Introducing BetaBooks Book Clubs

This month we officially transitioned the former "Beta Reader Pool" to its new home as "Pam's Beta Jam." This is an exciting change for me and Paul, as Pam has been running the pool for some time and has been doing a great job with it. We're glad to see her get full credit and ownership.

This change is also exciting because it ushers in a new opportunity for our reader community. In the past the reader pool was implemented in such a way that there could only be one on the site, but now we can host additional groups. We’re calling these new groups “Book Clubs,” and my hope is that over the next year we’ll see several new ones emerge.

If you’re not familiar with how book clubs work, here’s a quick overview:

  • Each club is led by a curator (like Pam) who accepts submissions from authors, screens them, and selects books to share with the group.
  • Readers get to sit back and enjoy fresh books that have already been vetted for quality on a regular basis.
  • Selected authors get the chance to have a large and enthusiastic reader group beta test their book, leaving valuable feedback.

Starting now we're looking to add new book clubs for more specific genres and niches. If you’re interested in serving as a curator and organizing a book club, we’d love to hear from you. Please send us an email and we’ll be happy to chat!

Update: I posted an expanded explanation of the new book club process, if you're interested you can read that here.

This is a bit of an organic experiment for us, so we’re still working out the exact details of how new book clubs will form, but our basic expectation is that new groups will go through a provisional period where the curator demonstrates their ability to organize and run the group. Once the core group is established and healthy, we’ll announce it and list it for the broader reader community to discover.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, we’d love to hear them. You can email me and Paul at #, we’d love to hear from you :)




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