How The Book Club Works

[JohnT]

Where do you get 12 books from? Is that just a random number?

12 is the maximum limit for polls.

Nobody is making people read the books if their book doesn't get picked, so all of this seconding and thirding is just another way to make sure that more than one person is interested in reading a book before it goes to poll.

Yes, but you're essentially duplicating the effort that's already done by the poll.

Like I said, I used to do this too. Here's an example of a months nominee being run through the process

Nominating Thread

Voting Thread

Discussion Thread

(unfortunantly, we ended up with Enders Game one of the more over-rated books in the history of science fiction. )

Now it helps that the poll option was set to 24 votes, and we did allow multiple votes (akin to "seconding" and "thirding" the nominations.)

[Erfael]

JohnT,

This isn't meant to blow you off or anything like that, but maybe just hang out a couple of months, see how things work out, go with the flow. This system has worked well for us to get a very nice, diverse group of books in both the sci-fi and fantasy forums here at SFFWorld. We've picked over 70 books so far over the last 3 to 4 years in widely varying areas of both genres with little to no problem. Give it a chance. There are more ways than one to do things. After you've seen how things work for a while, if you have some concerns about things not happening in a fair, democratic, effective way, let us know.

[FicusFan]

I am confused as to why this urge to fix something that isn't broken ? Especialy when just joining. By all means nominate, vote, read, and discuss, but your suggestions will carry more weight if you actually spend some time here participating first.

[JohnT]

Look, when it is stated in the very first post in this thread:

I want everyone to feel comfortable making suggestions, so I will leave this thread open to reply.

And then my suggestions are followed up with the previous two posts essentially saying "STFU N00b!*", one wonders why you even bothered typing it in. If you want suggestions, welcome them. If you don't, be honest about it and remove the above line. And if you want people to "be comfortable" making suggestions, don't jump all over people who are merely doing as you ask.

*n00b to the boards, not to discussion groups. I've co-moderated (with my wife) a monthly film discussion group for the past five years, I moderated a science-fiction novel discussion group both online (example above) and in RL (Here is me complaining about the quality of discussion at one of the meetings), and there's the X-Files group which I co-moderated for a few years prior to the movie group.

[Sammie]

Hi John,

Thanks for your thoughts on our book selection system - as the thread says, members suggestions are always welcome, and I don't believe it was the intention of anyone here to give a different impression.

I think the issue here is that although your suggestions are indeed welcome, after consideration, the moderators and long-term participaters here feel that they aren't appropriate to the set-up here at the moment.

There simply aren't sufficent people taking part to justify such a large poll of the kind you suggest. After much trial and error (this system had been running in the fantasy forum for some years now - and believe me we had our glitches to start with!), we have discovered that the best way to get a large number of readers to join in, after the book of the month has been chosen, is to establish three to five books with a good level of member interest - via the nominations - and then have a run-off vote between those books. We found that the larger the number of books in the poll, the greater the proportion of members that voted that then did not read the winning book. Also, more often than not, we had to have a 'tie-breaker' poll anyway if there were a large number of books in the first poll. The nominations system is, for us, a tried and tested method. We will have needed, and will need again, to adapt the system as the membership grows and changes, so I doubt it will stay this way for ever but, for now, it's what works.

Why not give it a try for a couple of months, and then suggest ways that you think we could 'tweak' the system, to improve it further. I suspect that this would be more welcome than the suggestion that we are 'doing it all wrong' and should change completely, which you can understand may ruffle some feathers!

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Hope you enjoy the club!

Sammie.
Administrator.

[clong]

For what it's worth, it seems odd to me that your guidelines permit an author to be repeated after only six months. Illium sounds like a really interesting book, and I am sure that I will read it (though probably not until Olympos is out in paperback), but I can't see voting for it when you have already done Hyperion and there are so many many authors out there that you haven't covered yet. Just my $.02 .

[Hobbit]

it seems odd to me that your guidelines permit an author to be repeated after only six months.

Good point, clong. We allow it, but it doesn't say it's going to happen. As you have said, there are a lot of authors out there....

Your example is one though that wouldn't necessarily work, as Olympos follows on from Ilium. It would have to say, be Hyperion and Ilium with six months apart, if I remember right.

(Now whether we count Hyperion and Endymion as two separate series is an interesting point. But I think we would.)

But such a ruling would allow us to read Hyperion and then say Ilium if the members wanted to, with enough time to allow us to compare.

Hobbit

[Saulus]

Is there going to be a set reading schedule either by page or chapter that we will be advised to go by so that we don't ruin anything in our discussion of the book for somebody who may not have reached that point in the book?

[ArthurFrayn]

The way it's been so far, if I may field the question, is:
a book is selected for a given month in advance by the vote you have probably already seen. When that month rolls around, the thread for the book is offically open, usually by Erfael, and people start to post in it. Sometimes Erfael posts topical questions to get the ball rolling.
That's it! No page by page, chapter by chapter or any of that. When the thread is posted, it's assumed you have already read the book, or will keep away until you have, if you're afraid of spoilers.

[pavilion1993]

um i was wondering where do you vote on books

[pavilion1993]

um i was wondering where do you vote on which book to read for the month or just where to see which book has already been voted on?

[Corporal Hoorah]

This is an interesting idea, since several years have passed and publishing has changed, what about ebooks or indie authors? I nominate CARGO LOCK 5 if so

[Hobbit]

Well: never say never. The Book Club is on an undetermined hiatus at the moment though.