Blog Post

Essential Tips for Book Club Moderators

Jason BoogDec 15 2023

While exploring the ever-expanding collection book clubs on Fable, I've always admired the work of Crow Club, one of our most engaging clubs. With over 11,000 engaged members, club founders Sloan and Kyre have successfully navigated nine book club books with their members.These BookTok creators recently made a video with advice for other moderators, offering a treasure trove of tips to keep your book club as lively as a conversation in a Liane Moriarty novel.To dive deeper into their strategies, check out their full video below. Kyre and Sloan's advice will be a valuable resource for any kind of moderator, from an online book club to an IRL discussion. If you keep reading, I've highlighted a few of my favorite tips.

Let club members pick your book club book

One standout tip from Kyre is to involve everyone in choosing the book club book.

“We make sure all our members are included in the decisions."

“We do this by creating monthly themes," she explained. "Book members can go in there and leave recommendations. From their recommendations, we create a poll where we vote on what we want to read for the month.” By allowing members to recommend books, Crow Club creates a sense of community and ensures that the final selection feels like a group choice. Best of all, every club member feels like a celebrity book club leader when they help choose a great book.

Grow your club through social media

Sloan highlighted the importance of using social media platforms, especially TikTok and Instagram, to boost engagement.“We like to share what's going on in our book club on other social media platforms. The most important ones to us are TikTok and Instagram,” concluded Sloan.

“We love to share the book that we're reading that month on our Instagram stories. The most important thing is to provide a link that allows them to follow it straight to your book club on the Fable app.”

Sharing updates and book choices on these platforms, accompanied by direct links to the book club, not only keeps current members informed but also attracts new members who might be searching for a club after finishing a compelling read like "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" by Gail Honeyman or Fredrik Backman's captivating stories.

Use all your engaging book club tools!

An essential tool in their arsenal is the @club feature on Fable. Sloan swears by it. “The @club feature is something I can't go without. You literally just put the symbol and then ‘@club’ and it notifies all of your members,” said Sloan, explaining how they use Fable’s club tools.

“I absolutely have to use this every time we announce new themes, a new poll comes out for books, or for any other announcement. I know that everyone's going to see it.”

Keep reading on Fable

Whether you're a fan of Reese Witherspoon's vibrant celebrity book club or a member of one of Fable's thousands of virtual clubs, the world of book clubs is as varied as the books themselves. By including these tips in your conversational toolkit, your book club can become a haven for book lovers, a place where stories are not just read but shared. Your club can provide all the inspiration and fellowship of Oprah Winfrey's famous book club, reading the books you love the most with friends.The Fable app is built for social reading, with tools for sharing highlights, comments, insights, links, pictures, and videos as you set measurable reading goals. We also make it easy to launch your free book club, even if you are reading an audiobook. With our platform, you can host every aspect of an online discussion at a single destination to reach readers and build safe online communities regardless of location or time zone.

Start your own book club today!

You can also discover the best audiobook by exploring thousands of book lists on Fable, decoding your personal taste with our guided recommendations. It’s easy to make your own list as well!

Make a great book list.

Just finished reading an audiobook and have the urge to share your thoughts with the world? It’s time to write your review and highlight your favorite sentences! You can also import your Goodreads reviews to your Fable account!

Rate and review your favorite books!

By Jason Boog

Jason Boog is a writer living in Los Angeles and part of the editorial team at Fable. OR Books published "The Deep End: The Literary Scene During the Great Depression and Today," his book about how different writers survived the Great Depression. Simon & Schuster’s Touchstone imprint published "Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age," his handbook about how to raise kids who love to read. His work has appeared in The Believer, The Awl, Salon, NPR Books, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Peace Corps Writers, and other outlets. He was the West Coast correspondent for Publishers Weekly.