{"id":8134,"date":"2019-08-19T06:50:15","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T10:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8134"},"modified":"2019-08-19T06:50:15","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T10:50:15","slug":"what-do-book-club-audiences-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8134","title":{"rendered":"What Do Book Club Audiences Want?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Author Kathryn\nKraft<\/a> in Writer Unboxed says book clubs have \u201cthe potential to serve as a\nword-of-mouth marketing machine for novelists.\u201d We\u2019re all familiar with the\nmarketing boost books have received thanks to the endorsement of Oprah\u2019s book\nclub and now Reese Witherspoon\u2019s (with more than 800,000 followers), among\nmany others<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Millions of Americans belong to book clubs\u2014the formal kind\nthat have regular meetings in libraries and living rooms\u2014and the loosely\norganized kind that operate through social media, including GoodReads, with its\n90 million members. A 2015 BookBrowse<\/a>\nsurvey of people who read at least one book per month found that over half belong\nto at least one book club, with the percentage of readers who are book club members\nrising with age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another BookBrowse\nsurvey<\/a> of more than 5000 book club members, conducted last year, found that\n\u201coverwhelmingly, book club members want to read books that will promote good\ndiscussion.\u201d In other words, they\u2019re looking for books whose features intrigue\nthem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognizing a learning opportunity here, Kraft analyzed a\nnumber of book club reading guides to discover major topics presumed to promote\nbook club discussions. They relate to issues writers ponder all the time, and\nit\u2019s encouraging to know they get readers talking too. Here they are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. A protagonist with a unique perspective <\/strong>\u2013 Think Maggie Gee\u2019s new book Blood<\/em>, with its unforgettable narrator Monica Ludd or Rice Moore in the Appalachian noir prize-winner Bearskin<\/em> by James A. McLaughlin. Characters with strong voices like these give book club members \u201ca chance to look at life in a new way,\u201d Kraft says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. A character or characters readers can relate to<\/strong> \u2013 I have nothing in common with manipulative New Orleans gangster Frank Guidry in Lou Berney\u2019s November Road<\/em>, but I certainly related to him. A character doesn\u2019t have to be exactly like me<\/em> (please, no!) for that to happen; the character just needs to be richly portrayed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. A story that reflects some larger issue<\/strong> – In this way, the character\u2019s deeply personal experience can become \u201cuniversal and political,\u201d Kraft says. Gin Phillips\u2019s thriller Fierce Kingdom<\/em> begins with a mother wanting to take her toddler home, and the rest of the book is about that thwarted journey. Home is always more than an address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. A structure that helps set expectations and convey meaning<\/strong> \u2013 Denise Mina\u2019s Conviction<\/em>, with its story-within-a-story format not only engages the reader in two plots, the relevance of the second story gives the protagonist a chance to reflect on her past and motivates her current actions. Think Dov Alfon\u2019s A Long Night in Paris<\/em> or Chris Pavone\u2019s new The Paris Diversion<\/em> that puts the time of day at the head of each chapter in this fast-paced thriller that takes place over a jam-packed 11 hours. The ticking clock is one of the thriller genre\u2019s most popular structural devices. It sure sets expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Endings that are tidy or open-ended?<\/strong> I\u2019m sure there\u2019s lots of discussion on this point. Kraft comes down on leaving endings looser, which gives readers a chance to think about all the novel\u2019s foregoing elements and, in an act of co-creation, what\u2019s most likely to happen next. \u201cImaginations are not constrained to what occurred between the covers of the book,\u201d Kraft says. It\u2019s like movies that end with a \u201cwhere are they now?\u201d feature as the credits roll, which evoke that same feeling of limiting the possibilities I might prefer. I believe Delia Owens\u2019s Where the Crawdads Sing<\/em> would have been stronger without Tate\u2019s final discoveries. Let readers puzzle it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Free-Photos from Pixabay\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author Kathryn Kraft in Writer Unboxed says book clubs have \u201cthe potential to serve as a word-of-mouth marketing machine for novelists.\u201d We\u2019re all familiar with the marketing boost books have received thanks to the endorsement of Oprah\u2019s book club and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"What Do Book Club Audiences Want? - turning on the word-of-mouth marketing machine.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174,63,4,256],"tags":[1634],"class_list":["post-8134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-marketing","category-readers","category-social-media-2","tag-book-clubs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-27c","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/meeting.jpg?fit=324%2C338&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8136,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8134\/revisions\/8136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}