The Inner Lives of Book Clubs

Last year we set out to look beyond the who, what, and where of book clubs, and to instead explore their group dynamics. For example: What do people want from their groups? What motivates them to join in the first place, and why do they stay? What do they look for in the books they read? In the process, we conducted two surveys of more than 5,000 book club members, plus 500 non-club members, parsing responses to many questions. In February, we published our report, titled "The Inner Lives of Book Clubs"-the results of the first survey to get to the heart of the book club experience.

So, what did we learn? Among much else, we learned that the stereotype of book clubs being primarily social is far from reality: