Amazon has joined the party and has created their own book club. Leading the charge with Amazon’s official book club Sarah Selects is Sarah Gelman, the editorial director of books.
Amazon Book Club
The first book of the book club is Half-Blown Rose by Leesa Cross-Smith, which will be released on May 31. The book club us available on Amazon Book Clubs, a new free service that allows any user to create a book club. The Amazon book club feature is in the early access feature at the moment.
Members of Sarah Selects will get a notification each moth about the book of the month and will be able to send Gelman questions that she will answer during a livestream which will air on Amazon Live. The livestream will feature Gelman interviewing the author of the novel each month. All the selections will be newly released novels. The authors will focus on various authors and genres that Gelman is a fan of.
Gelman feels like Sarah Selects is an extension of what Amazon editor’s do. If you have visited Amazon’s book section, you know they offer daily deals and constantly curate books for their members.
“As the director of Amazon’s editorial team, I get to read a lot of great books. But sometimes I come across one that I can’t stop thinking about, or recommending to friends and family,” “With my new book club, Sarah Selects, I’ll be sharing my personal favorite books with customers, and we can discuss all the ‘can you believe it?’ moments together.”
Sarah Gelman
Running the book club is just one of many hats Gelman has been wearing at Amazon. She joined in 2009 and worked in publicity and communications and was named the editorial director of books in early 2019. Gelman is part of the team that chooses Amazon’s Best Books of the Month and also creates monthly category lists as well as the yearly book lists.
Transparancy
My one comment is that this seems incentivized. For all we know, authors might be able to pay to make the list. I don’t think Amazon needs the money but there is a lack of transparency that will always make this a possibility. What is evident is that any author and publishing company that partakes in this book club will have to meet some requirements such as author interviews.
Whichever author does get selected will see a boom in sales because of the book club as well as the publicity. I am curious how this will go before I make a judgement. But I will say that I will be making a book club for Books of Brilliance in the coming weeks so stay in tune for that blog post! Happy reading!
I can hardly wait for that blog post about your book club. Your taste in books is great.
Thanks! I’ve chosen bad books too but I usually don’t finish them.