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Questia Zooba Since 1926, the Book-of-the-Month-Club The Literary Guild Get a free book from Doubleday Book Club Quality Paperback Books Club Mosaico Book Club Doubleday Large Print The Children's Book-of-the-Month Club At the Mystery Guild At the Science Fiction Book Club Get 6 books for $0.99 + FREE book with membership to Rhapsody Book Club. One Spirit Get 5 books for $1 + FREE gift with membership to The Military Book Club. History Book Club At Black Expressions Get 5 books for $2 + FREE tote with membership to HomeStyle Books. Crafter's Choice The Good Cook |
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TIME Magazine, March 18, 1946: PUBLISHING: Mass Produced Culture ...Book clubs are now booming as never before... This year, the 25 U.S. book clubs will sell over 75,000,000 books and gross $100,000,000, one-sixth of all U.S. book sales. The clubs' rapid spread is due primarily to the simple fact that book clubs are the best means yet found to reduce publisher risk to a minimum. Bonbons and Books. The man who put this golden formula to work in the U.S. is nervous, precise Harry Scherman, 59, a onetime free-lance writer. When he flopped at that, he went into advertising. For a client, he devised a plan to give away pocket-sized classics with each box of candy, was amazed to find later that 1,000,000 classics a year could be sold for 10¢ apiece without candy. So in 1926 he started the Book-of-the-Month-Club Pay Dirt for Authors. He pays publishers 30¢ a copy to lease book plates, has the book printed himself. He guarantees publishers minimum royalties of $100,000, often pays much more. Example: he paid Publisher Appleton Century about $150,000 for Arch of Triumph. The publisher split this with Author Erich Maria Remarque, just as all B.O.M.C. royalties are split with authors. Exactly how much Scherman's club makes is his own trade secret. But the retail value of all books distributed by B.O.M.C. last year, including book dividends, was $25,000,000... Nevertheless, energetic Mr. Scherman is not satisfied. This month he will launch a new advertising campaign, which he hopes will boost B.O.M.C. membership to 1,000,000, make it the biggest book club in the U.S. That title is now claimed by Doubleday's Literary Guild ...Because of their vast success, book clubs have raised fears that books may soon be tailored less to art than to the requirements of the club's mass audience... But bookmen also argue that if clubs keep springing up there soon will be a club for every taste. And no one denies that clubs, by selling books to those who never bought before, have expanded the market enormously. Before the clubs began, there were only 1,000,000 people in the U.S. who bought books regularly. Now, in the clubs alone, there are 3,000,000. |
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