About Me  | When BOMC was a new-fangled idea.Posted Dec-02-07 00:45:20 PST Updated Dec-02-07 20:56:05 PST
IT WAS 1926 AND THERE WAS A NEW IDEA!  What appears above is an advertisement from the first year of the Book-of-the-Month Club's existence. Founded in 1926 by Harry Scherman, the club was an immediate success. (Wikipedia wrongly gives the year as 1923). This was the CHARTER SUBSCRIBER offer. The ad-copy reads: "A subscription to this year-round Service would be a Christmas gift deeply appreciated by anyone who enjoys good books. Send the coupon below for our Prospectus, in which it is explained how you may subscribe - either for yourself or others. "If you are a bookish person, you have probably heard about the Book-of-the-Month Club. many of the most prominent people in the country have already subscribed to its service. Wherever books are talked about, it is likely to come into the conversation. Frequently, however, the simple idea behind it seems to be misunderstood. "There are hundreds of thousands of intelligent people in this country who are really anxious to keep abreast of outstanding new books, as they appear. But the average person fails to read most of these important books. he misses them because he is either too busy or too neglectful to go out and buy them. How often has this happened to you? "I certainly want to read that book!" you say to yourself, when you see a review or hear a book praised highly, by someone whose taste you respect. But, in most cases, you never "get around to it". "It is to meet this situation, chiefly, that the Book-of-the-Month Club was organized. It takes cognizance of the procrastination that forever causes you to miss the best books; each month, without effort on your part, you will receive the outstanding new book published that month -- just as you receive a magazine -- by mail! How is the "outstanding" book each month chosen? "How may you be sure it is a book you would care to purchase anyway? In order to obtain a completely unbiased selection, the Book-of-the-Month Club has asked a group of well-known critics, whose judgment as to books and whose catholicity of taste have long been known to the public, to act as Selecting Committee. They are Henry Seidel Canby, Chairman; Heywood Broun, Dorothy Canfield, Christopher Morley and William Allen White. "These individuals have no business connection with the Book-of-the-Month Club. They are simply requested to function as judges, for the benefit of our subscribers, and they agreed to do so. Each month, the new books of all publishers, are presented to them. From these by a system of voting, they choose what they consider to be the most outstanding and readable book each month, and that book is forthwith sent to every subscriber of the Book-of-the-Month Club. "Tastes differ, however. You may concede that a book selected by such a committee is likely to be the one that you would not care to miss reading. But you may disagree with their choice in any one month. If so, you may exchange the book you receive for any one of a number of other books which the committee simultaneously recommends Thus, your choice among current books is no more limited than if you browsed n a bookstore. The only result is -- that you actually do obtain and do read the books you want to read. This you won't do in most cases, if you rely on your present haphazard methods of book-buying. "The cost of this service is -- nothing. The cost of the books is, in every case, the publishers' retail price. "If you are interested in this idea, and wish to know more about it, send for our prospectus, in which the simple details of the plan are completely outlined. Your request will involve you in no obligation to subscribe. If, however, you do subscribe at this time, you will receive special privileges as a "charter subscriber", which it will not be possible to offer later." Haw! Simply amazing, isn't it .... that people had to have the concept of a subscription book club explained. But not for long. People sneer these days ... or I should say collectors and dealers sneer ... hold their noses at the very thought of a book club book .... Indeeed, I have found myself sneering also .... harrumph .... passing by these half-pint clones of the published thing ... looking for the real thing.... the real book. HARRUMPH! At what is there to sneer? Smaller size? No price? Later printing? Illigitimate offspring? The simple idea?? All this is nonsense spawned by a collecting mania, and pocket books that will spurn all but the original ... and a book club is hardly the original. And it is easy it is to see how easy it is to sneer at an honest product, today - when the confounded book club editions seem to spawn like tadpoles in a pond .... they seem to make up the great majority of books at any one FOL sale. But just think ... as seen above, there was a time when nobody had even heard of a book club edition. When it was first announced, people took to it as the good idea that it truly was. After, all, there was no such thing as collecting moderns. Ultra-moderns as an idea didn't exist. People gladly accepted into their homes these cheaper versions of popular books. I imagine new book store owners snarled a bit. I imagine there are dealers and collectors who would now throw a book at me ... a book club edition, of course ... they would gladly bean me on the noggin for daring to suggest that the book clubs were a good thing. harrumph. Let them! I have dodged worse! The Book-of-the-Month Club was the first. It didn't take long before there were many other book clubs. Clubs sprouted up like daffodils in a Wordsworth poem, only not nearly so beguiling. There was the Literary Guild Haw! Now there was a book club full of traps for the unwary collector and dealer! But certainly a handsome-looking product. Then the People's Book Club, which presented, in retrospect, the innocent family face of America, and books that today have a charm and an aura all their own .... Where the Literary Guild dressed its books up to present a dignified mein, the People's Book Club presented a down-home, back on the farm product .... homey books with colorful pictorial endpapers that promised wholesome family entertainment. The endpapers didn't lie. Quite early on in the game there were clubs that zeroed in on genres ... there were book clubs within book clubs. ... mystery book clubs, science fiction book clubs, western book clubs, history, cooking, religious book clubs, political book clubs, garden book clubs, children's book clubs, etc. etc. Then there were the book clubs that catered to those who wished to think that their collecting, even if it was through a book club, was a cut above .... Hence clubs like the Limited Editions Club, with volumes lavishly illustrated and designed ... often with the illustrators signature. The Heritage Club was the poor man's Limited Editions Club ... the only difference, other than materials and some stray signatures , were the prices. Then there was the Folio Club, another outfit that presented books in spiffy dress, encased is snazzy slip cases. All of these designer club books were nice to look at and a pleasure to hold. I think of them all as the slipcase clubs. Today, for the discrinating collector, we have Eastons and Franklins ... lavishly constructed in leather and silk and faux leather, with lovely illustrations ... all with an eye to the collector; but all the same, these are still book clubs ... subscription arrangements. Haw! A brilliant idea, really ... build a collector's collection through subscription. These book club publishers are now a small industry and the complexities of collecting them have increased three fold as the years passed. There are good online references for negotiating these complexties. One of the best is right here on ebay (this is a safely clickable link): Keith's Specialty Store / Keith's ebay Me page Keith is knowledgeable and has a lot of good information which he generously shares about Eastons and Franklins. harrumph. I should know so much about any one subject. Don't tell him I was talking about him. The book club arrived, matured and sunk roots deep into American popular culture, eventually to be embraced even by book stores, and certainly by publishers, who could not sneer at a phenomena that stimulated company growth and whose contracts now were relied on for extended profits. In the world of big-time publishing, it is the rare book signed without an eye to the book clubs. But still, reigning supreme, flying high over all the rest is BOMC - and that's no airline.
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