Special Topics Paper Summary: Celebrity Book Clubs

 For my special topics paper, I chose to explore the impact of various celebrity book clubs and how we can use these clubs for readers advisory. While I have read several book club selections, mostly by discovering them by their seals on the covers, I had no idea what the impact these book clubs have had. 

The first book club I explored was the original celebrity book club, Oprah's. Through my research, I found out that when a book was chosen for Oprah's Book Club, it was estimated that it would sell 500,000 additional copies. Even books that were not new releases would return to the bestseller lists if they were included in her club (Sheehan, 2021). Reese Witherspoon's book club also has had huge impacts, with her picks accounting for two percent of all fiction sales since 2017 (Nichols, 2019) and the additional benefits of her picks being made into movies or shows through her production company. Even smaller book clubs have benefits, such as Jimmy Fallon's first book club selection selling three times more than the week before it was chosen (Grunenwald, 2019). 

I also came up with several ideas for how to use these book club selections in readers' advisory, such as lists on my library's catalog, book and movie displays from book club selections, book bundles that incorporate different celebrity lists together, and even a lecture/book club program using these celebrity selections. Because these book clubs are really trusted by readers as quality selections, I think any of these programs would be popular with the patrons at my library. 

References:

Grunenwald, J. (2022, December 20). Celebrity Book Clubs are all the rage. Perspectives on Reading. https://perspectivesonreading.com/celebrity-book-clubs-are-all-the-rage/

Nichols, M. (2019, August 16). How the new celebrity book clubs are boosting literary sales. Variety. https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/reese-witherspoon-celebrity-book-clubs-little-fires-everywhere-1203279897/ 

Sheehan, D. (2021, September 17). On its 25th anniversary, here’s a look at Oprah’s Book club-by the numbers. Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/on-its-25th-anniversary-heres-a-look-at-oprahs-book-club-by-the-numbers/