Welcome to the homepage of the ARWZ Book Club. Our Book Club here at ARWZ Magazine is a multi-board group read that runs on a seasonal basis. Books are nominated, voted on and discussed by our members and book club partners. The Book Club is run by ARWZ Editors, but hosted by a number of message board communities all over the net.

If you're the webmaster of an online message board community, you may have considered at one time or another running a group read or book of the month, but vetoed the idea because of all the work involved. Maybe you tried it for a time, but stopped because of lack of interest, or the constant demands. Perhaps you run a generalized book board with a successful group read, but get complaints for science fiction, fantasy and/or horror fans that they don't get to read enough of their favorites. If you've ever considered running a group read for books in the alternative reality genres, the ARWZ Book Club could be a great solution.


Becoming a Book Club Partner

There are many benefits to joining the ARWZ Book Club community as one of our official Book Club Partner forums. It lets you add interactive content to your online message board without having to go to the trouble yourself. Our multi-board format and seasonal schedule also solve a lot of the typical pitfalls of running an online book club:

1) ARWZ Editors do all the work to organize, schedule and lead discussions. By becoming an ARWZ Book Club Partner, you instantly add an interactive group read to your community without having to lift a finger. ARWZ Book Club runs itself on your page.

2) ARWZ Book Club discussions happen on YOUR forum, to stimulate activity and interest within your community. Most of the action, including nominations and book discussion takes place right on your forum. Members of your forum don't need to go to another page to discuss the chosen book. ARWZ Editors or their appointees start and lead the discussion right on your board.

3) Since ARWZ Book Club is a multi-board group read, you eliminate the problem of not getting enough people to read the book, as well as getting some free advertising. Each Book Club Partner gets their own discussion topic for each book, but each of those topics is linked up to the others. Think of it like a webring of book discussion. Joining ARWZ Book Club puts your online community into a larger network of book pages, helping to drive more traffic to your site.

4) ARWZ Book Club is scheduled and organized by ARWZ Editors so that the members of our Book Club Partners have ample time to nominate, vote on and finally to find the elected book before discussion starts, helping to eliminate delays in participation because of shipping time or library holds.


How it Works

If you're interested in becoming a Book Club Partner of ARWZ, here's the regular schedule and procedure, that is, what we'll be posting on your page and when:

Three Months before the next discussion starts, we will start a topic on each Book Club Partner board asking for nominations for the next group read. Members can nominate their choices right on your board. Nominations from each Partner board will be incorporated into the final poll for that upcoming read.

Two Months before the next discussion starts, we will synthesize all the nominations into a centralized poll on the ARWZ Community Forums. We will post a topic on your forum inviting your members to vote for their favorites in this central poll.

One Month before the next discussion starts, we will close the poll and post a topic on your forum informing the members of which book has won so that they will have ample time to get ahold of a copy of the book.

Discussion starts one month after voting closes. We will post a separate topic on each Book Partner forum. That's right, your page gets it own discussion topic for the book, and ARWZ Editors will visit your forum regularly in order to keep the discussion going for three months. If your members want to continue the discussion longer, be our guests! Not only that, but every one of those separate discussion topics has a link to every other discussion, so that members of other Partner forums can find their way to your board.


The best part? No fuss for you. ARWZ Editors post all topics and reminders, so that you never have to do any upkeep in regards to the Book Club. We run everything for you.


How to sign up

If you're ready to sign up, here's what you need to get started:

1) Are you an ARWZ Associate? While it's not a requirement, we highly recommend that you consider joining up as an ARWZ Associate. Becoming an Associate of ARWZ lets you add even more interactive content to your community and it allows your members to become more familiar with ARWZ Editors, and vice versa. In our experience, your members will be more willing to participate in the Book Club group reads if they interact with our editors on your forums on a regular basis. For more information on becoming an ARWZ Associate, please visit our Associates Details & Application page (link opens in a new window).

2) What are your community themes? While many of our prospective Book Partners will be science fiction, fantasy or horror pages with a specific or special-interest theme, many others will be general book or entertainment boards looking to create new content for the sf&f&h fans among their membership. Any board that welcomes discussion of alternative reality fiction is invited to become a Book Club Partner.

3) Where will you want Book Club Disscussions? Depending on the themes of your board, you'll want to consider which of your individual forums will be the best place for ARWZ Editors to post Book Club topics. If your board themes are more specific, then a general discussion or book discussion forum will be the best place. If your board themes are more general, then you might want to consider choosing a more specific forum (e.g. an SF&F forum?) for the Book Club topics. Think about which forum would be best for our editors to visit when posting topics and discussions related to the Book Club.


Application

If you're ready to go, please fill out the application below. If you have any questions before applying, please email our webmaster at webmaster@arwz.com:

Name of Administrator Contact:

This should be the name or internet handle of the head administrator of the page. If you are a co-administrator in charge of the page, we will presume you have permission from fellow administrators to speak for them in being the main contact for our editors and in applying for the program. If you are not the head administrator or one of a team of head administrators, but think the page where you are a moderator or member would be interested in joining, please inform the head administrator of the page about this program and ask him or her to join.

Are You an ARWZ Associate?
Yes
I would like this application to double as my Associates application
I don't have time right now, but will consider applying later
I'd rather be a Book Club Partner only

Administrator Contact Email Address:

An active email address for the above submitted administrator contact is required. ARWZ Administrators reserve the right to terminate Book Club Partners or Associate memberships based on email inactivity, so please keep us informed of changes to email addresses.

Name of Your Board:

Provide the official title of your message board community, as you would like it to read in the link on our Book Club links.

Main Message Board URL:

Please enter the main URL of the message forum. This URL should lead us to the main page of the board, where all individual forums are listed. This URL should NOT be the domain address of your website, unless the domain address forwards directly to the message forum index page.

Target Forum for ARWZ Editors:

Use this box to submit the URL of the forum on your board where ARWZ Editors should visit to post Book Club topics and discussion.

Additional Comments:
If there is any information specific to your board that you feel our editors should know when considering your application, please send us an email to accompany your application. You do not need to include any further information if you feel your application is self-explanatory. However, if you feel your board needs further explanation (e.g. your board themes differ from our typical Book Club Partner), or if there is any additional information you feel we should have in considering your application, please email us after clicking the "Submit" button below. Additionally, if any of the application fields above are not large enough for your name, email or board URLs, please submit what you can and send us an email giving us the rest of your application information. If you feel you need to submit a supplemental email for any of the above reasons, please send it to webmaster@arwz.com with the subject line "ATTN: RE: BOOK CLUB APPLICATION"



If your application is received during our nominations period or during the first two weeks of our voting period, we will include your page in the current book discussion cycle. If your application is received during the last half of the voting period or during the month prior to discussion, we will include your page as a Book Partner starting in the next cycle. Since our discussions are three months long, nominations for the next cycle start on the same day as discussions for the current cycle. As a result, new Book Partners never have to wait longer than a month and a half before their membership starts. If you specifically request that your page be included in the current cycle, even after the halfway mark in voting, we will activate your membership as soon as your application is processed. Please email us (webmaster@arwz.com) if such is the case.



Below is our current list of active Book Partner communities:

ARWZ Community Forums
Bestsellers & Literature
It's a Must Read
Science Fiction
Worm's SciFi Haven