Fanatics is a card that just gives and gives this month
South Africa’s leading bookseller, Exclusive Books, is celebrating the 20-year anniversary of its much-loved loyalty programme, Fanatics.
For more than two decades, the programme has attracted book lovers and now boasts 750 000 members. In celebration of the milestone, the store will be rewarding these loyal bibliophiles with double points for the entire month – the equivalent of 10% back on members’ spend.
“The Fanatics programme has reached a major milestone,” says the CEO of Exclusive Books, Benjamin Trisk. “Over the years, the mechanics of the programme haven’t changed: we still offer, in nonbirthday months, the equivalent of 5% back on our members’ spend, which makes Fanatics one of the most generous loyalty programmes in the country.”
So, what are Fanatics members’ top titles from the last 10 years?
2007 was the year that the “loss” of Harry warred with the politics of rugby when sales of In Black and White by Jake White almost doubled those of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.
2008, dubbed the year of secrets and spuds, John van de Ruit’s Spud and Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret went neck-and-neck.
2009 the year when the Twilight series lost an epic best-seller battle to Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
2010 was the year when Lawrence Anthony’s The Elephant Whisperer narrowly beat Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.
2011 was the year that Killing Kebble by Mandy Wiener topped the sales charts, even beating Steve Jobs, the biography.
In 2012, EL James’ 50 Shades of Grey series beat the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.
2013 and Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared marginally outsold Cape Town author Lauren Beukes’ The Shining Girls.
2014,saw The Real Meal Revolution by Jonno Proudfoot, Sally-Ann Creed, and Tim Noakes not only outsell Zelda la Grange’s Good Morning Mr Mandela, but become the highest selling book of the last decade.
2016 had Adrian Lackay and Johann van Loggerenberg’s Rogue – The Inside Story of SARS’s Elite Crime-busting Unit, which explored the misery of state capture. But The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Carlton Abrams saw the year end on a happier note.