How Does Reese Witherspoon Pick Books for Her Book Club

Writing

Jun 6

Updated April 2024

As a writer, I’m always trying to better understand the publishing industry and what makes a book sell. Celebrity book clubs definitely help sales, but how is Reese choosing each book? Is she paying attention to certain industry signals?

Fortunately, there’s a database with insights called Publisher’s Marketplace. For $25/month, anyone in the world can access their data. They report hundreds of new deals each day. Using their search engine, I looked up all 51 adult books that Reese has selected and analyzed them. I used this list of her book club picks and excluded her Young Adult (YA) selections for the purpose of this article.

You can access the data I pulled at the bottom of the article. First things first:

Reese sold her book club for $900 million in August 2021

As I was working on this project, I saw the news:

Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine will be purchased by a new firm financed by private-equity company Blackstone. The terms of the deal weren’t announced, but a source told the WSJ the deal values Hello Sunshine at $900 million, with Blackstone spending over $500 million to buy out Hello Sunshine's outside investors, including AT&T and Emerson Collective. Witherspoon and some the company's executives and investors "will roll over the remaining equity into ownership stakes in the new company Blackstone is forming."
Former Disney executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs will run the new entertainment company that is purchasing Hello Sunshine, with a focus on streaming content; Witherspoon and chief executive Sarah Harden will join the board, and continue to run Hello Sunshine. Witherspoon said, "I’m going to double down on that mission to hire more female creators from all walks of life and showcase their experiences. This is a meaningful move in the world because it really means that women’s stories matter."
Continuing the investment theme we referred to yesterday, big sales for companies based on your content, Harden noted how, as the Journal put it, "the company's relationship with authors [through Reese's Book Club] helps when its executives are bidding for the rights to turn books into shows and movies. Harden said: "The advantage that we have is in tentpoling a book and putting a spotlight on it."
—Publishers Marketplace

Even though Reese’s Book Club has been sold to Blackstone, she’ll remain on the board. Whether she’ll continue selecting each book, I’m not sure. But even before this deal, we know Reese is picking up certain books for a reason. I believe the sale of the company will change some things, but I don’t think it will change the root of what I found in my research.

How many copies does the average book sell when Reese endorses it?

Reese is known as a tastemaker. According to Sarah Harden, the CEO of Hello Sunshine, Reese picks each book herself. To become a Reese pick, the narrative must center on a woman and it must give readers hope.

Her most impactful selection is Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, which she picked up just a few weeks after its launch in August 2018. It’s gone on to sell more than 10 million copies worldwide.

In 2019, however, Reese’s book selections sold 18,500 copies on average. Their strongest pick that year was The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes, selling 34,000 copies. Their lowest pick of 2019 sold 5,000 copies.

How does Reese Witherspoon choose books for her book club?

I spoke with an editor recently at a traditional publishing house. She told me she has the contact of a “book scout” for Reese’s book club. When the editor finds a book that fits what they’re looking for, she’ll contact the scout to put the book on their radar. From my understanding, editors don’t often contact the scouts unless something is truly the right fit.

While I’m not sure how many editors have Reese’s scouts’ information, it’s very likely the process unfolds similarly across different big publishing houses.

As I was researching this article, I looked at Reese’s previous selections and wrote down the names of literary agents, editors, publicists, imprints, and publishing houses in hopes of spotting a trend. The process of researching her first 51 book selections helped me see that there isn’t a simple answer. Each book has a different background. But I noticed a few things during my research:

PRE-EMPTS

At least 24% of Reese’s picks were books that sold in a pre-empt. According to Bookends Literary, “pre-empts happen when a publisher wants a book so bad they offer an amount high enough to convince the agent and author to cancel an auction. Or, really, not even go forward with it. In a pre-empt situation a determination will be made of how much the author would want to take the book off the table.”

WORLD RIGHTS

22% of Reese’s picks were books that sold World Rights. This entitles the publisher to print the book in any language.

When a book is sold in a pre-empt and sells with World Rights, it signals the book is desirable. Plus, if a publisher invests in a book, it means they feel confident they can re-coup their money via sales. They’ll work harder to ensure they don’t lose money on that title. Authors with those deals are going to get marketing support from the publisher to ensure it. More than anything, it just means: it’s a really good book.

SELECTED AHEAD OF TIME

I compared the date Reese picked each book with their release date. Of the 51 books she’s picked so far, only 15 were selected after their release date. That means that 70% of her titles are selected before they even get released. This validates that Reese is looking at publishing deals in real time. She’s not waiting until they get to print.

There’s also an overlap: the deals that she selects ahead of time also happen to be the deals that carry a large signal of success: six-figure deals, pre-empts, and books that sold their World Rights immediately.

GENRE

Here’s the distribution across genres:

Reese primarily chooses thrillers, domestic fiction, romance, historical fiction, memoirs, and literary fiction. She’s also dabbled in western, fantasy, self help, and true crime.

#OWN VOICES

#OwnVoices is a term coined by writer Corinne Duyvis. It refers to authors from under-represented groups writing about their own experiences or from their own perspective. Reese has shown a strong commitment to supporting underrepresented and diverse voices. This is evident in the books she’s choosing.

Reese also created a writing fellowship called LitUp to support unpublished and underrepresented writers. This is a new initiative, but I assume she’s going to select incredible writers into this fellowship, and down the road, they may even become Reese Book Club picks.

COMMITTED STORYTELLERS

One thing I loved about researching each author is going to their website and seeing how many books they’ve written. I started to take note of the number of books each author had published before becoming a Reese Witherspoon pick. It was clear that each author is a committed storyteller. They not only love writing, but most of them have a unique passion that shows up in their writing. For example, Kate Quinn is a historical fiction author who published eight books before her ninth book, The Alice Network, was selected. Her unique edge is that she’s a historical writer who heavily researches the time periods she writes in. You can see her work here.

It was most common for authors to be debuts. A lot of these debut authors were getting large, pre-empt deals for their first book. Publishers and tastemakers like Reese want to be the ones to discover a new popular voice. There was definitely a trend for quality over quantity.

That being said, each author demonstrated dedication to their craft. Whether it was how many books they’ve written, their writing background, or just simply being subject matter experts about their book topics. They write what they know about and they know it well.

Here’s the publishing history for each author in Reese’s book club:

41% of the authors were debuts
27% published 2-4 books
22% published 5-9 books
8% published 10-14 books
2% published 15+ books

FILM DEALS: THE QUEEN OF BOOK-TO-SCREEN

We all know Reese selects books that her production company Hello Sunshine can turn into mega hits on the screen. This is evident with Little Fires Everywhere, and soon Where the Crawdads Sing and Daisy Jones & The Six.

One thing that surprised me:

Big Little Lies and Gone Girl weren’t Reese Book Club picks, according to the official list they published. Reese didn’t found her book club or Hello Sunshine until 2017, but she’s been turning books into movies since the early 2010s.

There’s no official resource or list with all the books that Reese has made into movies. Safe to say, it’s a very long list.

What can we take away from this research?

Quality matters above all else. Very few authors will ever become a “Reese’s Pick”—it’s the equivalent of winning the publishing lottery. But looking at each author’s backstory helps solidify that quality matters.

There’s also an art and science to book marketing. The publishing industry is a business like any other. The more we can pull the curtain back and look at what sells (ahem, being featured on @reeesebookclub), the more we can replicate it for ourselves. #Bookstagram is a popular book marketing resource for a reason. It works for Reese Witherspoon and it can work (on a smaller scale) for regular writers like us, too.

I created an entire resource dedicated to book marketing here for just $10 (see a screenshot of it below).

Data is current as of August 2021.