formed by Benjamin Franklin in 1726; more representative was the Cadmus Club of Galesburg, Ill., founded in 1895 for the promotion of good fellowship, good reading, and literary works of local interest. The late 20th cent. saw a revival of such book clubs, with the notable addition of on-line clubs and Oprah Winfrey's televised club.

The common 20th cent. understanding of "book club" is not a club at all but an organization that promotes the mail-order sale of books. Among the best known are the Book-of-the-Month Club, with its offshoot paperback book club, Quality Paperback Books, and the Literary Guild. There are also clubs devoted to more specialized interests and forms, such as cooking, gardening, science fiction, computers, and books on audio tape. Mail-order clubs—set up as they are to ensure that the tastes and choices of their readership will be met—are models of mass production and distribution methods aimed to supply individual consumers. Although various book clubs apply different methods, the Book-of-the-Month Club licenses publishers' printing plates in order to print its selections cheaply and bind them sturdily for mailing. Members order negatively; that is, they let the club know which books they do not want by returning an order card. Although mail-order book clubs enjoy large memberships, they lost some ground to the rise of discount chain bookstores in the 1980s and on-line booksellers in the late 1990s.

Book Clubs select books issued by regular publishers for release to their members, at retail prices or less, and with dividends of extra books. The first U.S. organization, the Book‐of‐the‐Month Club, was founded in 1926 with 4750 subscribers, and in 1946 had nearly 1,000,000 members. In 20 years it distributed some 70,000,000 volumes, and set the pattern for most book clubs. Its board of judges selects a newly issued book (or a dual selection of two short books) for the members, who guarantee to accept four selections the first year. Members receive a dividend upon joining, another for every two books purchased, and a monthly literary review. Another large club, The Literary Guild (founded 1927), operates on the same principle, except that a single editor makes the selections. In 1946, at the height of the plan, there were some 25 clubs distributing 75,000,000 books annually, and grossing one‐sixth of all U.S. book sales. Many clubs are specialized, devoted to particular categories, e.g. religion, nonfiction, history, the arts, “classics,” limited editions, and detective stories. The effect of these organizations on literary taste has been much discussed. It is conceded that they have increased reading and brought new books to regions without bookstores, but it is often contended that they have put literature on a standardized, mail‐order basis, have inculcated a mediocrity of taste, and have focused attention on their selections to the exclusion of equally good or better books.