Judging by the column inches in last week's British broadsheets, the announcement of the Richard and Judy Book Club shortlist is now more significant than the Man Booker prize. That's remarkable considering that when their club started up in 2004, it barely merited a mention. The idea that a lightweight daytime television duo could reshape the literary world was laughable. As the club gathered steam, articles started to appear with sniffy quotes from the literati. Now being selected for the R&J club is (accurately) billed as the most "sought after plaudit in publishing".
Spurious sales statistics are often quoted about the Richard and Judy effect, but the real figures are none the less breathtaking. The big hit of last year's show, Kate Mosse's Labyrinth (published by Orion), shifted 858,378 copies in 2006. The favourite selection from their spin-off Summer Reads series, Victoria Hislop's The Island, sold 586,883. These are numbers that most Booker winners - with the exception of Yann Martel - can only dream about.
Despite some overheated claims, Richard and Judy (and their producer Cactus TV) did not invent the reading group, an American phenomena that was gaining ground in Britain in the late 1990s. Nor are they the only route to reaching such groups, as is shown by the runaway success of books such as Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian or Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. But the Channel 4 duo have cannily tapped into a burgeoning desire to "share" experiences of books, and they've achieved the seemingly impossible feat of making books work on TV's terms. They've also consistently picked stories that really resonate with readers.
There's no great mystery to the Richard and Judy formula. They want books with real talking points - or in producer Amanda Ross's memorable phrase, angles for "sofa chat". Each year there will be a few idealistic American writers; a historical thriller; a schmaltzy story; a bizarre narrator, and a challenging literary novel. But just when publishers think they have divined the magic formula, the TV duo throw in a leftfield choice like AM Homes's This Book Will Save Your Life. The "Book Club" stickers that so disfigure paperback covers are now relied on as a buying guide, even by people who never watch the show. As a result some retailers have handed over responsibility to the pair - for supermarkets, Richard and Judy have become the equivalent of booksellers standing in the aisles and helping customers. Inevitably the battleground has shifted to price, and we have the ludicrous spectacle of a discount war on books that most people will happily pay full whack for.
Inevitably such success brings resentment; smaller publishers grumble that the list is "sown up" by the big boys, who help to fund the final award ceremony. But there's plenty of conglomerates who will be bitter at not making the cut this year, while Granta is smiling with AM Homes.
For authors the one-off effects of Richard and Judy's largesse can be staggering. William Boyd has gathered fans for years, without quite breaking through; royalties from sales of Restless will probably earn him more than his last three novels combined. But these new readers may not turn to his follow-up effort - the brand being bought is Richard and Judy, rather than author. That's where the industry needs to step in, to ensure that the effects of the club outlast its stint on the sofa.
