The vote never closes
Four titles get floated in the thread, two people reply, and you end up picking on Sunday night so the library holds go out in time. Nobody feels asked.
About 3 hours a month chasing repliesFor monthly reading groups
Choose the next title, count the chairs and keep every discussion question in one place
BookClubRoster gives your group a single page for the monthly vote, the RSVP list, the host rotation and the guide for the book you are actually reading. The group chat goes back to being a group chat.
Ballots close on the date you set. Reminders go out three times a cycle, not thirty.
- 1,940 clubsmeeting every month across 44 states
- 112,000 RSVPslogged since the first meeting in 2021
- Set up in an eveningno app for members to install
What the host absorbs
The reading is the easy part
Running a group of fifteen readers is a small logistics job that nobody trained you for. Here is where the hours and the money actually go.
Headcount is a guess
You buy for twelve, seven show up, and the rest text at 6:40 that something came up. The food and the coffee are already bought.
$28 to $60 wasted per meetingThe same host every time
Two members carry the hosting, quietly resent it, and stop coming by spring. A rotation exists in theory and lives in nobody's calendar.
2 to 4 members lost a yearQuestions vanish upward
You wrote nine good questions on Tuesday. By Thursday they are 300 messages above a photo of somebody's dog, and you open the meeting cold.
45 minutes rewritten every cycleHow a month runs
Four steps, then the group takes it over
You set the shape of the cycle once. After that the reminders, the ballot and the guide arrive on their own schedule.
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Open the ballot
Add three to six candidate titles, or let members nominate. Each nomination carries the page count, the format and whether the library has copies, so people vote with their calendar in mind.
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Close the vote on a date you choose
The ballot closes automatically, ranked or single choice. Everyone gets the result, the meeting date and the reading pace in the same message, and the winning title becomes the month's page.
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Collect the RSVPs and name the host
Members answer yes, no or maybe in two taps, with no login. The rotation puts the next host up automatically and lets two people trade a turn without asking you to referee.
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Build the discussion guide together
Questions, passages and page references live on the title page where anyone can add to them. You walk in with a printed guide or open it on the couch.
Day 1
The ballot goes out
Members see the shortlist with page counts, formats and a note on library copies. Voting takes under a minute and works on a phone in the grocery line.
Day 6
The result and the pace
One message names the winning title, the meeting date and how far to read by then. The title page opens at the same moment for questions and passages.
Day 26
The final count
Two days before the meeting the host gets a confirmed headcount, the dietary notes and the printable guide. Nothing else is asked of anyone.
What is inside
Built around the way reading groups actually meet
Nothing here is borrowed from event software. Each piece exists because a host asked for it twice.
Ranked monthly ballot
Members rank the shortlist instead of piling on the first title somebody names. The result page shows every round, so a close vote never turns into a rumor about favoritism.
RSVP with a real headcount
One link, no account, yes or no or maybe, plus a note for the host about allergies or a late arrival. The count updates on your phone as you shop.
Host rotation on a calendar
The rotation runs a year ahead and shows each member their next turn. A trade takes one tap and both calendars update without a thread about it.
Shared discussion guide
Questions, quoted passages and page numbers sit under the title, editable by anyone in the club. Print a clean one page version the morning of the meeting.
Reminders that respect people
Three messages a cycle by default: ballot open, result and pace, meeting in two days. Members set their own channel, email or text, and can mute the rest.
Reading history and copies
Every title you have finished stays searchable with attendance, the guide and the rating members gave it. Copy availability notes tell you who still needs a library hold.
What changes by month three
The numbers hosts report back to us
+31%
Attendance
Median meeting attendance across clubs that ran six cycles. A closed ballot with a fixed date removes the two weeks of drift that quietly kills a Thursday night.
3.4 hrs
Given back each month
Measured against the hosts' own before and after logs: chasing votes, rebuilding questions and counting heads by text message.
$41
Saved per meeting
Food and coffee bought to a confirmed count instead of an optimistic one. Clubs of twelve to twenty report the largest difference.
9 of 10
Rotations still running
Nine in ten clubs that turned on host rotation still have it running a year later, because the trade button removes the awkward part.
Where the hours go back
Hosts told us the worst hour is the one spent deciding for everybody, then apologizing for it. A closed ballot ends that hour on a date the group agreed to.
Why attendance holds
People come to the book they chose. Ranked voting means the winner is the title most of the room can live with, which shows up on the couch four weeks later.
What the board sees
Coordinators export attendance by circle and by month, with the titles attached. It is the same file that answers a grant question and a director question.
Two kinds of room
A living room and a branch meeting room need different things
The mechanics are the same. What sits on top of them is not, so the product carries both without asking either one to pretend.
Neighborhood and workplace clubs
Fifteen people, a rotating living room and a standing Thursday. What matters is that the vote feels fair, the host knows the count by Tuesday and nobody has to scroll a thread to find the questions.
- Members answer from a link, no accounts
- Rotation that people can trade themselves
- Guides you can print on one page
- A shelf of everything the club has finished
Library and bookstore reading programs
Nine circles, three staff, one board that wants numbers in October. What matters is attendance you can defend, copies you can track and a program year you can export without rebuilding a spreadsheet.
