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Mocha Girls Read

We are a group of Black women who love to read, want to read more and meet like-minded women.

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Digitizing Your Local Book Club

If you’re part of a book club, good on you! It can be seen to be a dying art in the modern-day and age, and yet it’s such a thrilling and healthy activity to still be getting on with. You collect together with like-minded people, in a setting you all find comfortable, and have a long and winded discussion about a book you’ve all been reading that week or month. It’s a great way to bring people together, as well as make sure they enjoy their time and really find their pace with such a varied and interesting hobby! 

But seeing as we do still live in the modern-day and age, and buying book after book for all of your members can get a bit pricey after a while, it might be time to move onto a digital platform. And with the pointers below, we’re going to show you the benefits of doing so, and exactly how. 

Pexels Image – CC0 Licence

Start Using E-Readers

Books are wonderful things. It feels good to turn a page, and they often have a lovely smell about them, and it’s always nice to be able to rest your eyes once you look away from a screen. But as we mentioned above, it can get a bit pricey to invest in book after book, and who can be sure that the members of your group will commit to reading it, or keep on coming after a single session anyway! 

Instead, it might be more worth your time and money to use e-reading software instead. You can even use the club funding to invest in e-readers for the group, to make sure you have assets to back you up and to keep everyone on the same page, literally. One big base investment, with free or yearly bulk subscription services, and you could save all kinds of pennies the whole year-round. 

And if you’re worried any of your new tablets or e-readers are going to go walkabout, you can always turn to mobile device management with unparalleled device reporting to keep an eye on them for you. If you have the main tablet, where the software is installed, you can reach out to all the other readers who are connected to it, to make sure they’re in the right place. 

Hold Sessions Remotely

It’s an invaluable use of modern technology, and it’s one of the main reasons your book club will be able to keep on going, whatever the weather. If you can hold sessions remotely, instead of coming together physically once a week or twice a month, there’s a good chance your attendance will be higher than ever! There’s nothing like being able to pull more and more people into a book club simply because of your increased emphasis on accessibility! 

Of course, you can still get together, whenever and however you like! But if there’s ever a member who can’t make it, or the bus or taxi fare is a bit too much for their budget that week, they can Skype or IM in instead. And that’s what the modern world of technology is all about: convenience. 

Spark Debate with Internet Research and Comment

And of course, if you want to properly digitize your local book club, you’re going to want to start turning to the internet. There are all kinds of people online, with all kinds of opinions they like the world to know, and you could apply this to your book club meetings. 

You could take a stranger’s critical point of view and use it to spark a bit more intellectual discussion around the book you’re currently reading. Ask whether people agree or disagree with this point of view, and then get them to explain their stance on the matter. All in all, if you’re having trouble coming up with enough talking points for an hour-long meeting, this is one of the best ways to solve the issue! 

So, Are You Ready to Go Digital?

Not everyone is, of course, and it’s one of the big reasons book clubs still exist in the first place. And yet, the traditional activity of reading and the modern world of technology can go hand in hand quite beautifully here! 

You can use all kinds of new applications and different pieces of hardware to bring more people into your group and make it a much more inclusive meeting area. And for what’s meant to be a sociable activity, that’s an invaluable change to make. 

Tools to Look Into

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Mocha Girl Alysia

Founder / President at Mocha Girls Read
Founder of Mocha Girls Read book club. But basically, just another girl who loves to read and then read some more and wants to meet others like me. If you add a cup of green tea with lemon and honey I will be overjoyed.
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