Abstract
In the early twentieth century, book sales clubs became popular as an alternative means of book distribution. Corinna Norrick-Rühl offers a unique comparative approach, synthesizing research about book sales clubs in twentieth-century Germany and the USA. Whereas previous studies have focussed mainly on the recommended literature and the effect on middlebrow reading, Norrick-Rühl shows how book sales clubs rendered the book as a cultural object available and affordable, filling working-class and middle-class shelves with attractive volumes of “furniture books”. While book sales clubs were enormously successful in the twentieth century, they have recently declined. The author finally underlines the significance attributed to book ownership and books as cultural objects in the twenty-first century.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Adams, Thomas, and Nicolas Barker. 1993. “A New Model for the Study of the Book.” In A Potencie of Life. Books in Society, ed. Nicolas Barker, 5–43. London: The British Library.
Benton, Megan. 1997. “‘Too Many Books’: Book Ownership and Cultural Identity in the 1920s.” American Quarterly 49.2 (June): 268–297.
“Bertelsmann sagt dem Club bye, bye. Ende 2015 ist Schluss.” 2014. Börsenblatt online, June 17. Accessed 28 July 2016. http://www.boersenblatt.net/artikel-ende_2015_ist_schluss.802943.html.
Cherrier, Hélène, and Russell Belk. 2015. “Decluttering.” In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies, ed. Daniel Thomas Cook, and J. Michael Ryan, 238–239. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Darnton, Robert. 1982. “What is the History of Books?” Daedalus 111.3 (Summer): 65–83.
Dixon, Hayley. 2013. “Charity shops stuck with thousands of copies of 50 Shades of Grey.” The Telegraph, September 5. Accessed 28 July 2016. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10289912/Charity-shops-stuck-with-thousands-of-copies-of-50-Shades-of-Grey.html.
Dressler, Helmut. 1947. Werden und Wirken der Büchergilde Gutenberg. Zurich: Büchergilde Gutenberg.
Dumont, Vera. 2015. “Literaturvermittlung an ein Millionenpublikum—Die fast ausgestorbene Spezies der Buchgemeinschafts-Mitgliederzeitschriften.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Internationale Buchwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft (IBG) Young Scholars Network, Mainz, Germany, November 13–14, 2015.
Ehni, Gunter, and Frank Weissbach. 1969. Buchgemeinschaften in Deutschland, 2nd ed. Hamburg: Verlag für Buchmarkt-Forschung.
Estermann, Monika. 2013. “Buchhandel, Buchhandelsgeschichte und Verlagsgeschichtsschreibung vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart.” In Buchwissenschaft in Deutschland. Ein Handbuch, ed. Ursula Rautenberg, 257–320. Boston, New York: De Gruyter.
Evans, Mariah D. R., Jonathan Kelley, and Joanna Sikora. 2014. “Scholarly Culture and Academic Performance in 42 Nations.” Social Forces 92.4: 1573–1605. Accessed 28 July 2016. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sou030.
Farr, Cecilia Konchar. 2004. Reading Oprah. How Oprah’s Book Club Changed the Way America Reads. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Flood, Alison. 2014. “Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has sold 100 m copies worldwide.” The Guardian. 27 February. Accessed 28 July 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/27/fifty-shades-of-grey-book-100m-sales.
Franzmann, Bodo. 1987. “Buchbesitz.” In LGB 2 . Lexikon des gesamten Buchwesens. Band I. “A”–“Buch”. Second edition, ed. Severin Corsten, Stephan Füssel, and Günther Pflug, 574. Stuttgart: Hiersemann.
Füssel, Stephan. 2013. “Introduction” to “Ungeöffnete Königsgräber.” Chancen und Nutzen von Verlagsarchiven, ed. Stephan Füssel, 7–12. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Füssel, Stephan, and Corinna Norrick-Rühl. 2014. Einführung in die Buchwissenschaft. Darmstadt: WBG.
Goff, Neal. 2011. “Direct-Response Bookselling: How it Died, Why it is Alive Again, and Why it will Become Even More Important in the Future.” Publishing Research Quarterly 27.3: 259–267. Accessed 28 July 2016. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-011-9219-2.
Haupt, Friederike. 2015. “Free Billy!” Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. September 6.
Henze, Eberhard. 1987. “Buchgemeinschaften.” In LGB 2 . Lexikon des gesamten Buchwesens. Band I. “A”–“Buch.” Second edition, ed. Severin Corsten, Stephan Füssel, and Günther Pflug, 592–597. Stuttgart: Hiersemann.
