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 | Science Fiction Jazz, Vol. 3 publisher: Musicrama/Koch ASIN: B0000DEOA7 sales rank: 698478 price: $28.45 (new) |
 | Science Fiction Jazz, Vol. 1 publisher: Musicrama/Koch ASIN: B00005Q6LU sales rank: 566277 price: $56.78 (new) |
 | Ray Gun Belt Buckle publisher: MassBuckles ASIN: B001I42QX6 sales rank: 188811 price: |
 | The Brain That Wouldn't Die publisher: Image ASIN: 6305750246 sales rank: 84893 price: $4.87 (new) |
 | 4 Classic Wyrd Sisters Old Time Radio Broadcasts on DVD (over 5 Hours 53 Minutes running time) publisher: Quality Information Publishers, Inc. ASIN: B001LFAD9Q sales rank: 114346 price: |
 | Spirit of Wonder: The Movie publisher: Bandai ASIN: B0000AC8OO sales rank: 67270 price: $4.83 (new) |
 | The Road (Oprah's Book Club) by: Cormac McCarthy publisher: Vintage Books, published: 2007-03-28 ASIN: 0307387895 sales rank: 253 price: $4.42 (new) |
 | Slaughterhouse-Five by: Kurt Vonnegut publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback, published: 1999-01-12 ASIN: 0385333846 sales rank: 648 price: $7.15 (new) |
 | The Reluctant Fundamentalist by: Mohsin Hamid publisher: Harvest Books, published: 2008-04-14 ASIN: 0156034026 sales rank: 2428 price: $4.00 (new) |
The Book of the Month Club (founded 1926[1]) is a United States mail-order business, customers of which are offered a new book each month.
The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc. That company merged with Doubleday Direct, Inc., a company owned by Bertelsmann, in 2000. The resulting company, Bookspan, was a joint-venture between Time Warner and Bertelsmann until 2007 when Bertelsmann took over complete ownership. Approximately six weeks after it acquired complete ownership of Bookspan, Bertelsmann initiated a major overhaul of the book club business, a process that will eliminate 280 positions, or about 15% of its workforce of 1,900. Many of the specialty book clubs such as American Compass are being eliminated.
The company operates a number of non-general book clubs including:
- American Compass, a club primarily aimed at American conservative readers.
- InsightOut, a book club featuring books of topical interest to gay and lesbian readers
- Mosaico and Circulo, two clubs offering Latin and Spanish-translated selections.
Contents |
Membership terms
The most common terms of membership involve a "negative response" system whereby a member is offered a monthly book selection that will be mailed to them on a particular date if it is not declined before that date is reached. Customers have the option to respond declining the selection or opting to order another book or books instead.
In addition, potential members are often offered a selection of books to select from at an arbitrarily low price (for example "4 books for $4.00 each") with the stipulation that once they have accepted this initial shipment, and decided they wish to join the club, they must then purchase a certain number of books within a certain period of time (for example, 2 books within the first year) to complete their obligation to the club.
The Zooba format requires a 3-book commitment and allows the customer to build and manage a book list similar to a mail-order DVD rental queue. The customer is charged $9.95 monthly (plus any applicable taxes) and is sent the first available book on his or her list. Additional books not on the monthly cycle are also $9.95, and the web interface makes maintaining gift addresses easy. The service usually has an impressive selection of current hardcover bestsellers and is freely browsable to non-members.
History
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 [2]. Sackheim and Scherman then founded (1920) 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, [3]. After starting with 4,000 subscribers, the Club had more than 550,000 within less than twenty years.
Clubs operated by Bookspan and affiliates
- Black Expressions
- Children's Book-of-the-Month Club
- Círculo de Lectores
- Club Mosaico
- Crafter's Choice
- Discovery Channel Book Club
- Doubleday Book Club
- Doubleday Large Print
- The Good Cook
- History Book Club
- Home Style Books
- InsightOut
- Kids' BookPlanet
- The Literary Guild
- Military Book Club
- Mystery Guild
- One Spirit
- Quality Paperback Books
- Rhapsody Book Club
- Scientific American Book Club
- Science Fiction Book Club
- Book-of-the-Month Club
- Stephen King Library
- Zooba