FAQ - A Twitter Book Club Primer for New Members

[Leonor, Magnificent Book Bird]

Here are some topics that might become frequent questions, so in order to rein those in, I have prepared a FAQ that might elucidate you on how this Book Club works and some of it's rules and guidelines.

If you haven't done so, say hi to everyone, just go over the Introduction and Welcome Thread.

How does it work?

One book every 4 weeks.

The First Week - Book Suggestions
Suggestions of books are made by our followers on Twitter, either by Public Reply or Direct Message.
Only one suggestion per person. If you suggest more than one book, we will only take into consideration your first suggestion. Suggest a book that you want to read, not one that you have already read.
We accept suggestions on all types of book; fiction, non-fiction. It can either be a novel, a biography, a collection of short stories or essays or a graphic novel.
If you are an author or a publisher and want to suggest your book, that's fine, but don't just suggest your book and bail. Do it because you want to be involved in the club, not just to self-promote.

The Second Week - Book Selection
The book selection is made here on Goodreads,via a poll. Unfortunately all the services that offer Twitter polls are based only to two options, we usually have more than that. The books that are up for selection are the ones that were suggested by our followers. Of all the books that were suggested you vote on the one you would like to read. Majority rules, so the most voted book wins.

The Third and Fourth Week - Book Reading and Commenting
During the third and the fourth week, we read the book and tweet about it. Because we are an online book club and twitter is vast, remember to use the hashtag #TwitterBookClubMonthYear, e.g. #TwitterBookClubDec13 so that everyone on the book club can see your tweets and join in the conversation.

This group is here for people who wish to discuss the book further and more in depth. And it also provides us with a perfect place to host all the books that are suggested and selected.

Forum Conduct

We want everyone to have fun here, so here are a few guidelines that must be followed:

Treat other members courteously.

Nobody has the right to abuse anyone verbally, to spam the forum, or make offensive remarks, including but not limited to posts that include racism, sexism, or comments derogatory to another’s sexuality.

It is alright to disagree with someone, different viewpoints only contribute to a healthy discussion. However,differences must be addressed with respect.

We will not tolerate when individuals go beyond these boundaries, it’s not fun to read and destroys community atmosphere. Personal attacks on Members, Authors or Moderators will lead to that person being removed from the group and their threads deleted.

For Self Promoting Authors, Bloggers and other Goodreads groups

1. If want to promote your book or website, you must be involved in the community. If you join solely to promote your book and do not enter discussions, you are spamming.

2. All self-promotion topics MUST be posted in the Self-Promotion folder.

3. Please create only one topic for each book or website you are promoting. In other words, if you've already made a post about one particular book or your website, and you'd like to post a review or the like, post that as a reply to your topic. Don't make a new topic.

4. Promotion of other Goodreads groups in threads requires permission of the Moderators.

Removal of threads or the banning of those who fail to obey these guidelines is always at the discretion of the Moderators of the Forum.

Because plagiarism equals intellectual death, the forum conduct part of this text was adapted from the very well written Group Guidelines of the Fantasy Book Club here on Goodreads.

[Filipa]

Leonor, just one comment (that I also left on twitter): would be useful to check that books are available electronically - Kindle for example.
The African capital where I currently live is not that great on bookshops... :(
Thanks!

[Leonor, Magnificent Book Bird]

Filipa, thank you for your question.

We will do our best to ensure that all the books are available as an e-book. And nowadays most of them are. As a matter of fact, so far, we have received 5 book suggestions, including yours, which you can see on the group's bookshelf Suggestions November 2013 and all of them are available on the kindle store.

[Kellie]

Loving this….!

[Leonor, Magnificent Book Bird]

Kellie wrote: "Loving this….!"

Awesome Kellie. And have you made your book suggestion yet? Just tweet it as a reply to @thebookclub on twitter and use the hashtag #TwitterBookClub.

[[deleted user]]

This is great, can we recommend graphic novels to ?

[Leonor, Magnificent Book Bird]

José wrote: "This is great, can we recommend graphic novels to ?"

Yes, we are open to all types of books. So suggest away!