Book clubs can be a defining moment in any author’s career. Fact is, the success of any book is accelerated if book clubs get hold of it and begin spreading the news. That’s why we call them “influencers” and that’s why we work hard to find and vet them for you.
This article from the Independent Book Publishers Association Book Clubs: The Benefits shows how beneficial book clubs can be, or you may want to read how book clubs’ word-of-mouth put Water for Elephants on top (yes, even above the Oprah selections of the day!) in the NYT: Big Time for a Novel…
Getting Your Novel Into the Hands of Book Clubs
Meet Kathy Murphy, the “Pulpwood Queen” who opened the only Hair Salon/Bookstore, Beauty and the Book in the country in Jefferson, Texas and in 2000, founded and now operates the 600+ chapter book club, The Pulpwood Queens, nationally and in 15 foreign countries – the largest “meeting and discussing” book club in the world!
Kathy will be on a very popular panel at this year’s PubSense Summit, titled Busting into Book Clubs. joined by WWW’s own Jacqueline Gum who vets book clubs for our Winner Circle; Melissa Rodrigo, Melissa Rodrigo, founder of the Charleston Book Lovers club, which currently has over 700 members; and literary agent Michelle Brower of Folio Literary Management, who works with authors to make their project as appealing as it can be to book clubs!
Know of a Live Book Club in Your Area?
Besides the WWW team reaching out regularly to bloggers, Twitterers, indie book stores, readers at book festivals and more, once every few months we circle back to the coolest source – YOU – to ferret out the latest book clubs in cities around the world. Because, the club you know about might also be of value to one of our other emerging authors – and their club may be of value to you!
Please, take answer the few questions below, or make a comment with the book club manager you want us to reach out to, or jot us an email at [email protected].
With your help, our vetted list of LIVE book clubs in the Winner Circle, now already over 200 live clubs and thousands of readers strong, will offer authors the best chance to expose their work to new readers. And book clubs will have the opportunity to read new work in the genres of their choice, and maybe even influence who the next best-seller will be… It may be you!
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Book clubs sound like the way to go. Now I only need to contact some.
I think that is probably great advice for most writers, but apparently not for “Western” writers. I’ve sold 8400 books (6000 by me and 2400 by a small press that I fired for underpayments), had one novel take a Gold Medal (2014 Military Writers Society of America,Historical Fiction), had a short story take second place in the 2014 SPUR Awards (Western Writers of America), had another short story selected for the 2012 Petigru Review, and currently have a novel and another short story recommended for 2015 SPUR Awards by my publishers. My first two novels were recognized in 2013 by a feminist group for having “strong and sexy heroines”-but I have never been able to wrangle an invitation to a book club. I have presented to perhaps a dozen civic clubs and sold them over a hundred books, but zero book clubs. Most book clubs seem to be women’s groups here, and have no interest in my genre. I think it was Louis Lamour who said, “If I do a historical novel placed east of the Mississippi, it’s called Historical Fiction; west of the river, it’s a damn Western.” I would probably do much better with clubs out West, but I live here. I’m going out and eat worms.
The beautiful part is you don’t have to be anywhere near the book club these days – authors are Skyping or doing Google hangouts. So click in the Winner Circle on western states and see what pops up!