![]() For readers living farįrom a bookstore, the system offered a convenient alternative. The general book club strategy has been to entice a reader with promotional offers like a four-book purchase for $2 if the customer agrees to buy a specified number of other titles at regular prices. Such fierce competition obviously did not exist when the Book-of-the-Month Club's founder, Harry Scherman, invented the book club in the United States in 1926 with a gimmick that relied on a literary stamp of approvalįrom experts like Heywood Broun and Christopher Morley, who selected the best new books for a reading public hungry for literature. Last couple of years, so this is an opportunity to put some operational systems together." "In the case of the Book-of-the-Month-Club, they've really been struggling over the Is that book club sales growth has been hurt by "a couple of factors, most prominently online book sales," he said. However, one publishing executive familiar with the negotiations said that a joint venture would enable the two book clubs to cut costs by sharing "back end functions" such as distribution and warehousing. ![]() "We are declining politely, but firmly, to comment," said Peter Costiglio, a spokesman for Time Inc. The companies have made tentative plans to create a six-member board presiding over the joint venture that will be evenly divided between executives of Bertelsmann and Time Warner, Time Inc.'s corporate parent.Įxecutives at Bertelsmann and Time Inc. for more than six weeks in an effort to strike a deal this month.īut both sides have not reached an agreement yet on the financial terms or determined which company would operate the club, according to publishing executives close to the negotiations. 2 Book Clubs Are Said to Weigh a Merger By DOREEN CARVAJALĮss than a year and a half after buying the nation's premier publishing house, the Bertelsmann media conglomerate is poised to form a partnership withĪn American icon of popular literature, Time Inc.'s Book-of-the-Month Club.īertelsmann - which is based in Gutersloh, Germany, and purchased Random House last year - is negotiating to create a joint venture that could bring together the two largest book clubs in the United States, the Book-of-the-MonthĬlub and Bertelsmann's Literary Guild, according to publishing executives who asked to remain anonymous.īoth clubs have been pondering how to compete against online booksellers in a book market radically changed from the days when judges made Book-of-the-Month Club selections over sherry that had the power to spread literaryĬulture to readers isolated far from bookstores.īertelsmann's Doubleday Direct, of which the Literary Guild is a part, has been negotiating with Time Inc.
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