Brianna Goodman, the editorial director for Book of the Month, sits on a bar stool at the company’s Manhattan office. The space is arranged with six rows of chairs, hosting primarily Book of the Month club employees and a journalist, for recording the Virtual Book Tour, a monthly podcast that Goodman co-hosts with Jerrod MacFarlane, the editorial associate.
British Cambodian author Kaliane Bradley is joining them, whose first novel, “The Ministry of Time,” has made it onto the bestseller list. The BBC had already acquired the rights to adapt this time-travel romance into a six-hour series, directed by Alice Birch of “Normal People” and “Dead Ringers” fame, even before the book’s retail release in May.
“This book has so much to love in it,” Goodman enthuses as she introduces it. “It’s a mix of time travel, of rom-com, of this really interesting exploration of time and history and the ways that language changes over time. It also has my favorite thing that happens in books, which is a dry sense of humor….It’s one of those books where I’m sitting by myself snorting quietly as I’m reading, so thank you.”
The audience’s inquiries range from the genesis of Bradley’s book (originally a series of posts on a polar exploration enthusiast site during the COVID-19 lockdown) to the biographical parallels with the narrator’s own life (her mother is Khmer and migrated to London amid the Cambodian civil war). They also explore the protagonist’s opinions on modern technology, highlighting that the historical figure Lieutenant Graham Gore, who tragically died with his crew in Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated Arctic expedition to find the Northwest Passage, enjoys Spotify but detests smartphones and the TV show “East Enders.”
The Q&A session sizzles with energy, designed to entice listeners to purchase the book. Launched in 2022, the Virtual Book Tour naturally extends from the discussions the BOTM editorial team engages in when selecting the official Book of the Month titles, typically ranging from five to seven books.
As the Q&A session draws to a close, the scene transitions smoothly: chairs are swiftly stacked away, studio lights are dismantled, and staff begin to mix up cocktails inspired by the ‘Ministry of Time.’ These drinks combine sloe gin with a splash of lemon juice and club soda, finished off with a sprig of mint and a blue cocktail cherry. Reflecting a scene from the book, these drinks nod to Lieutenant Gore’s discovery of a sloe bush and his subsequent brewing of sloe gin, a concoction dating back to the Victorian era. Bradley then settles into a banquette, ready to autograph books for the enthusiastic staff.
“I really only expected five to 15 people to read this book, and the idea that these amazing people have got behind it is really quite extraordinary,” says Bradley, in typical British understatement. “Just seeing the culture here, it blew my mind.”
A Substandard Website and Lack of Direction
When Anne Hathaway asked the audience on Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” how many had read Robinne Lee’s 2017 novel “The Idea of You,” which her latest film is based on, the resulting silence went viral, fueling the perception that smartphones have led to a generation less inclined to read. Fallon humorously responded, “We don’t read,” suggesting Hathaway might find more literary fans on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Night.”
“The Idea of You” wasn’t chosen by Book of the Month (BOTM), unlike Casey McQuiston’s 2019 LGBTQ romance “Red, White and Royal Blue,” which was selected and later turned into a successful 2023 film. According to Statista, the book industry remains a robust multi-billion dollar global market, with U.S. sales topping $9 billion a year from 700 million units sold. Despite the rise of audiobooks and e-readers, printed books, especially hardbacks generating $3.2 billion annually, continue to be the preferred format.
Established in 1926 as a mail-order book club, Book of the Month has played a pivotal role in shaping literary tastes, showcasing debut works from renowned authors such as Ernest Hemingway. “The Sun Also Rises,” J.D. Salinger with “The Catcher in the Rye,” and Nelson DeMille with “By the Rivers of Babylon.” However, the emergence of Amazon and big-box retailers has severely impacted independent bookstores and reduced the relevance of book clubs as a significant promotional medium. By the 1990s, BOTM was struggling with harmful mergers and acquisitions. By 2012, when John Lippman, a former music publishing executive and Lehman Brothers vice president, acquired a majority stake, the club was on the brink of obscurity.
