I ran into an article in the New York Times this morning about the new Progressive Book Club. Initially I was skeptical. It seemed to me that it was simply the Book of the Month Club’s way of cornering yet another market of readers. However as I continued to read the article it appears that the investors behind the club don’t really believe it will make much profit at all. They are truly doing it for the good of the progressive movement.

The club will go a few steps further than the run of the mill mail order book club. There will be no mailings, it will be completely online based. It also will provide social networking on the site and encouragement to members to form their own local book clubs to share some of the books. It will also allow members to donate $2 of each book purchase to an organization chosen from a list of participating groups. Groups such as the Foundation for National Progress, which publishes Mother Jones magazine and the Wellstone Action Fund will show the book club’s banner on their sites in exchange for being included.

The publishing world itself is not overly impressed by the new club. The feeling being that readers are typically a pretty liberal group anyway. They probably don’t need a book club to encourage them.

Time will tell.