How to start a book club

Book clubs are to carrots as ranch is to friendship. They are a vessel for a means to an end. They are an opportunity to meet up with your friends, turn off your phone, and freak out about that wild plot twist together. Friendship at its finest, in my opinion. What can be hard is finding one that works with your schedule, reads what you're interested in, and is somewhere you can meet new friends. The digital age is great for most things, but it struggles to encourage IRL hangouts. It’s tough! I remember when I had just moved to a new city, and I really wanted to make some friends. Joining a kickball league, going out to happy hours, and late-night hangs were fun, but those events weren’t fostering the conversations I was hoping to have. 

I looked online for a couple of weeks, trying to find some kind of resource to help rectify my situation. Unfortunately, I did not find what I was looking for. No matter! I would start my own book club. A situation forged by trial and error. I invited everyone I knew: people from work, friends, friends of friends, neighbors, and more. I am overjoyed to say, even though I’ve moved, the book club is still there. The group chat has numbers I don’t know, names I’ve never heard, and I couldn’t be happier. It has become its own autonomous community, which is better than I could have hoped. I learned a lot from that group. If I were to do it all over again, I would follow the steps below. 

Step 1: Decide what kind of book club you want 

This step is filled with more questions than answers. Do you want the book club to have a theme like ‘Rising Authors and Rising Doughs’, where you focus on reading up-and-coming authors while baking sourdough, or ‘Mysterious Lives and Mystical Crafts’, where you read memoirs and make whimsical crafts? The world is your oyster! Who is your audience? Are you bringing together various friend groups, or are you trying to make friends? What kind of books do you want to read? Do you care what books you read? How do you want the books to be chosen? 

Once you hone in on what you want the book club to be, you will be able to better sustain it. If you don’t know what you're working with, it won’t work. If you're more type A, feel free to make that Excel sheet, but don’t feel the pressure or need to be more organized than you want to be. Take your time with this phase. You’re pouring the concrete for the home, you don’t want to rush! The cracks will only grow worse over time, so take it at your own pace. 

This is what I texted my friends!

Step 2: Start building your group

Communication is key. I prefer a group chat as the main form of communication for my book club. You need to decide how you would like to communicate with your people. Group chat, GroupMe, email, letter, or whatever you want. It’s none of my business. If I were you, I would start talking to your friends, coworkers, and whoever else you would like to be in the group about your desire to start a book club. Some will love the idea. Some will say they hate reading. At the end of the day, you are planting the seed. When you’ve completed step one, throw all of them in a chat. Start! You don’t need to have a perfect plan to start something. Just start. If you wait until you're ready, you may never do it. Give yourself enough time to add everyone you want to start with to the chat. I guess I should say an early congratulations! If you’ve done these two steps, you have started a book club! YAY! Now, it’s time for your first meeting. 

Step 3: Pick a day and stick to it

This is the hardest part. Depending on how many people you have in your chat determines how difficult it could be to pick a date. Note: everyone might not be able to make the first meeting. Totally ok! I sent three dates and had people vote for the date that worked best for them. While at your first meeting with your group, you all can talk about how often you’d like to meet and what dates work best for the group long term. This is just the first meeting. Try and keep it as stress-free as possible. REMINDER! This is meant to be fun first and foremost. 

After your group has decided on a date that works for you (I can not emphasize this enough), DO NOT CANCEL! Think of this first meeting as an immovable date for yourself. Book clubs work when they’re consistent. You must start on the right foot. Pick a fun spot and reserve seats early. If you’re hosting at your home, pick up ingredients for a fun food board or recipe. You’re setting the tone! 

Step 4: Only cancel if everyone can’t come, and I mean EVERYONE

Scratch my previous statement. This might be the hardest step. So, you have had your first meeting, and your next meeting is coming up. Here’s the problem: work has been crazy, you haven’t finished the book, and all but two people have said they can’t make it. DON’T PANIC. Have the meeting. I know. I know. You might be thinking, “But why? Not everyone can make it! Shouldn’t I reschedule?” No. If you are rescheduling for every person who can’t make it, you will never have your second meeting. Life is crazy! Everyone is busy! Throughout the course of your book club, people will be more or less free. Keeping a consistent time and schedule will make it easier for people to come. It may sound counterintuitive, but consistency is more important than numbers. Listen to your friend's schedules and book around them the best you can. It’ll all shake out the way it needs to. 

Step 5: Give the seeds time to grow 

For my first book club meeting, ten people showed up. AWESOME! It was loud and vibrant and everything I wanted it to be. In week 2, there were four people. WHAT! What did I do wrong? Why didn’t everyone come back? What happened? It was really a simple answer. Life got busy. Work projects, relationships, unexpected commitments… life happened. The next week, six people came, and each week looked a little different. As it went on, more of the same people kept coming to the group. It took about six months, though. Six months of consistently showing up tired or wide awake. Showing up loving the book or letting them know I didn’t even finish it. No judgment. Just friends talking about what they loved, hated, disliked, or didn’t care about the book. A successful book club takes time. Give yourself patience and be open to learning what works best for your group. NOTE! These steps aren’t foolproof, but they have been tried and tested. Be brave! Start your book club and start reading. Connect! Make friends! Push yourself to learn new perspectives and beliefs. Go forth!