"Having an Oprah Book Club selection is pretty much like having the pinnacle of the community." (Michael McKenzie, Publicity Directory)
Ever since Oprah Winfrey debuted her book club in 1996, she has been influencing book sales worldwide. It started with the debut novel, The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard, and ended with the classic, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. First time author David Wroblewski's novel The Story of Edgar Sawtelle became a selection in 2008 and quickly became a New York Times bestseller. When Oprah's show went off the air in 2011, she had endorsed 70 titles with an estimated sale of 55 million Oprah editions. For more information, read Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America by Kathleen Rooney. In 2012, the former talk show host launched Oprah Book Club 2.0, focussing on digital media.
Mark Zuckerburg, who started Facebook, launched his own book club in January of 2015. His first title, The End of Power by Moises Naim, was sold out on Amazon within the first 24 hours of being announced as a selection.
Online book clubs are all the rage these days. BookTalk.org (http://booktalk.org/) and the New York Times Book Forum (https://www.nytimes.com/books/forums/index.html) are two such clubs.
Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/), with 12 million members, is another powerful book club. "Reading Lolita in Tehran stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 100 weeks and became book club fodder worldwide," says a Goodreads interview with the book's author Azar Nafisi.
Library Thing (https://www.librarything.com/), another online book club, has catalogued 96 milion books and reviewed almost 2 1/2 million titles. Among the top 25 books are selections like: Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, Twilight, The Kite Runner and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.
BookShout (https://bookshout.com/bookshout-marketing/) an e-reader, endorses bestselling authors Bill Nye, Jane Green and Beth Moore among others.
If you end up on a book club list, whether a traditional book club or an online one, it's likely to boost your sales. If you want to learn more about marketing your book, read Sell Your Book Like Wildfire by Rob Eager.
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