The First Books Book Club
My idea finally comes to fruition.
I have a terrible memory, but I can tell you the moment I had the idea for this book club. I was watching the Today Show, and they were doing a segment on adult science fairs. The science fair winner had done a presentation on how the font size of the author's name on a book jacket correlates to the book's reviews. The bigger the name was, the worse the reviews were. They used James Patterson as an example, and I remember thinking, "I bet his first book is good, even if the ones he churns out now are crap." THEN, I bet a book club of all the most successful author's first books would be really fun.
Reader, almost fifteen years after I first had that idea, Lisa from the Bookshelf on Church has partnered with me to make that book club a reality!
We will read four of the best-selling, most prolific author’s first books (or first successful books) and pair them with a new author’s first book to see how things have changed and how they’ve stayed the same within that genre!
First up, Danielle Steel!
Danielle Steel is the fourth-best-selling fiction author of ALL TIME -right behind William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, and Barbara Cartland (another romance author). That means she's also the bestselling living author because those three are dead. She has written 210 books and sold an estimated one. billion. copies.
I repeat, she has sold one billion copies. She published seven novels in 2024 and has seven more on deck for 2025. Let's say she puts the pro in prolific.
Danielle completed her first manuscript at 19 and wrote her first novel, Going Home, in 1973. But her second novel, Passion's Promise, put her on the map.. or the NY Times Best Seller list, where she has remained basically ever since. Passion's Promise was inspired by her second marriage, which I can't tell you any more about, or it will ruin the plot of the book…but let's say it involves a guy from the wrong side of the tracks and a prison canteen wedding
I do not read a lot of romance - despite being the highest-earning genre of fiction with just over $1.4 billion in revenue annually - so I'm excited to dive in with the genre's queen. Plus, it's a growing genre, with sales increasing 36% in 2021, so it will be fun to read a new author's take on this ever-popular and ever-growing form of fiction.
If you want to join the First Books Book Club, you can buy a box from Lisa by clicking here!
OR
If you would prefer to get the copies yourself, you can become a paid subscriber to my Substack, and I will send you the names of the surprise books once the boxes go out in January!
We will discuss both books and announce the next genre in March!
Do I need to join another book club? Probably not since I barely keep up with the ones I’m already in. But do I want to join this one? Probably.
I am curious, though, about what’s in the box besides the book. I love supporting The Bookshelf, but the price is a little high!
I've done something similar before where I read a book I love and then try to read that author's backlist. I'm usually disappointed because there's usually a reason why they weren't famous before their most recent book! 🤔 I'll be interested to see how your experiment goes.