Online book club

by Shanna
(Grovetown,GA)

I enjoy reading books but I am in the military and often find myself geographically separated from my reading buddies. In fact most of the people I know are not in the same state as me. So, I came up with the idea of having a website as the meeting place for a book club. Here people can post their thoughts on a book, swap books, blog about a book, etc. I was wondering what did you think of this idea and do you have in suggestions on how I can enhance this idea to make it effective.
Thank you,
Shanna K

Response from Queenie D:

Hi Shanna,
What a wonderful idea! There are definitely many women who are extremely busy and find it hard to schedule a face-to-face club each month.

Here are my thoughts:

1. Choose about 4-5 people to start. Be sure they have internet access, are somewhat computer savvy (or willing to learn), and will actually read the book.

2. Follow the regular book club rules, omitting the parts about club meetings. http://www.book-club-queen.com/book-club-guide.html.

3. Set up a blog. I recommend www.blogger.com. It's a very easy platform that anyone can use.

4. Decide on a date to have the book finished each month. Whoever is in charge of choosing the book would also be in charge of running the discussion. Have that person post about 6-10 questions they find interesting or worth discussing. Give a 3-day time frame for the other members to respond. Then require that each member responds at least once to someone else. This will get the "discussion" flowing and it should take off from there.

Come back and let us know how it goes!

Good luck and Happy Reading!