The Inner Lives of Book Clubs

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From Publishers Weekly:

For 20 years BookBrowse has been providing reading recommendations to book clubs and readers in general through its website and newsletters, so we at BookBrowse know that the perception many have of book clubs—as primarily social groups with minimal serious discussion—isn’t accurate, but until recently we didn’t have the hard data to prove it.

Last year we set out to look beyond the who, what, and where of book clubs, and to instead explore their group dynamics. For example: What do people want from their groups? What motivates them to join in the first place, and why do they stay? What do they look for in the books they read? In the process, we conducted two surveys of more than 5,000 book club members, plus 500 non–club members, parsing responses to many questions. In February, we published our report, titled “The Inner Lives of Book Clubs”—the results of the first survey to get to the heart of the book club experience.

So, what did we learn? Among much else, we learned that the stereotype of book clubs being primarily social is far from reality:

• Most book clubs stay focused on discussing a book for at least 40 minutes of each meeting, and, generally speaking, the longer a group spends on book discussion, the happier its members are with the club.

• Overwhelmingly, book club members want to read books that will provoke good conversation—97% of book club members consider that a core criterion in the books they choose, while 73% also actively seek out books that challenge and 55% look for books that are controversial.

. . . .

• 70% of book clubs primarily read fiction, but they aren’t the bastions of “women’s fiction” that some believe them to be. For example, 93% read nonfiction at least occasionally, and the longer a book club has been together, the broader its selections tend to be.

. . . .

• 91% of book club members say that they value being exposed to books that they otherwise wouldn’t have read. This is particularly intriguing, as the leading reason given by readers for not being interested in being in a book club is that they don’t want to have to read books that they did not choose themselves.

. . . .

• Most book clubs require a member to have read a book before recommending it to the group—or, at a minimum, to have thoroughly researched it. In short, to reach a book club, publishers first have to reach at least one individual in the club.

• Book club members discover books in the same places as readers in general, so the key is not so much to promote “to” book clubs; rather, it’s to position titles so that the features book clubbers look for are brought to the fore. The report outlines 13 core factors to achieve this, many of which publishers can influence.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly