It started as Book-of-the-Month Club. After merging with a number of rivals it became Bookspan, and now it’s called Booksonline.

Is the name the only thing that’s changed? As a matter of fact, the brilliant – some say diabolical – principle on which BOM was founded, has been abandoned some 83 years after it was created by a marketing genius. This according to the deluxe edition of online book trade newsletter Publishers Lunch.

The formula was called the negative option. I described it in a blog about book clubs.

An enterprising merchandiser named Harry Scherman founded the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1926. He perceived that an enormous potential audience, particularly in rural areas, had inadequate access to bookstores in towns and cities. Mail order, which worked so successfully for many other products purveyed to rural people, ought to work with books, too, Scherman reasoned. And he was right.

Scherman, however, put a twist on this concept that made it a dramatic departure from the Sears, Roebuck approach. It’s called the “negative option,” meaning that unless members expressly indicate that they do not want the latest selection, the club will assume they do want it and will send it to them. Scherman’s insight into human nature was almost diabolically shrewd. Perhaps he didn’t trust that members would buy books simply because they were good, and he counted on such human foibles as laziness, guilt, and confusion to make members default on their obligation to return their cards in time to prevent clubs from shipping selections to them.

Whatever the motives of Scherman and subsequent book club entrepreneurs, the clubs caught on fast and hard, sweeping the country.

How do today’s book clubs work? Book Clubs Online has this to say:

There are two basic types of book clubs: commitment book clubs and continuity book clubs.

Commitment book clubs feature attractive introductory offers containing several books for a symbolic price (for example 6 books for 99¢ or 4 books for 1$ each) in exchange for a commitment to buy a few more books at the regular club price within a certain timeframe; usually this means 2-4 books within a year or two. The club price incorporates a considerable discount, which can be anywhere from 30-80%, in some cases even more.

Commitment book clubs send their members a catalog (either printed or electronic version) every 3-4 weeks, along with a card which includes the title of the Featured Selection – a book chosen by the club’s editors as a must-read of the moment. Members are not bound to buy the Selection though; they can opt for a different book (or several books) instead, or skip the offer altogether. Note that the Selections are no longer shipped to members automatically, as was the case until recently; now, members need to request/order the desired book. [italics mine: RC]

Once the obligation is fulfilled, the membership can be canceled at any time. Typical representatives of commitment book clubs are Doubleday Book Club, The Literary Guild, Book-of-the-Month club etc.

If the formula ain’t broken, why is Booksonline fixing it?

Apparently it is broken: “No books are shipped to members automatically anymore,” Lunch quotes from the announcement. “In this day and age of commercial overabundance and enlightened consumers armed with access to a boundless pool of information, it just couldn’t fly anymore.” In plain English, that seems to mean that Americans are too savvy to buy into a sales gimmick that plays on ignorance, laziness and confusion.

Well, it was fun while it lasted, but now the clubs’ books will have to sell on their own merits and on bargain pricing. Luckily for the clubs there’s plenty of that to carry them for the next four score years. Book clubs are fundamentally a good thing for all the reasons on which they were founded, and they should continue to thrive relying on a new and cleaner business model.

RC