What Makes Book of the Month Club Click?
November 1, 2019 # ufcjconline
Subscription services are all the rage these days. In fact, the latest edition of the “State of the Subscription Economy” from the Subscription Trade Association reports that there are nearly 7,000 subscription box companies worldwide, and 70 percent of them are in the United States. One indicator of the growth of subscriptions, the Subscription Economy Index, found that sales of these services have grown 300 percent in the last seven years. People just love their subscriptions!

Forbes compiled a list of the leading subscription services, and most are names that are heavily supported by advertising (Dollar Shave Club), are supported by product sponsorships (Ipsy, Birchbox), or are owned by major companies (Amazon Subscribe & Save). These brands need hundreds of thousands of subscribers to support their business models so that they can maybe make a profit.
Noticeably absent from this list is the 93-year old Book of the Month Club. The company was an iconic brand before Amazon changed the landscape of bookselling. Today, Book of the Month is owned by John Lippman, who re-launched the company in 2015. In a Forbes profile of the company, Mr. Lippman says that the business model has evolved, and it focuses on a very narrow target market. The fact that the book-a-month club targets primarily women in their 20s and 30s is precisely the reason that it does not appear in the rankings of top subscription services.
Not only is the demographic very specific, but the target market must also have an affinity for book reading. This further narrows the potential number of customers; Mr. Lippman said that Book of the Month Club had 100,000 members and expected revenues of $10-$15 million in 2017. In the Forbes article, Mr. Lipman states:
Between 75% and 80% of the books we feature are by relatively unknown authors, and about 80% of the authors are female. We sometimes sell 15,000 or 20,000 copies, and you can see that everyone else sold 5,000 copies. We are shining a spotlight on a limited number of great books.
This is not the mass-market approach that many of the large subscription box services take to customer acquisition, and the company seems to be okay with that.
Customer Profile
Book of the Month Club’s current customer base is about 100,000, but it has a larger potential market size, based on some basic analysis of demographics and psychographics:
- Women, aged 20–39+: 44,340,293 (13.44% of the population, as of 10/31/19. Estimates from Census.)
- Consumers purchasing six or more hardcover books: 5.983% of the population (MRI Simmons Spring 2017 NHCS Adult Study)

A broader analysis of the demographics of “book lovers,” which might be defined as consumers who purchase six or more hardcover books a year, shows that women represent 36.5 percent of the market. Further, the 25–34 age group represents just 19 percent of the segment. By broadening the market to either men or women of a slightly older demographic, the market potential would expand. The good news, either way, is that the income of book enthusiasts is high, with 64 percent making over $75,000 per year, which is a prime target market.

Social Media Strategy
Book of the Month currently has its most active following on the more visual social media platforms. The 629,600 monthly viewers on Pinterest is second only to the 686,000 followers that it has on Instagram. Engagement is also high on Facebook, where the company has 329,000 followers and 327,000 likes.
Twitter is the least popular platform for Book of the Month, where it has just 12,000 followers. The company has not tweeted since May 2019; in contrast, on Instagram, BOTM posted once or more a day over the last week. Given that Twitter has a higher proportion of men users than women users, it is a sound strategy to focus on other, more visual platforms.
Since Book of the Month Club has a small selection of books each month, posting images of the book covers has been a successful strategy. With a significantly higher number of followers on Instagram and Pinterest than the actual number of people that subscribe, the imagery is clearly striking a positive chord with users.
A deeper look at the psychographic profile of book enthusiasts from MRI Simmons shows a few interesting areas where there is the potential for cross-marketing. Of consumers that purchased six or more hardcover books in the last year, some cross-over markets include:
- 23.2% are “True Foodies” — Passionate about food and spend a lot of time cooking at home. They prefer fresh ingredients and organic food and consider themselves culinary experts. Variety is the spice of their life, and they love to try different cuisines.
- 27.8% are “Wizards” — Technology plays an important and broad role in their life. They cannot live without the internet or imagine life without new electronic gadgets. Wizards are enthusiastic and adventurous users of new technology. This group’s hunger for new technology fuels a future for potential new features, benefits, and devices.
- 22.5% are “Status Strivers” — Shopping is fun and recreational; they like to browse as much as buy, are willing to travel to stores, and spend the money and time to keep up with trends.
Using social media to target these subsectors of the consumer market could help the company tap into new subscribers. These psychographic insights also reveal an opportunity for the Club to potentially mix in additional titles which may appeal to some of the other interests of frequent book purchasers.
Given Book of the Month Club’s focus on a narrow market, the company has been successful in growing its subscriber base. But there is significant market potential if the company were to broaden its demographics slightly or market to segments of the population with parallel interests.
Sources:
“Book Clubs in the USA,” Strategic Library, October 2015
“Book Of The Month Reinvents As A Subscription Box Business For Millennial Women,” Forbes, December 5, 2017
“Inside the $2.6 Billion Subscription Box Wars,” Fast Company, October 17, 2019
MRI Simmons Spring 2017 NHCS Adult Study
“One-In-Five Americans Now Listen to Audiobooks,” Pew Research Center, September 25, 2019
“Share of U.S. Adults Using Social Media, Including Facebook, is Mostly Unchanged Since 2018,” Pew Research Center, April 10, 2019
“The State of the Subscription Economy, 2018,” Forbes, March 4, 2018
“The Subscription Economy Grows More Than 300% In The Last Seven Years,” Business Wire, March 21, 2019
“United States Population by Age and Sex,” U.S. Census Population Clock
“What Do Women Want? One Company is Betting It Comes Between Two Covers,” Washington Post, December 19, 2017
“Why Subscription Boxes Are Here to Stay,” Forbes, April 12, 2019
