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.