Richard and Judy Book Club choices 2004 to 2022

Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan started their book club as a segment of their Channel 4 afternoon show in 2004, ten books a year discussed on air with celebrity readers, and the effect on sales was immediate enough to get a name: the Richard and Judy effect. Cloud Atlas, The Shadow of the Wind, The Time Traveler's Wife, Notes on a Scandal and Star of the Sea all owed their British sales to it, and publishers began to shape their lists around the chance of a pick. When the show ended the club moved to WHSmith in 2010, where it has run as spring and autumn lists of book-club paperbacks.

For a collector the Channel 4 years are the ones that matter, because several of those choices became the modern firsts of their decade. Cloud Atlas (Sceptre, 2004) and The Time Traveler's Wife, first published in San Francisco by MacAdam/Cage in 2003 before the Cape edition of 2004, are the two that command real prices in their first printings; Brick Lane (Doubleday, 2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (Fourth Estate, 2006) follow. The club's own editions, with the Richard and Judy logo on the cover, are later printings and are worth no more than any other paperback; the book to look for is the hardback first printing in the jacket as issued before the choice was announced.

Each row links to the book's page, where the first edition is identified against two sources where we have them, its printing points are listed, and a value band appears once we hold recorded sales of that printing.