The Dua Lipa book club influence

Over the summer, we shared some surprising stats about book club attendance on the blog — how it’s on the rise, and particularly with a younger demographic. Our research on that blog post lead us to thinking about celebrity book clubs, and specifically those celebrities whose fans skew younger. And that brings us to Dua Lipa’s Service95 book club. You may know her as a pop star, but she also spends her time sharing reading picks with her over 340,000 Instagram followers and 21,000 TikTok followers. It seems as though the book club arm of Service95 started in May 2023 with her first pick, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart.

Though Dua Lipa is a British-Albanian singer-songwriter, her influence is global. But how much influence does she have on the Canadian book market? We chose to look at a sampling of three books of the month from this year to find out. We used BookNet Canada’s SalesData and LibraryData services to track the print book sales and library circulation in Canada.

First, the January pick: The Guest by Emma Cline, first published in May 2023. It was announced as the January 2024 read on December 5, 2023 in an Instagram post that has garnered 12,000 likes. (The public announcements for the Service95 monthly picks seem to be promoted on Instagram.)

In the graph below, we can see that in the four weeks following the announcement, the sales of this title did go up in the Canadian market. However, this was during peak book buying season over the holidays and the sales did return to pre-holiday levels after Christmas.

When we look at library circulation of The Guest after the announcement, the loans are fairly flat and the holds trend down slightly.

What about another book past the holiday season with an older backlist title? A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini was the February 2024 pick and the Instagram announcement on January 16, received 30,000 likes. So interest from the Service95 Instagram community is up from the previous pick.

Looking at the graph above, we can see that sales did increase in the week after the book announcement, but they also yo-yoed over the next three weeks. Not a straight one to one, but it’s possible that Dua Lipa moved the needle for this title.

In the library market, we see less fluctuation. Holds remain steady, though trend down somewhat in the four weeks after the book pick was made public, and loans drop slightly after the announcement.

The last book pick we’ll look at is June’s title, Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. When it was announced on May 30, the Instagram post garnered over 409,000 likes. Though there was no immediate increase in sales, two weeks after the Service 95 announcement of their pick, the sales of Say Nothing increased fairly significantly.

And in the library market, the holds for this title increased in the week after the announcement which you can also see reflected in the loans two weeks later. For a title originally published in 2019, that increase is notable.

So, Dua Lipa may not be the new Oprah in terms of influence in the Canadian book market, but it’s possible that her picks are increasing sales for some titles, and maybe even library circulation. Either way, we’re just heartened to see celebrities of all ages reading and sharing their love for books with their fans. May it continue!