DarntonWatch E17: Corinna Norrick-Rühl on "Observations on theorizing & modelling mail-order book culture"

Dr Corinna Norrick-Rühl from the University of Münster gives the paper "Observations on theorizing & modelling mail-order book culture". This builds on research presented at the 2019 conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, and also on Dr Norrick-Rühl's recent book, Book Clubs and Book Commerce.

As David Carter shows, subscription book clubs and similar ‘middlebrow’ endeavors had a distinct ‘dual commitment to culture and to its wider diffusion.’  Since roughly the middle of the twentieth century until today, these clubs have influenced the canon and simultaneously subverted it through the popularization of reading and blurring of cultural categories and boundaries. Mail-order catalogues enabled consumers to shop for books in the comfort of their own homes, independent of infrastructure and without having to engage with a bookseller, avoiding judgment of reading preferences or embarrassment lest they appear ill-informed. Through book sales clubs, book ownership was transformed into an affordable and attainable goal for millions of people.

Studies of publisher book clubs tend to focus on the local or national context, though book sales clubs are enmeshed in the global history of the book, not least through their significance for the foundation and spread of international media conglomerates such as Holtzbrinck or Bertelsmann. This brief paper will consider different theoretical frameworks and their applicability to understanding the success story of publisher book clubs, as well as introducing the ‘4 C model,’ which describes the benefits of and reasons for membership in book clubs in four categories.