When bestselling fantasy author Samantha Shannon's sequel to 'The Priory of the Orange Trees'—'Among the Burning Flowers' releases next month (September 2025), there will be a special edition of the book with bonus content and design features like luxurious end papers. Indeed, fantasy is among the most popular genres, and authors like Shannon sell copies by the millions. And the special edition—even before the book releases—reads like a show of confidence by the bookseller in the author, in the title, and in the fans. As such, the special edition goes in the face of a general outcry about shorter attention spans and a declining and deteriorating reading culture—an often-articulated despondency around how "no one reads any more"!
Despite the scepticism and gloomy predictions surrounding reading culture, however, books seem to be here to stay. By one account, over 2 million books are published globally each year. Of these, roughly 90,000 are published in India alone. To be sure, this includes self-published titles and books that sell up to a dozen copies only. But the industry continues to push out hardbacks, paperbacks as well as e- and audio-books. Similarly, despite outcries of a global decline of reading culture, book clubs, communities and events have persisted—albeit in different formats, and sometimes with the help of richer media that makes interviews, collabs, bonus content and AMAs (ask me anything sessions) with popular authors possible, shareable, re-visitable. If anything, niche readers seem to have found more avenues to discover people with similar reading tastes to them and to interact with (and support) the authors and books they love.
Of course, the technologies have changed but the drive to find one's book tribe is old. A series of recent events that landed a small selection of The Reprint Society books with this writer, sent her down this rabbit hole and got her thinking again about book clubs, and where we find our book tribes. For, The Reprint Society was a book club-cum-re-publisher in business between 1939 and 1966, when it was sold to retail chain WH Smith and publisher Doubleday. Members presumably signed up for member-discounts on books and another small advantage: The club had a unique arrangement with publishers where it could reprint books after six months of an original title hitting bookshelves whereas other UK-based re-printers had to wait for nine months after first publication.
The discounts and time-advantage aside, re-printers also offered subscribers the benefit of curation. The Reprint Society, for example, had titles like 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' by T. E. Lawrence, 'The Bafut Beagles' by Gerald Durrell with illustrations by Ralph Thompson, 'The Joyful Delaneys' by Hugh Walpole, and '7 Years in Tibet' by mountaineer and one-time Nazi sergeant Heinrich Harrer. Founded by ex-World War 1 pilot Alan Bott, who later started Pan Books—one-half of Pan Macmillan today—The Reprint Society, London, had roughly 2 lakh members in the UK alone at the height of its popularity.
(In case you are curious, here's a quick version of how these books came to be in this writer's home library: The books belonged to a deceased relative who was in the merchant navy. Whether he was a member of this club, or acquired the books in some other way is impossible now to determine. Suffice to say, it provides powder for another article perhaps, on how books travelled the world in the pre-Amazon age and how a career in the merchant navy oiled this wheel.)
There are book clubs today led by celebrities from Reese Witherspoon and Oprah Winfrey to Sonali Bendre, of course. Singer Dua Lipa's Service95 is an interesting place to start, in case you're looking for one (its July 2025 book of the month is International Booker-shortlisted 'Small Boat' and Service95 dropped Dua Lipa's interview with author Vincent Delecroix on its audio podcast on July 1). Delhi and Gurugram have two of the 2,000-odd global chapters of the Silent Book Club where people bring their own books, to read in silence. There are chapters of BYOB or Bring Your Own Book in Mumbai and Bengaluru. And hundreds, if not thousands, more offline versions launched by bookshops, residential societies, schools, friends...
Some things haven't changed since the 1950s, when The Reprint Society was in its heyday—some book clubs and recommendation sites also offer discounts for subscribers; a throwback to the business model of decades ago. But we've also come a long way since the 1950s, and readers don't just depend on offline book club subscriptions, book catalogues, reviews and interviews—though all of those exist, too—to find the books, genres and authors they might want to read. Recommendations can be found online, and in-between lines of code on social media sites from Instagram to TikTok and podcasts, too - with hashtags like #booktube, #booktok, #bookstagram, #booklovers, #bookrecommendations, making content discoverable and connecting readers across platforms. Some, like BookTube channel Jack in the Books and Bookstagrammer Ova Ceren @excusemyreading, have a following that runs into hundreds of thousands.
