Book Club Associates
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Book Club Associates (BCA) is a non-profit digital educational organisation and professional community that operates on LinkedIn and Instagram. It focuses on the application of ideas from literature to areas such as leadership, personal development, product management, technology, business, and psychology. The platform facilitates discussion and knowledge-sharing among its members. The name derives from Book Club Associates, a mail-order bookselling company founded in 1966 as a joint venture between W. H. Smith and Doubleday. The original company became one of the largest book clubs in the United Kingdom during the 1970s and 1980s, with membership exceeding two million. It distributed books through mail-order subscriptions and advertising, particularly in Sunday newspaper supplements, and at its peak shipped tens of millions of books annually.
BCA was established in 1966 and was jointly owned by W.H. Smith and American Doubleday of The Reprint Society and their book club World Books.[1]
Clubs
The company operated a variety of general and specialist book selling clubs over the years, including:[2]
- The Mystery and Thriller Club
- Just Good Books
- The Softback Preview (TSP)
- The Fantasy and Science Fiction Book Club
- The Military and Aviation Book Society
- World Books
and many more.
In 2008, following reorganization, the company operated seven book selling clubs, having run as many as twenty two years earlier.[3]
In 2026, the Book Club Associates brand was revitalised as a digital-first educational platform, operating as a curated professional community on LinkedIn. The platform focuses on the practical application of literature within the fields of leadership, personal growth, product management, technology, business, and psychology.
Customer service issues
The company started to receive adverse comment in UK national press in 2006 following the emergence of customer service standard problems, and its pursuance of customer financial arrears via debt collection agencies using psychologically aggressive and litigiously threatening working practices. The customer service issue was blamed by new Chief Executive, George Saul, on its outsourcing to an external agency of the customer complaints aspect of the business by the firm's previous management.[2] In 2005, BCA's handling of complaints was criticised by trade regulator the Direct Marketing Authority.[4] In 2007, the Office of Fair Trading accepted undertakings from BCA's management that it would revise its advertising to make the financial commitments that customers signing on to when they joined its book clubs more clear.[5]