The Rise of Celebrity Book Clubs and the Fall of Original Thought
Not really, but kind of?
We are in the zeitgeist of the Literary It Girl, and everyone has a book club. And by everyone, of course, I mean every celebrity ever. From Mindy Kaling to Dua Lipa to Dakota Johnson, from Sarah Jessica Parker to Kaia Gerber to Emma Watson, there's no shortage of ladies in the limelight telling you what you just have to read. And why not? In the age of the internet, everything is commodifiable, and every moment is an opportunity to influence, which is to say, everything is an opportunity to sell you something and pad influencers’ pockets. Books are no exception.
But what’s interesting is that, historically, books do not make money. To quote
My last post on book awards got me thinking about the accolades books collect and how this recognition increases sales, readership, author success, and public discourse around a book. In writing that post, I learned how these organizations that bestow literary prestige function as powerful business entities rather than altruistic, nonpartisan groups untouched by subjectivity, as they’d have you believe.
A short mental leap from these prizes is the aforementioned celebrity book clubs—a newer form of anointing books as “chosen” in the culture, which inevitably boosts their sales and readership. They’re a simple way for a public persona, like Oprah or Reese Witherspoon, to connect with their audience, share interests, and build a community.
But when we see that these book clubs are making millions upon millions of dollars, it becomes clear that they are much more than just cutesy little pet projects. At the very least, they’re part of brand curation, adding to the impact and engagement that a certain celebrity garners from their would-be fans. It gives them more surface area for relevance and reach. At the very most, and, arguably, at the darkest, they’re purely arms of the larger capitalist machine, a clever, self-sustaining ecosystem that results in the person at the top getting rich as hell.
How do these book clubs work as businesses for these celebrities? What can authors whose books are picked for a celebrity book club gain from this relationship, and what are these book club picks doing to and for readers? As with most stories, it makes sense to start at the beginning.
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
It begins, of course, with Oprah Winfrey. And what doesn't? Oprah launched Oprah’s Book Club in 1996 as a monthly segment on her talk show. Oprah would choose books, both new and old publications, often interviewing the author of the book on her show. The original version of Oprah’s Book Club chose eight books a year before announcing its end in 2002. It relaunched in 2003, but on a slower schedule, with only four books a year.
Being an Oprah’s Book Club pick was a boon for authors and publishing houses alike. Her impact on book sales was called “The Oprah Effect” and took authors and book sales to new heights— from a few thousand copies sold, in the case of Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” to 800,000 copies sold after Oprah picked it for her book club. It’s estimated that Oprah book club picks, collectively, have sold over 55 million copies. One author talks about how she bought a house with money from her book sales after it became Oprah’s book club pick. Before there were Instagram influencers, there was Oprah, and her book club had books flying off the shelves.
Oprah ended her TV segment of the book club in 2011 and transitioned to “Oprah’s Book Club 2.0,” which focused on digital readership through e-readers with discussions on social media. This venture was a partnership between Oprah magazine and her TV network, aiming to adapt to the rise of the internet and social media.
Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 has since pivoted to podcasts, undoubtedly a lucrative deal for Winfrey, though there is not much info on what her listener numbers look like. It is hard to imagine the podcast being as popular as Winfrey’s recommendations in their heyday.
THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA
While Oprah is undeniably a tremendous success in multiple areas of media and business, her book club at its peak was just slightly behind the digital age of influence as we know it today. Of course, she now has an Instagram, but her audience skews older and was not raised on social media— a crucial component of the modern-day celebrity book club.
As far as I can tell from my research (i.e., google), Reese Witherspoon was the next celebrity book club after Oprah’s ended. Reese’s Book Club, as it is so aptly named, started in 2017 as an arm of her production company, Hello Sunshine. Reese shares her monthly book picks with her 3 million Instagram followers, and the book sales go crazy.
In 2023 alone, her book club picks blew other celebrity book clubs (including Oprah’s), out of the water, totaling around 23 million print copies sold. Reese’s Book Club picks spend months, even years, on the best seller list and, in some cases, increase sales by 10,000 times what they were initially pacing at.
To hear Reese tell it, she started the book club because she loves reading but also because she felt that in the film industry, women’s stories weren’t being told. Because of this, she looks for “optimistic” stories with women at the center for her monthly book club picks.
But it goes beyond just sharing heartwarming, female-led stories with her audience and boosting book sales. Under the hood, things look a little bit different. Reese’s Book Club works through a very smart, almost fail-proof process:
First, Reese and her team will contact the novel’s publisher about making the book their pick. Then, Reese will promote the book to her 3M Instagram followers, engage with the author, and make other appearances.
In return for this publicity, promotion, and a guaranteed enormous increase in sales, Reese negotiates deals for the rights to the book, which her production company then owns.
Once Reese’s company, Hello Sunshine, owns the rights to the novel, they will then negotiate with streaming platforms to fund the production of these shows in exchange for the rights. This means that Hello Sunshine is getting these books turned into shows and movies, sells the rights at a markup, and is not on the hook for funding the very expensive making of the show or movie itself.
Fucking genius, right? And, shocking to no one, this has been wildly successful. Big Little Lies, The Morning Show, and Little Fires Everywhere—all shows Reese starred in—are products of this formula. And Reese is making money hand over fist—Apple bought the second season of the morning show for $300M, and Reese makes $2M an episode for her role on the show.
