Book Clubs Boost Bloggers and Young Readers

Book Clubs Boost Bloggers and Young Readers
by Rodolpho Carrasco
April 21, 2002
in the Pasadena Star News

Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif.

It is hard to tell which news is bigger: Oprah Winfrey scaling back her book club or the Today Show jumping aggressively into the void left by Oprah.

Last month Oprah announced that she would curtail her long-running book club, telling Reuters that "It has become harder and harder to find books on a monthly basis that I feel absolutely compelled to share."

NBC recognized an opportunity and has created a format where a well-known author suggests a book by a more obscure writer who appears a month later for discussion. The blessing of Oprah in front of her 7 million viewers meant large sales for the author. No wonder book publishers are pleased that the Today Show, with 6 million viewers, will step into the gap.

The book club craze shows no signs of abating, and it’s not just because NBC is stepping up to the plate. In an age of individual action augmented by cell phones, email and two-way pagers, Americans hunger for community and communal activities. Lovers of books meet that need through discussion and interaction with members of their book circle.

Beyond filling a need for community, book clubs are providing solutions to unique challenges. Journalist Andrew Sullivan and the children of Cleveland Elementary School in Pasadena have recently benefited from book clubs.

Sullivan, a Washington D.C.-based political commentator for the New York Times and the Sunday Times of London, began writing a web log at AndrewSullivan.com over a year ago. A web log is a personal journal that is published to a web page for the world to see. Many weblogs, like Sullivan’s, provide steady commentary on a particular subject. My own weblog, UrbanOnramps.com, focuses on urban Christian ministry news.

This month Sullivan reported that his web site is now profitable thanks to proceeds from an online book club at his site. This is big news, because making money on the web is the one thing every person wants to do and the one thing no one seems to accomplish.

Taking a page from the Oprah Book Club, Sullivan figured out a way to take a small percentage of each book sold through his web site. Amazon.com allows this through their Associates Program. If a person buys a book after following a direct link from your web site to Amazon.com, Amazon will commission you 15% of the sale price.

Sullivan does not share his personal figures, but simple guesswork says that if 800 people buy a $20 book from Amazon as part of Sullivan’s book club, then his 15% of $16,000 calculates to $2,400 - not bad.

In a recent Washington Post online chat Sullivan said that the blog "is beginning to generate real revenue — from donations and kickbacks from our book club. I could easily make a living off it as of now — not a great one, but enough to get by."

Another great thing a book club can do is get children reading who previously struggled to read. At face value it sounds a little crazy — the little ones dislike reading, so you fix that by making them read. But any good reading teacher will say it’s what you have to do.

Enter my wife, Kafi, who is the literacy resource teacher at Cleveland Elementary School. In January she and Principal Abel Quesada started a book club for fourth through sixth graders at Cleveland Elementary. In early February they received a grant from Altadena Rotary Club that allows the children to keep the books they complete.

Today there is not just one club, but three. Initial success led them to start two more clubs. Now 14 second graders, 10 third graders, and 15 fourth through sixth graders meet every two weeks during lunchtime to discuss assigned books, which include "The Great Brain" and "In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson."

Kafi notes that the book clubs are not just populated by children who enjoy reading. Children who do not read well — the very children the clubs were designed to reach — have chosen to participate. Some reluctant students just needed a little encouragement from Mrs. Carrasco to join.

Others came in by more creative means. Early on very few boys were involved. "So I bribed them," Kafi says. "I told them that if they read the book and came to discussion I would get them McDonald’s." Once the boys read the first book they were hooked. "They came back and brought their friends," she says.

I tried out a book club once. I dropped out because the members wanted to read important books like T.C. Boyle’s "The Tortilla Curtain" and Chinua Achebe’s "Things Fall Apart" and I wanted P.J. O’Rourke and newspaper editorials.

But it’s inspiring to see a book club succeed at motivating book-averse children to read. And my creative juices flow when I see a web site paying the bills by operating an online book club. Maybe it’s time to join, or start, another book club.

The copyright for these materials are owned by Rudy Carrasco.  These materials were use with permission by TechMission