Simon & Schuster is launching a virtual book club and they have set up a website, Facebook page and have even partnered with Bright Cellars, who will deliver a myriad of different wines each month. The first pick will be Alice Hoffman’s The Rules of Magic, which goes on sale June 26.
There will be no discounts for book clubs who want to purchase multiple copies and the publisher is basically telling everyone to go buy the ebook from Amazon, B&N, iBooks or Kobo for $11.99 each or visit their local bookstore to buy the print edition.
Every month S&S will pick a new title and have a free download available which will have an author interview, discussion questions and an extensive Spotify playlist. This might be solid for book club organizers that do not have a ton of time to put into what title the group will be reading that month and develop their own discussion topics.
What I find interesting about this book club is that self-publishing companies and indie authors rarely do anything like this. They are more concerned with trying to come up with new underhanded ways to push their content or issuing press releases.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