A MODEL FOR THE MONOCULTURE
Clearly, Reese is printing money with this business model. And for other celebrities in film and TV, it’s easily replicable. Celebrities like Mindy Kaling, Dakota Johnson, and Emma Roberts all have book clubs that funnel into their production companies, where they follow similar steps to the Reese model detailed above. Others not in the industry, like Dua Lipa and Kaia Gerber, have their book clubs funnel into podcasts, and I’d bet money that there will be more bookish business deals in their futures.
Something about this business model feels… sort of icky to me in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. And to be clear– I am not trying to paint Reese Witherspoon, or any of these celebrities, as the villains. I mean, celebrity culture is inherently psychotic and horrifying on so many levels, but that’s outside the scope of this essay…
With this book-club-to-movie pipeline, it’s a case of don’t hate the player, hate the game. But where does this get us all as readers when the masses are only influenced into reading feel-good, girl-defeats-the-odds, tidy little stories that conveniently fit Reese Witherspoon’s range of acting? The idea that books are nothing more than vehicles for an eventual binge-worthy Netflix series feels bleak.
THE PROS (IT'S COMPLICATED)
For the record, I am not trying to sound “holier than thou,” like I don’t watch TV or something. And I see a lot of positives in these celebrity book clubs, mainly in the initial part where they recommend a book.
As we’ve discussed, publishing is a dying industry. A study of print books from the top ten publishers found that “…only 6.7 percent of the new titles released by these companies were selling more than 10,000 copies in their first year of sales, only 12.3 percent were selling more than 5,000 copies in their first year, and only 33.9 percent of these titles were selling more than 1,000 copies in their first year.”
Most authors make less than minimum wage writing a book, and books, on the whole, don’t sell well because the heartbreaking truth is that people don’t read. Or, at the very least, more books are being written than there are people who read them.
So when Oprah or Reese Witherspoon or Dua Lipa or whoever shares a book with their massive audiences and sales go off the charts, I think that’s spectacular. It’s a life-changing status for some of these authors and may affect their ability to secure future lucrative book deals and allow them to build a dedicated fan base to support future book sales.
It’s also great that these clubs have more people reading. While I have strong opinions about books and what is and isn’t worth my precious reading time, I am a big proponent of reading at large being a good thing. If Reese’s monthly book pick is what gets you to read something new a few times a year, that’s amazing, truly. I’m stoked for people to read whatever they want to read, and doing more of that is positive as far as I’m concerned.
AND YET…
And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that this whole thing is depressing. Reese Witherspoon’s business model relies on her picking books that fit the mold of her palatable, prime-time-ready taste. She is candid about her picks being “shareable,” women-centered stories where women save themselves. Subsequently, she funnels her audience into this singular, bland reading experience—the same type of story month after month.
Do not misunderstand me– I am not knocking female-led book clubs claiming to champion stories about women, female and BIPOC authors, and so forth. And while the type of books Reese’s Book Club recommends is not for me, I understand that the human experience is about diverse viewpoints and tastes, and those that differ from the mind are just as valid.
What I am knocking is the following of a powerful person’s taste who has a vested interest in you listening to their recommendations, and it’s not because they’re trying to impress you at a dinner party.
And to be fair, we as a society are certainly looking to be told what to like. It is the influencer era, after all. Personal taste is only useful as far as it can be presented aesthetically on Instagram, which is just the problem. We look to others to tell us what our taste should be so that we can tap into the “culture.” But when the “culture” is being curated by people looking to make money, incentives now align with appealing to the masses rather than taking a chance on something strange and unique and outside the realm of traditional palatability.
The result of this cycle is a broad, flat expanse of sameness– the same content over and over, just packaged slightly differently, that we passively consume because some beautiful lady on Instagram told us to. Later, we’ll watch her show for the same reason. Rinse and repeat.
So what is the answer? What do we do with this? Honestly, I don’t know. I will say that the irony of me writing this while also having a newsletter recommending books is not lost on me. But my goal has always been to serve as a departure from the repetitive, to offer a literary road less traveled. At the very least, I don't have a production company.
The best I can think of as a counterweight to all of this is to read stuff you might not normally pick up rather than what everyone else is recommending on TikTok or Instagram. Ask your local bookseller or librarian what books from 10 or 20 years ago are worth reading. Pick up a few random $1 paperbacks at a thrift store. Browse at an indie bookstore for a genre you rarely read. Ask a friend what the weirdest book they ever read was, and read that.
Branching out, reading widely, reading odd things, reading obscure things, reading challenging things– that is where taste is formed and where you find what speaks to you. That is where you encounter novelty and curiosity for the world you inhabit. That is where you find the kind of things that alter your brain chemistry and change the way you think. I can promise you won’t find that in a celebrity book club.
What do you think? Do you love or hate celebrity book clubs? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Books of the moment:
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📖 Currently reading:
What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma
📚Recently finished:
The Hard Crowd by Rachel Kushner, 4/5 stars
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield, 5/5 stars
👉🏼You should read: Celebrity Book Clubs I’d Actually Like to Join
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Interesting and (to my way of thinking, anyway) valid points all. So given this, where do things like the NYTimes “best books” list figure in? Does the Times do something more like you? The celeb lists?
I think you break this all down really well and give a fair assessment of the trend. I think the whole "book-tok" movement dovetails nicely here with your argument. This is not a conversation about celebrities, but rather a discussion of the lemming nature of the masses (we've ways been lemmings, it's just that now our cult leaders are online, accessible).
The real tragedy, I think, is that there seems to be a yawning gap between the populariry of the club and the quality of the book. Oprah's books were often outstanding. Witherspoon's seem fine. But the rest...