1926; 98 years ago (1926) in New York City, New York, U.S.
Founder
Harry Scherman
Headquarters
New York City
,
U.S.
Key people
John Lippman (CEO)[1]
Blake Orlandi (COO)[1]
Cris Vergara (CTO)
Parent
Pride Tree Holdings
Website
www.bookofthemonth.com
Book of the Month (founded 1926[2]) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members choose which book they would like to receive, similar to how the club originally operated when it began in 1926. Members can also discuss the books with fellow members in an online forum.[3]
In late 2015, in concert with the club's 90th year, the club announced a relaunch into 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 1.2 million Instagram followers.[4][5] Approximately 75% of the club's titles are by up-and-coming authors, and 80% of titles are fiction.[4] 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.[5] In 2016, the club launched a Book of the Year award. In 2017, the club debuted its first ever television advertisement called "Monthly".[6]
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's first selection was Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. It also featured, but did not select, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises in the Book of the Month News. In 1936, (its tenth year), the Club selected Gone with the Wind by unknown author Margaret Mitchell. 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." John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was selected the following year in 1937. In 1951 (its 25th year), the club distributed its 100 millionth book and selected J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, which became 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."[7]
^ ab"Bookspan Company Profile | Financial Information, Competitors and Executives". DataFox. Retrieved May 5, 2017.
^Radway, Janice A. (1997). A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
^"Discussion". Book of the Month. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
^ abCharles, Ron (2017-12-19). "Review | What do women want? One company is betting it comes between two covers". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-01-24.
^ abBrown, Ellen F. (2 December 2016). "It's not your grandma's Book of the Month Club". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2016-12-11.
^"This Delightful Ad for Book of the Month Makes a Bunch of Period Jokes and It's Actually Funny". Adweek. 13 November 2017. Retrieved 2018-01-24.
^"Our Story". Book of the Month. Retrieved 2016-12-11.
A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, that is approximately as long as a natural orbital period ofthe Moon; the words month and Moon are cognates...
lunar month is the time between two successive syzygies ofthe same type: new moons or full moons. The precise definition varies, especially for the beginning...
Goodreads Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction of 2017, and a finalist for BookoftheMonth'sBookofthe Year award in 2017. "BEST HISTORICAL FICTION"...
Council. It is held annually in themonth before the Chanukah gift-giving season (roughly during themonthof November). Book fairs are held in most major...
critical success and went into two editions with sale to Book-of-the-Month Club as "Talk ofthe Office," and translation into 13 languages. Movie rights...
ever for all of my life". The Old Man and the Sea became a book-of-the-month selection, made Hemingway an international celebrity, and won the Pulitzer Prize...
NZ BookMonth was a non-profit initiative started in 2006, with the goal of increasing readership of New Zealand books. It was a nationwide annual event...
announced the NOFX 7" oftheMonth Club, a new subscription-based service scheduled for the release of 12 new extended plays almost monthly. As with the previous...
nights. For Whom the Bell Tolls became a BookoftheMonth Club choice, sold half a million copies within months, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize...
late. Attaining the greatest positive response of any of his works up to that time, Steinbeck's novella was chosen as a BookoftheMonth Club selection...
science book by Rachel Carson. Published on September 27, 1962, thebook documented the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of DDT, a pesticide...
meet a self-set writing goal during themonthof November. The event has attracted worldwide participation. The event was established in 2011 by Charlotte...
brightest star." Throne of Glass was named Amazon.com's "Best BookoftheMonth for Kids & Teens" in August 2012. Whitney Kate Sullivan of Romantic Times stated...
its author. Thebook was published in 1944 and nominated for a third Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Blixen initially did not want thebook to be nominated...
Best Books of 2005" from The New York Times and received the World Fantasy Award for 2006. Thebook tells the stories ofthe young Kafka Tamura, a bookish...
copies through theBook-of-the-Month Club. Parts ofthe Chicago chapters were published during Wright's lifetime as magazine articles, but the six chapters...
it won a PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize in 1991 and garnered positive reviews from The New York Times Book Review and the Dostoevsky scholar...
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