Do you have any idea how important you are to books?
Your wallet may beg to differ, but if you’re in a book club, there’s a good chance you’re connected to the one percent.
Well, okay. Maybe not that one percent. But if you read, love, and (most importantly) buy books, you’re absolutely connected to 2013’s one-percent rise in book sales over the year before.
According to a recent article in Publishers Weekly, last year’s total book sales rose to $15.05 billion (with a b; take that, reading-is-dead doomsayers!).
Better still, sales rose in nearly every book category, too, and in both e-book and hardcover formats. Paperbacks, alas, saw their sales drop.
So what does this have to do with book clubs? Plenty.
It’s partly because of these clubs — or, more precisely, the dedicated readers who join them — that sales have gone up. Every time your club’s members select a new book to read and then go out and buy or download a copy, you’re supporting the author who wrote it, the editor who edited it, the publisher who published it, and the store that sold it.
Imagine: After all these years of books playing a huge role in your life, you probably never stopped to consider what a huge role you play in theirs.
