From The Literary Hub:
In early January 2017, bright, colorful banners of grinning television personalities holding novels started popping up on the walls of New York City subway cars. The advertisements announced “One Book, One New York,” a joint venture between the Mayor’s Office for Media and Entertainment and digital media company BuzzFeed. The campaign’s tagline, “Aiming to get all of New York on the same page—literally,” outlined its simple premise. “One Book” was to be the largest book club in history.
The idea is not as new, or as strange, as it sounds. Community reading programs are nearly two decades old. In 1998, Seattle introduced the concept, and four years later, Chicago followed. Since then, interest has exploded. Today, the Library of Congress estimates there are more than 400 programs across the country. In an interview with WNYC, Commissioner Julie Menin says Chicago’s program inspired her to bring One Book to NYC. The motivation was partly economic: “Other cities that have done One Book programs… have seen enormous spikes in sales of that particular book. Right now, we have about 65 independent bookstores in the city. The Bronx has no bookstore. Staten Island has one. These bookstores are under threat of closure, and one important economic reason we want to do this program is to… make sure that people visit their local bookstore.”
. . . .
Then the work—and reading—began in earnest. The Mayor’s office released a calendar of events taking place throughout spring and summer. Penguin Random House donated over 1,500 copies to the city’s libraries and developed a guide for book clubs. Digital subscription service Scribd made an audiobook available free for 90 days. But these were just resources. The question remained: would people participate? “Somebody recently described New York to me: it’s not one big city, it’s actually a ton of small towns, smushed right up against one another,” says Isaac Fitzgerald, BuzzFeed’s Books Editor.
If that’s true, then how, exactly, do you get eight million people on the same page?
. . . .
In the Bronx, it isn’t so easy, according to life-long resident Noëlle Santos. Santos is the entrepreneur behind crowdfunding project The Lit.Bar, the first independent bookstore in the Bronx in six years, and the only bookstore in the borough since Barnes and Noble shuttered its branch there in 2016.
Santos was invited to the launch party for One Book, but since then, she hasn’t seen much visibility for the program in the Bronx. The problem is, without bookstores, “There’s no space to bring readers together. I’m sure that people are participating, but I just haven’t seen it, because I’m the only one throwing literary events right now.” Calling the Bronx a “book desert,” Santos says residents must travel to other boroughs to participate in literary events. “We’re out here, and there’s people reading Americanah, and we’re participating in One Book, One New York. But we’re going to other places to share. That’s why I’m not seeing it.”
. . . .
In Brooklyn, where there are many “hubs,” it’s a different story. Author Emma Straub, who recently opened the Cobble Hill independent bookstore Books Are Magic, says they can hardly keep Americanah on shelves. “I think people like to buy novels they think have been deemed ‘great’ by several bodies of people—in this case, the book got great reviews AND was chosen for this city-wide reading project. So I think people are more inclined to take a chance on it that they might not otherwise.” She says Adichie is having a “moment.” “We sell so many copies of Dear Ijeawele and We Should All Be Feminists. She’s really striking a chord.”
Link to the rest at The Literary Hub
The CBC has a program Canada Reads. Five personalities select a book each and advocate for their book over five programs. At the end of each program the panel votes one book off. The last book standing is the winner. The debate is more entertaining than an ad campaign.
Eeek! I thought Survivor: Whatever was bad!
Give me snakes, poisonous insects, and crazy people – please don’t make me deal with book critics!
The personalities are celebrities. There have been actors, singers, rappers, astronauts, politicians, all sorts. There have also been complaints about who is on the panels. Some people complain the panelists aren’t “real people”. Other people complain the panelists aren’t literature critics. “Real people” might be fun, if articulate, but literature critics would suck all the joy out of it.
I agree that having literature critics do it would be the worst possible option. Personally, I think it would be fun to see that where the people are authors themselves, and they have to pick a book to advocate which is outside the genre(s) they write.
This is quite a creative way to spread even more propaganda to the masses. Fake News is no longer enough apparently. Yuck.
Brilliant way to peer-pressure non-readers into buying a critic-curated literary book that doesn’t appeal to them, discovering they hate it and can’t finish it, and then avoiding reading for another 10 years.
Yep, sheer genius.
Nice deal for the ‘one’ book.
I wonder how that one was picked.
Now if it had been a campaign of everyone in the city reading a book, maybe. But the same book?
I’m starting to think that “book clubs” are for sheeple who aren’t avid readers.
I read what I want, when I want. I really don’t need someone else to tell me what to read.
My problem has always been finding the time to read. Never had a problem finding a good book.
Book clubs long ago learned lots of people like the book showing up on their front porch. They might not need someone to tell them what to read, but are happy to read whatever the mailman leaves. Like picking up a magazine at the doctor’s office.
Hmm. Wonder if Amazon will implement something like that? Random number generator that sends you a book a week (maybe only one genre, like the Crime or SF/F book clubs).
Or maybe they have; I don’t keep up with things that don’t interest me.
If they could give me those books at a discount off retail price (while still being standard quality and not ‘book club’ quality), I’d totally go for that. Well, the books would need to be a wide selection, not just what big publishers wanted to push at me.
Um, one that I just couldn’t finish reading this morning. “One Book, One New York” is just a tad too creepy as a tag line.
It’s been trotted out so many times before in history, in countries ranging from theocracies to Communist paradises.
(Okay, okay, Communism is very much like a theocracy, which is why modern-day ones get along so well with ISIS, Iran, etc. – but there are some differences.)
So it takes an extended city wide ad campaign to sell one book? 😉