These platforms—and the reading communities on them—can even influence what gets written and how it gets promoted. Consider the rise of genres like hockey romance from trends that began and blew up on social media, and in turn fired up communities whose members found new fuel in each other's recommendations and new launches. Consider, also, an example of the reach of these recommendations across time and continents: Through much of 2024, young TikTokians around the globe connected with an 1848 novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights, after "discovering" it on BookTok accounts.
'Red Flags and Rishtas' writer Radhika Agrawal says: "I have only recently discovered Bookstagram and the whole concept of finding your books online within a community... now that I have, I am bombarded with recommendations and with so much more information. (For example,) I had no idea what some of these things were, even though I was writing romance. I had no idea that people like to read certain tropes when it comes to romance. I would read everything; I would read friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, miscommunication (as romance subgenres). I didn't really decode it as much. But I have discovered in the last two years, people have very, very set preferences and I think the awareness for these, the awareness for certain trends, is coming about from Bookstagram and BookTok and other book communities online."
Social media to OTT adaptations
"Social media is truly the heartbeat of my author journey, it’s the reason I get to write full time. When Collide launched, I promoted it exclusively through TikTok, and from there, everything just took off," says Canadian author Bal Khabra whose 'Off The Ice' series falls within the trending sports romance genre and includes titles like 'Revolve', 'Spiral' and 'Collide'. "There’s something really cozy about the way readers and authors interact there (within Bookstagram). It’s also great to keep up with my favourite authors and find new ones," adds Khabra.
Movie and OTT adaptations of books from the Harry Potter series to Call Me By Your Name, The Handmaid's Tale, Heartstopper, Game of Thrones and more recently, Black Warrant, also act as discovery-platforms and readership-generators for titles - both new and old. And whether you read the book first or come to it via the series/movie, there are communities of people who love or hate the original more.
While experts and naysayers have sounded the death knell for books a fair few times since the turn of the century, entire subreddits, podcasts, YouTube channels devoted to genres and subgenres suggest otherwise. The sheer number of publisherd and books released each year also tells a story about how books aren't going out of fashion. A 2021 report by Ernst & Young found that there were over 9,000 publishers in India and roughly 21,000 book retailers.
Where else readers find books, readers like them
Depending on what you like to read, you might find Wattpad more interesting than Goodreads. Or the recommendations on BookTok and Bookstagram more useful than the new releases and preorders listing on ecommerce sites like Amazon.in. Fans of Web novels, comics and fan fiction may find their reading corner on sites like Webnovel.com and for Indian children's books, you could try Pratham's Storyweavers.org.in. Substack accounts by your favourite authors - and readers - are another great way to pare the TBR pile with recommendations you can trust. As are recommendation sites - take your pick; examples include fivebooks.com and Whichbook.
Podcasts sometimes recommend books, too. In the last 12 months, this writer has bought books like 'The World for Sale', 'Invitation to a Banquet' and 'Everything is Tuberculosis' after listening to author interviews over podcasts. Even book listings on e-commerce sites offer multiple cues. For example, the number of people taking the trouble to rate a book or series can be telling. Rebecca Yarros's latest book in The Empyrean series has over 2 lakh ratings, averaging 4.5 out of 5.
Indian author Alisha Kay, who began her writing journey with a flash fiction blog in 2016, says, "Participating in various blogging festivals helped me build a reader base for when my debut YA spy fiction released in 2020. In 2021, I started my Alisha Kay romance pen name from scratch, and I found Instagram very useful in connecting with romance readers and reviewers. But most of my readers come from Amazon. Whether it is for my kidlit books or my romcoms, I have way more readers than I have social media followers, and they all discover my books on Amazon before they follow me on social media. I do know that Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program plays a large role in how Indian romance readers discover new authors. When you finish one book, the app recommends similar books, leading you to discover more authors in the same genre."
Book listings on e-commerce sites themselves can be viewed by genre and subgenre. For example, the romance genre on Amazon.in which started out as a bookseller before it became the behemoth it is today, is organized with sub-genres like "Alpha Male", "Billionaires & Millionaires", "Clean & Wholesome", "Enemies to Lovers", "Fantasy", "Gothic", "Historical", "Holidays", "Later in Life", "Love Triangle", "Mafia Romance", "Medical", "Military", "Multicultural & Interracial", "Romantic Comedy", "Sports", "Time Travel", "Workplace Romance"...
