Book Clubs

A book club is a standing group read: one book (or topic) at a time, a pace the organizer sets, and discussion that lives in coverages instead of scattered across comments. It's not a format you'll find on Substack or beehiiv - most of this page is about using it well, not just finding the settings.

Starting a club

Every club has a profile (name, description, cover image), a member list, and - the part that actually makes it a club rather than just another publication - a current read. As organizer, you set what that is and when discussion opens. Nothing runs on autopilot; a club with no current read is just an empty room.

Clubs can be public or private. Public means anyone can join immediately - the right default if you want to grow membership through discovery. Private means people request to join and you approve them - better suited to a group who already know each other and want to keep it that way.

Publishing a coverage

A coverage is what a post is to a regular publication - the actual piece of writing - scoped to the book currently being read: a review, an analysis, a discussion prompt. You publish one whenever you want discussion to open, the same way you'd publish any other post.

The real difference from a regular post isn't the format, it's the audience. Club members are reading along with an ongoing arc, not landing on a one-off - so a coverage that assumes people read last week's is normal here, in a way it wouldn't be for a standalone post.

Joining a club as a reader

You're in instantly for a public club, or once approved for a private one. Either way, you'll see the current read and every coverage published so far, in order - there's no separate "catch up" feature, because reading the coverages in sequence is catching up.

For why a book club is worth running alongside a newsletter in the first place, see Why your newsletter needs a book club (and how to run one) on the blog.

Reviews, notes and readers' posts

A book of your club can carry a review, a reading plan and notes, and you can let your subscribers post into the club too. You choose what's featured and hide what you don't want. See Complements.

Moderating the discussion

What readers report in your club, and the comments and posts your rules hold for approval, wait in the Discussion block of the club's tab in the Studio. You approve, hide, remove or ban from there. See Moderating your publication.

Your club's page, its books and its readers

Your book club has a page you arrange like any page of your site: see Your book club page. Each book has its own page (A page for each book), and readers can recommend the next book and read along (Recommend a book and read along).