- Coordinator view across every circle
- Attendance and outcome reporting by branch
- Copy and hold notes per title
- Program year exports for grant files
Season planning
Sketch a whole year of themes, then open each ballot when its month arrives. Coordinators use it to balance genres and to leave room for a local author visit.
Quiet members
The ballot and the guide show who has not weighed in yet, without shaming anyone in public. A short nudge from the host brings most of them back into the vote.
Handover
When a host steps back, the next one inherits the reading history, the rotation and the member list intact. Clubs survive the transition that usually ends them.
Hosts and coordinators
Read by people who run the room
We had eighteen members and four of them made every decision. Ranked ballots changed that in one cycle. Last month a debut novel nobody expected won, and fifteen people showed up to argue about it.
I coordinate nine reading circles for the branch system. Before this I kept attendance in a spreadsheet I did not trust. Now I pull a report for the board in about four minutes and it matches the door count.
The discussion guide is the part I did not know I needed. Members add a question during the week and by Thursday I have twelve, not the three I scraped together on the drive over.
1,940active clubs and reading circles
96%of clubs renew after their first full season
7 minmedian time to open a first ballot
Plans
One club, a shelf of them, or a whole branch system
Every plan includes the ballot, the RSVP page, the rotation and the discussion guide. The difference is how many groups you carry and what you have to report on.
One Club
$9 per month
For a single group of any size that meets once or twice a month.
- Unlimited members and meetings
- Ranked or single choice ballots
- RSVP page with host notes
- Host rotation calendar
- Discussion guide per title
- Email reminders
Recommended
Multi Club
$29 per month
For a host or a store running several groups on different nights.
- Up to ten clubs on one dashboard
- Everything in One Club
- Text reminders as well as email
- Shared title library across groups
- Co-host permissions
- Printable guides and sign in sheets
Library Program
$79 per month
For branch systems and reading programs that answer to a board.
- Unlimited clubs and coordinators
- Attendance and outcome reporting
- Copy and hold tracking per branch
- Program year exports for grant files
- Staff accounts with roles
- Onboarding session for your team
Plans change up or down at any time and the difference is prorated on the next invoice. Clubs that pause for the summer keep their reading history without paying for the quiet months.
Not sure which plan fits? Tell us how many circles you run and we will say so plainly, including when the smaller plan is the right one for you.
Every plan is billed monthly in US dollars and can be cancelled at any time from your account. No annual contract, no setup fee, and your reading history stays exportable for as long as you keep the club open.
Questions we get
Before you move your club over
One Club is $9 per month, Multi Club is $29 per month and Library Program is $79 per month. A club is one group that meets on its own schedule and votes on its own titles, no matter how many members it has. A group of six and a group of forty cost the same. If you run a morning circle and an evening circle on the same title, those are two clubs, and Multi Club covers up to ten of them.
Most hosts open their first ballot in about seven minutes. You name the club, set the meeting night, paste your member emails and add three or four candidate titles. Members do not create accounts, they answer from the link in their email. If you are bringing a reading history over from a spreadsheet, send it to us and we import it for you before your next meeting.
We store the name and contact address you enter for each member, their RSVP answers and anything they write in a discussion guide. We do not sell it, we do not use it to advertise anything, and we do not put third party trackers on the pages your members see. You can export a club and delete it permanently from the club settings, which removes member records within thirty days.
Meetings publish to Google Calendar, Outlook and Apple Calendar through a subscription link, so your branch calendar stays current without anyone retyping dates. Attendance and program year totals export as CSV for board packets and grant reporting. Library Program accounts can also push a monthly summary to a shared drive folder. We do not integrate with catalog systems directly, and we say so plainly rather than promising it.
Cancel in the account screen at any time and the plan stops at the end of the month you already paid for. There is no cancellation fee and no phone call to make. Before you go, export every club as a CSV and a printable archive of the guides, votes and attendance. Clubs that pause over the summer often downgrade instead, which keeps the history in place.
Members never install anything and never make a password. They get an email or a text with a link, they tap a title to vote and tap yes or no to RSVP, and that is the whole experience. Hosts who tried it with an older group told us the drop off was in the group chat, not in the club. If two or three members prefer to answer by phone, you can mark their vote and their RSVP yourself in a few seconds.
The Reading Room Ledger
What hosts and coordinators asked us this season
Our magazine answers the questions that arrive by email from people running reading groups: how to get twelve copies, where to meet, what a year actually costs. Three of the newest reports are below.
practical guide
How do I get twelve copies of one title into my members hands without anyone buying a book?
US public libraries lend book club kits, honor interlibrary loan requests and buy on patron demand. Here is how to line those three channels up against a monthly reading calendar.
comparison
Should our group meet in a library room, a bookstore back room or somebody living room?
Three venue types, three sets of rules. Compare meeting room policies, food restrictions, capacity, cost and how each one changes who actually shows up each month.
regulation and compliance
What are the rules on showing a movie adaptation at our library book club meeting?
Screening the film after the novel is a public performance under US copyright law. Here is how public performance licenses, library blanket licenses and the face to face teaching exemption actually apply.
Talk to us
Tell us how your club meets and we will show you the month
Send the shape of your group, the night you meet and the part that is currently eating your Sunday. We reply within one business day with a walkthrough built on your own reading list, not a demo club named after a stock photo.
One reply from a person who has run a reading group, within one business day. If forms are not your thing, write to jimenezjulien42@gmail.com instead.