As in the 1950s, serialized novels is still a thing, as are public libraries and—for now—bookstores that sometimes have their own fan following. But there are many more avenues now to discover the books we think we'll love and the authors we know we could follow into hours-long AMAs (ask me anything) in 2025. In the age of streaming and user-generated content, where authors find potential readers has changed, too.
Where writers find their readers
Both Alisha Kay and Ell P, author of Shameless in Stilettos - an Indian crime-fiction novel with a Dominatrix twist set in Bengaluru, found the earliest readers of their books in Bengaluru writers' clubs—Ell P joined Write Club Bangalore in 2014 and Kay was part of The Write Tribe from 2016 to 2018.
"They (The Write Tribe)... were my first readers. They gave me the confidence to turn my flash fiction into a full book. Unfortunately, the group disbanded soon after that, although some of the members still blog regularly," says Kay. "I think Bookstagram is still a good way for readers and writers to find their community in India. I’ve also heard of a lot of authors building a strong readership on Wattpad, although I’m not sure how many of those readers also read your other works that aren’t available on the app," Kay adds.
Ell P's debut novel is interesting for a few reasons—its exploration of kink, a confident female inspector as the lead and all the makings of a series, are among them. Once Tara published the book earlier this year, Ell P got to work finding her readers. Among other things, she sent the book to Read With Us Book Club for "honest reviews". Run by three cofounders, the book club offers members three prompts on what to read each month.
Samantha Shannon, author of The Bone Season which has sold over a million copies and has been translated in Russian and French among other languages, says: "I do love Instagram and post there almost every day. I like to give readers a glimpse of my process—whether that’s research, drafting or editing – and to share the mythology and inspiration behind the series. I also do a trimonthly Q&A, which is a lot of fun. I did recently learn that there’s an active Discord for the Bone Season series, which was really exciting. It’s lovely to know there’s a dedicated place for its readers to come together."
Discord is an instant messaging service with voice and video calls capability that also allows users to form communities up to 250,000—a limit that can be extended on request.
Book tribes, then and now
Earlier this year, Redditor Ali Lockhart (@ali_learns_to_read) posted a message on r/RomanceBooks: "What do you do when it's literally impossible to read a book you really want to read? Wondered if this has happened to anyone else". A book she found through Kindle Unlimited, and loved, had disappeared from the platform, she wrote. "...to my shock it's not only not available through kindle unlimited, it's not available anywhere in book form. No physical copies or ebooks. I am utterly dismayed, it's only available in audiobook form and I hate audiobooks... (cry emoji) at r/tipofmytongue, r/whatsthatbook, Help a Bitch (sic) Out, or the Romance Novel Book Sleuth group on Goodreads."
It's the kind of plea that might not have been possible 20 years ago, and yet it's an experience that readers in the 1950s might have had - albeit the conditions would be different where they might have encountered a book at a stall on a railway platform or in a faraway library and, frustratingly, never spotted it again.
Subreddits devoted to books and genres are full of such conversations. Consider this post by PsyferRL from July 1, 2025:
"I read all 14 of Kurt Vonnegut's novels for the first time in 2025. This is my formal "First Impression Power Rankings... What a journey this has been, the first time I've ever intentionally read every novel written by an author and I really don't think I could have made a better choice than Kurt Vonnegut. I was gifted Slaughterhouse-Five by a friend a few years ago, she told me it was her favorite book. At the time I wasn't reading much, so it sat on my shelf for a few years. That changed when I finally picked it up this January. Since the start of the year, I have read in this order: Slaughterhouse-Five, The Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Player Piano, Mother Night, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Breakfast of Champions, Slapstick, Jailbird, Deadeye Dick, Galápagos, Bluebeard, Hocus Pocus, and finally Timequake...."
The post goes on. Over 19 hours or so, it's gathered 145 comments and nearly 900 up-votes. To be sure, not every query lights up in proper conversations. In this case, though, the conversation flows. Like it might in a physical gathering of book lovers. It's everything you want from your book tribe. Recommendations, memories, opinions, counterarguments... and general bonhomie fuelled and sustained by discussing a book that is well-loved among your tribe.
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