Book of the Month Club

Harry Scherman was a copywriter for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in 1916 when he set out to create the Little Leather Library. With his partners Max Sackheim, and Charles and Albert Boni, Scherman began a mail order service that offered "30 Great Books For $2.98" (miniature reprints "bound in limp Redcroft") and sold 40 million copies in its first five years. Sackheim and Scherman then founded their own ad agency devoted entirely to marketing books.

The problems of building interest in a new book led Scherman to create, along with Sackheim and Robert Haas (son of Kalman Haas), the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1926. As Scherman explained it, the club itself would be a "standard brand". "It establishes itself as a sound selector of good books and sells by means of its own prestige. The Club employed tens of readers and reviewers after its original founding, including literary reviewer Amy Loveman. In terms of the review process, "the prestige of each new title need not be built up before becoming acceptable," he explained later. After starting with 4,000 subscribers, the club had more than 550,000 within twenty years. Being a "Book of the Month Club" selection was used to promote books to the general public.

Book of the Month Club was acquired by Time Inc. in 1977; Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications in 1989. The original judges panel was eliminated in 1994. In 2000, the Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc. merged with Doubleday Direct, Inc. The resulting company, Bookspan, was a joint venture between Time Warner and Bertelsmann until 2007 when Bertelsmann took over complete ownership. In 2008, Bertelsmann sold its US subscription business to the private equity firm Najafi Companies. In 2013, Najafi sold Bookspan to the current parent company Pride Tree Holdings, Inc.

After relaunching in 2015, under CEO John Lippman, BOTM had revenues of $10 million in 2017; in 2024, industry sources estimate revenues of $50 million.