Reply to WSJ: The New Book Club: Meet Online, but Party in Person

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[quote=Anonymous]Has anyone joined an online turned IRL book club? From the article it sounds like it skews millennial women, but I'm always looking to meet new people. It seems like this might be a different crowd than would try a random library or bookstore book club or wait for a neighbor to organize.

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/book-clubs-social-media-community-c856ddfa?st=avd1973jhygj1tp&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Women are finding a way to get social media to do what it’s supposed to do. Or at least what I’ve always hoped it would do: help us make new friends.

Like so many of us, my brain has felt increasingly taken over by screens. I’m constantly online for work, covering social-media companies for a living. The time I used to spend reading or meeting new people was too often spent scrolling feeds and streaming TV shows.

I was finally able to break the cycle by joining a book club online. Instead of shopping ads and fake news, many women are finding that online book clubs can be a way to connect to new people in communities they want to be part of in real life.

“We don’t go out as much anymore, I think, just in general as a society. Everything can be dropped off at our door,” says Katie Barney, a 38-year-old nurse practitioner who joined a Chicago-area offshoot for fans of the Instagram account Beach Reads & Bubbly. “This is so much different. We make an effort to meet up.”

While book communities have long been on the internet, they experienced a new surge in recent years, particularly around 2020 when many people were staying at home during pandemic lockdowns. #Bookstagram and its TikTok equivalent #BookTok have spread across the websites, with users posting over 29 million times mentioning #BookTok. Publishers say #BookTok can help launch bestsellers and give bloggers copies of books in exchange for reviews.

It isn’t just TikTok. Romance novelist Abby Jimenez created a Facebook group in 2019 that now has over 24,000 fans. “That has been instrumental in the success of my books,” she says. “These are the people that are the ride-or-dies.”

From online to IRL friends
Many people, especially women, who joined online book clubs are looking to turn those connections into real-life friendships.... (article continues)

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