In the beginning, there was Oprah. Now, there are over a dozen celebrity-helmed book clubs that could make an author’s career. But do they actually move the needle? “It used to be that if you got a big book-club pick, your book was an automatic best seller, and that is so not the case anymore,” says one publicist. We asked 15 authors and industry insiders what these clubs can really do for a book.
The Big Four
1.
Oprah’s Book Club
2.
Read With Jenna on the Today show
3.
Reese’s Book Club
4.
Good Morning America
Oprah is usually the first place to pitch, one publicist told us, especially if the book is nonfiction or has weightier themes. Then she’ll go to Jenna Bush Hager, then Reese Witherspoon, then Good Morning America. All have different upsides: Fans of Read With Jenna appreciate that the former First Daughter’s picks skew feminist and political. GMA gets dinged for not having a famous figurehead, but the show tends to air multiple segments for its picks, so authors can end up on TV three times instead of just once. Vanessa Chan says her 2024 book The Storm We Made would never have found so many readers without the club. “I get letters now from Kansas, from Missouri, from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, being like, ‘I heard about this on GMA.’”
But these days, the real brass ring is a development deal. When Marissa Stapley published her novel Lucky in 2021, she was almost ready to throw in the towel. “I am a mid-list author. Lucky was my fourth novel. It had already come out in Canada to really soft sales, and I was really very concerned about my publishing career.” Then Witherspoon chose the book, it sold a few hundred thousand copies, and her company Hello Sunshine started developing it into a limited series with Anya Taylor-Joy.
And with Reese, once you’re in the club, you’re in the club. “They still promote me and my book all the time on their socials,” says Laura Taylor Namey, whose YA book A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow was a pick in 2020. “It’s like the gift that keeps on giving.” Chosen authors reunite at events like Hello Sunshine’s Shine Away festival and keep in touch, cross-promoting each other’s books and helping each other’s careers.
The Rest of Them
.
Belletrist (Emma Roberts)
.
TeaTime (Dakota Johnson)
.
Service95 (Dua Lipa)
.
Natalie’s Book Club (Natalie Portman)
Every bookish person online lost their marbles when Dua Lipa posted her YouTube video interviewing Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk for the singer’s Service95 Book Club, but it’s not clear that these clubs can change a book’s fortunes. “Authors get really excited that these places have chosen them,” according to one publicist. “But they do not sell copies at all.” Instagram simply doesn’t reach potential readers the way TV does. “Natalie Portman will post one of her book-club picks to her millions of followers and people just comment stuff like, ‘Oh, Natalie, you’re so gorgeous,’” this publicist says.
Belletrist, at least, has found a way to sell books by partnering with the online indie bookstore Tertulia, which automatically sends members their picks for a monthly $25 fee that includes digital salons with authors and Roberts. And if nothing else, getting picked by these clubs can be nice to mention on a book jacket or social media. “The book did not become a best seller, but it was pretty lovely having that good energy behind me,” says one author who was recently featured by Dakota Johnson’s TeaTime.
Still, there are now so many of these celebrity clubs that some publicists worry about market oversaturation. “If everybody has a book club, there’s inevitably some dilution that takes place because they’re are all competing for the same subset of eyeballs,” says publicist Paul Bogaards. “The clubs have to continually invent and find ways to engage with their readers and their communities.”
Ultimately, the most influential celebrities in the bookselling game may not be the ones with book clubs. One publicist regularly pitches “surrogate voices” who can speak on behalf of a book when it’s published, like Elizabeth Gilbert and Gwyneth Paltrow. “Apparently people need to hear about a book three times before they buy it,” the publicist says. The first time might be on the Today show, but the other two have to come from somewhere else.
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