Holtmann, Jan Philip. 2008. Pfadunabhängigkeit strategischer Entscheidungen. Eine Fallstudie am Beispiel des Bertelsmann Buchclubs Deutschland. Köln: Kölner Wissenschaftsverlag.
Hutter, Martin, and Wolfgang R. Langenbucher. 1980. Buchgemeinschaften und Lesekultur. Studie zum Programmangebot von sechs Buchgemeinschaften (1972–1977). Berlin: Verlag Volker Spiess.
Kappel, Joseph W. 1948. “Book Clubs and the Evaluation of Books.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 12.2: 243–52. Accessed 28 July 2016. Stable http://www.jstor.org/stable/2745263.
Kollmannsberger, Michael. 1995. Buchgemeinschaften im deutschen Buchmarkt. Funktionen, Leistungen, Wechselwirkungen. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Lokatis, Siegfried. 2010. “A Concept Circles the Globe: From the Lesering to the Internationalization of the Club Business.” In 175 Years of Bertelsmann. The Legacy for our Future, 132–171. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann.
Long, Elizabeth. 2003. Book Clubs. Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Melis, Urban van. 2012. “Buchgemeinschaften.” In Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Die Weimarer Republik 1918–1933. Teil 2, ed. Ernst Fischer, and Stephan Füssel, 553–585. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Müller, Carola, comp. 1999. Bücher, Bilder und Ideen. 75 Jahre Büchergilde. Frankfurt: Büchergilde Gutenberg Verlagsgesellschaft mbH.
Müller, Lothar. 2015. “Lasst dicke Bücher um mich sein.” Süddeutsche Zeitung. October 31.
Nash, Paul W., ed. 2007. Folio 60. A Bibliography of The Folio Society, 1947–2006. London: The Folio Society.
Owen, Lynette. 2014. Selling Rights, 7th ed. Abingdon: Routledge.
Pleimling, Dominique. 2012. “Social Reading—Lesen im digitalen Zeitalter.” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, October 2. Accessed 28 July 2016. http://www.bpb.de/apuz/145378/social-reading-lesen-im-digitalen-zeitalter.
Radway, Janice. 1997. A Feeling for Books. The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-class Desire. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Reichwein, Marc. 2011. “Corporate Publishing im Buchhandel: Literaturvermittlung zwischen Marketing und Journalismus.” In Perspektiven der Literaturvermittlung, ed. Stefan Neuhaus, and Oliver Ruf, 235–248. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag.
Schlott, René. 2009. Die WBG, ein Unikat der Verlagslandschaft. Eine kleine Verlagsgeschichte der Wissenschaftlichen Buchgesellschaft. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Schneider, Ute. 2015. “Buchgemeinschaft.” In Reclams Sachlexikon des Buches, ed. Ursula Rautenberg, 75–76. Third Edition. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Schummeck, Josefine. 2016. “Hört auf, mit vollen Bücherregalen anzugeben!” ze.tt, February 19. Accessed 28 July 2016. http://ze.tt/hoert-auf-mit-vollen-buecherregalen-anzugeben/.
Silverman, Al. 1996. “Book Clubs in America.” In The Book in the United States Today, ed. Gordon Graham, and Richard Abel, 113–127. New Brunswick, USA; London: Transaction Publishers, Whurr Publishers.
Smolinsky, Meeghan. 2010. “A New Reading Experience: Book of the Month Club.” Last modified Fall 2010. Accessed 28 July 2016. http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/BOMC.html.
Striphas, Ted. 2009. The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control. New York: Columbia University Press.
“The Book-of-the-Month Club. An outline of a unique plan for those who wish to keep abreast of the best books of the day” [BOMC marketing brochure, published in 1927]. In Ohta, Yukie. 2013. “When the BOMC was the BMOC: The Beginnings of the Book of the Month Club.” New York Bound Books. Last modified November 2, 2013. Accessed 28 July 2016. http://www.newyorkboundbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/BOMC-brochure.pdf.
Wayne, Teddy. 2015. “Our (Bare) Shelves, Our Selves.” New York Times, December 5. Accessed 28 July 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/fashion/our-bare-shelves-our-selves.html.
Whipple, Leon. 1929. “Books on the Belt.” The Nation, February, 182–183.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Norrick-Rühl, C. (2018). Two Peas in a Pod: Book Sales Clubs and Book Ownership in the Twentieth Century. In: Stead, E. (eds) Reading Books and Prints as Cultural Objects. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53832-7_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53832-7_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-53831-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-53832-7
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)