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: