As we prepare to turn the page on 2023, the Bookclubs team is reflecting on the past year’s challenges and achievements with awe and gratitude. December is often a time to reminisce about the books we’ve read, music we’ve listened to, workouts we’ve completed, adventures we’ve taken, or projects we’ve undertaken. In this spirit of contemplation, we’d like to take a moment to celebrate the highlights and milestones that the Bookclubs community shared this year.
Our Community of Book Clubbers Has Grown!
Bookclubs serves personal, professional, and community-driven book clubs across 60+ countries. 30,000 new clubs started their book club journey with Bookclubs this year, and overall our community grew by almost 300,000 new members! We also now boast over 800 public book clubs making Bookclubs the the largest free marketplace for public book clubs. 🎉
Did you know? January sees the most new clubs created every year! We’ve also found that clubs that start in January stay together longer than other clubs – love to see people sticking to those New Year’s resolutions. If you’ve been thinking about starting a new club, now is the time. Or know someone else setting up a new book club? Make sure they know about Bookclubs!
We’re Working Smarter Not Harder
Bookclubs tools save you time so you spend less time on logistics and more time reading and discussing. Our organizational tools have saved admins countless hours by streamlining communication and planning. This year, we launched our new Premium, Pro, and Pro Plus plans, which support Bookclubs’ financial sustainability and have allowed us to develop great new tools for both free and paid users – with lots more to come in 2024!
Here are just a few of the new features we introduced in 2023:
- Shelf Service: Bookclubs’ book delivery subscription service
- Powered-up Polls: Make your book club decisions faster and fairer with enhanced polls.
- Text Message Notifications: Never miss important book club info again with text notifications.
- Club Meeting Calendar Sync: Sync your club meetings with your preferred calendar app.
- In-App Video Meetings: Host a book club meeting directly through our platform.
- Member Subscriptions: Support your work through optional membership subscriptions.
What We’re Reading
Clubs using Bookclubs read a lot, and widely! Clubs discussed over 19,000 different book titles this year. Lessons in Chemistry was this year’s most popular title, read and discussed by nearly 2,000 clubs. Bookclubs partners with over 50 publishing houses to bring our readers the most buzzworthy and trending titles as well as curated reading lists for all types of genres and readers. We also hosted 15 live author interviews through our Bookclubs Author Chats book club.
One of our most common requests has been for more book summaries to make it easier to pick your books (especially when using our poll feature, which automatically ports the book descriptions in)! This year we added descriptions for over 55,000 books, making it much more likely that the books your club is interested in will have a description.
We also added discussion guides for hundreds of new titles and shared our list of 124 book club discussion questions you can use with any book.
Here’s a sneak peek at some of the most popular book club books discussed this year. Stay tuned for the complete list this month!
What people are saying:
Bookclubs brings readers from all walks of life together exploring diverse genres, and delving into books that spark laughter, stir emotions, and challenge perspectives. Here’s what some of our users have to say about their Bookclubs experience:
We hope this look back offers your book club a healthy dose of inspiration for the year ahead as you set your reading goals for 2024! Thank you for making Bookclubs a haven for book lovers. Your passion, enthusiasm, and commitment have truly made this a remarkable year.
Wishing you all a restorative holiday season full of joy and celebration!
Anna and the Bookclubs Team 💗