“They had a crappy website, they weren’t good at e-commerce [and] they just weren’t about anything,” says Lippman, who is now BOTM’s chief executive officer. “There was no point of view; they were just drifting.”
The digital revolution fragmented the book industry, and the surge in algorithm-driven e-commerce added further challenges for general book clubs. Oprah Winfrey’s book club, launched in 1996, leveraged her star power and daily talk show to become a pivotal promotional force. Having the Oprah’s Book Club endorsement was a prized achievement for publishers. In response, Book of the Month Club reintroduced its panel of celebrity authors to compete, but the broad range of its selections failed to build a dedicated readership, causing subscriber numbers to dwindle.
“Supporting new authors, helping them break through, that was actually the thing I was most interested in,” Lippman says. “It sounded like fun and that’s what was missing. It was like, ‘Who used to do that in the book business?’ Oh, us, like 90 years ago. Why don’t we just do that thing again and also be good at e-commerce?”
In 2015, Lippman rebranded Book of the Month, removing ‘club’ from its name and shifting its focus to contemporary fiction. Subscribers invest $15.99 monthly to select from a curated range of five to seven hardcover books. For those seeking more variety, additional titles can be acquired for $10.99 each. By the end of its first year post-relaunch, BOTM turned a profit and by 2017, it had earned $10 million. Currently, the company boasts annual revenues exceeding $50 million.
Over 80 per cent of BOTM subscribers are Gen-Z and Millennial women. “We didn’t specifically reinvent it for younger women, but that’s who came to us,” he says. “Women read most [of] the fiction in America, and if you’re promoting up-and-coming authors, you tend to attract younger audiences.”
BOTM now has over 350,000 monthly subscribers and around 2 million social media followers across platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Despite its growth, the company maintains a lean operation with about 50 employees based in New York.
Brianna Goodman, 31, epitomizes BOTM’s ideal subscriber and serves as the key decision-maker for the monthly book selections, which include a variety of genres such as thrillers, literary and historical fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, and short stories. Goodman was already a subscriber before joining the BOTM team. Her career progression within the company was rapid; she started as an editorial assistant in 2018, two years after earning a literature and creative writing degree from Fordham University. Previously a classically trained ballet dancer, she moved to New York in 2011 to perform at the Joffrey Ballet School, living in a cramped West Village apartment with six roommates.
“We were all dancers,” she says. “There was a lot of tension.”
While pursuing her dance career, she also took night classes at Fordham and worked part-time as a babysitter to make ends meet.
“At a certain point I just couldn’t make the financials work,” she adds. “I also had many other interests. And I just hit a point where my life was so disciplined and so contained in this very narrow way, and I just like wanted it to open up more.”
Book of the Month offered her that chance. “At the time it was a pretty small company so there was a ton of opportunity,” she says. “I was just excited to learn every single aspect of the editorial team’s work.”
On average, Goodman reads about five books a week. She oversees a six-member editorial team that reviews submissions, but she reads every book that BOTM endorses from start to finish.
“If I’m reading a book, and I can tell that it’s something really special and really different, my heart literally starts racing,” she mentions a hand on her chest to emphasize her point.
She currently owns around 250 books, reduced from 500 due to a recent move. Her days are packed with meetings with agents, publishers, and authors, so she finds time to read on weekends and early mornings before work. She’s an early riser, usually up by 6 a.m., with piles of books scattered around her apartment—on the coffee table, tucked in the living room corners. When friends come over, they often leave with a book or two. About the books in her bedroom, she chuckles, “They are actually in the bed with me. I sleep on the right side of the bed and books sleep on the left side of the bed. I know I shouldn’t do that. They are hardback books.”
“It’s really important for me to tap into that mindset that I had when I was hired, of being a member and rushing to open the app on the first of the month to see what the new books are. It can be so easy for people who do this job to start to feel like everything feels the same, ‘I’m so overwhelmed that I’m sick of reading.’ But it’s so important for me to never feel that way and remember that this might be the one book that a member reads this month.”
“If I didn’t love books,” she says. “I couldn’t do this job.”