Book Clubs

Money is not the only reason to do a book club deal. They can give you more exposure than any other method in the business. You do not make a lot of money but it does earn your title a different level of respect. We will be paid $150,000+ in royalties before it is all said and done. This gives us money to promote and do other things. I would not say we accrued any major Profit but we are very glad we did it.

We are the exception and not the rule. Most books do not experience this level of success. They normally don't take up to 60% of their titles past the first print run because of the stiff competition among their titles. When they do print they only print 3,000 or 3,500 copies at a time. We are again the exception with an average of 10,000 copies per print run. (110,000 copies in 12 print runs)

When we negotiated our deal 3 years ago we got a better deal than they offer now. I would still do it at the lower royalty they now. You do no work and take no risk, that is the kind of deal I will do all day long.

The way book clubs pay is evolving from buying the books at 75 to 85% discounts to royalty payments in the past. BMOC is now paying about 8% and Doubleday is paying 6 or 7% this is based on what the "club price" is, in our case they sell our $21.95 book for $17.95. They also pay less if it is one of the books that they offer for $1 or 1 penny etc. With BMOC they pay « of the royalty on those books.

Some people still report that they are selling books (not getting a royalty), which is by far the most profitable for the publisher generally speaking. This is quickly becoming a thing of the past. If they offer this arrangement take it before they change their mind.

Book of the Month Club Inc which includes Book of the Month Club, Children's Book of the Month Club, One Spirit, and Quality Paperback Club are bombarded with books. (Along with Doubleday which owns several clubs themselves. They turned us down even though we used the identical approach) Now they are one as they are doing a joint venture. The new name for the joint clubs is supposed to be Bookspan. There is a lot of sorting out that is taking place.

I would submit books to both sides, approaching the appropriate club for your title. They will review submissions sent to them and they prefer galleys. They want to see the book before it is published if possible.

You must make it a point to keep them informed on your book's uniqueness, and any special success that you are experiencing long after your initial submission.

I had submitted information to them for 6 consecutive months before they gave us the green light. The information was brief and primarily my communication took place by fax. For the most part I would send an update on the sales that we were experiencing both in and out of the book trade along with Media updates on what the author was doing. I would caution you to not send them information that is trivial. Remember how much competition you have and make it a point to inform them how you might be different. In our case it is that we have not backed off of our media efforts. Most publishers would give up on media after 3 to 6 months. We are 36 months into this book and we are still going strong.

We continue to keep them up to date on our progress, remember how much competition you have. They do not seek this type of information out you must keep them informed in the most consistent and least disruptive way that you can. You can develop a relationship with these people, but you must respect their time.

You can hire an agent that specializes in selling book club rights or you can do the submission process on your own. I chose to do it myself because I knew that we were not going to give up on the book until we had sold 250,000 copies and an agent might give up after a few months. (That is how they make money and I do not blame them. They need to be constantly presenting new titles.) Some books may not have that potential.

If you are not good at follow up and selling I would strongly recommend an agent that does sub-rights (bookclubs) as they know about all of the changes that are going on at the two big clubs during the formation of the new alliance. They also tend to have relationships in place with various editors at the clubs, and there are a bunch.

I would discourage any phone calls to the following clubs until you have sent a very compelling pitch letter along with a galley or copy of the book.

They all have the same address:

They are all at the same address:

You might also check out Literary Market Place at you library they should have the phone numbers. You can call the clubs and get a list of the different clubs that they have.

James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive
Oregon, WI 53575-1129
phone: 1-608-835-7937
e-mail: mbr@execpc.com
e-mail: mwbookrevw@aol.com
http://www.midwestbookreview.com

Copyright ©2001

Site design by Williams Writing, Editing & Design