It’s time to announce the first book to be featured in our virtual book club for freelance writers, authors, and aspiring authors. I’ll also cover how things will work moving forward, and you can sign up by leaving a comment to that effect (if you sign up, it would be a good idea to subscribe to the comments, so you get email notification when I comment here reminding you of the book’s discussion day).

June’s Featured Book

Peter Bowerman’s award-winning The Well-Fed Writer

* There are multiple versions of this book. We will be focusing on the more recent version (which is not only updated, but also a combination of the information from his first two WFW books). If you don’t have a copy yet, I recommend buying it directly from Peter’s site. You can also purchase it in e-book form if you prefer (order the e-book at the bottom of the page linked above).

Sign Up Information

If you’d like to let us know that you’re on board with the book club for June, leave a comment to let us know you’re committed to participating. Don’t forget to subscribe to the comments if you want a comment email reminder shortly before the discussion starts.

Additional Information

I’ve decided to stick with the blog format for simplicity’s sake. There is a book club category in our category list where you can access the posts. I might also put this link at the top of the site.

On the first day of the discussion period, I’ll kick it off by posting a list of 5-10 questions. Some of these questions will carry over from one month to the next, and others will be more specific to each title. You can suggest questions by emailing them to me at jenn@allfreelancewriting.com. I might not be able to use everything that comes in, but I’ll try to choose the best from any submissions (and you’ll be credited with the question when I post them).

We’ll then have an open discussion about the book in the comments on that post. You can answer all of the questions, or just a few if you prefer. You can respond to others’ feedback too (please just use the reply option on their comment so the conversations stay threaded, and I think it’ll work fine).

I think one week should be adequate for discussions from book club participants who actually read the book prior to the start date. If discussions still seem pretty active at that time, I’ll leave it open for an additional week. If not, further comments will be closed for that month’s book choice. The reason is this — I want this to be a focused monthly book discussion. I do not want people to say “well, I’ll just read it a few months later and leave my comments then.” That defeats some of the purpose of doing this as a group. So on these book club posts, comment times will be limited (although they’ll remain archived).

June Book Club Discussion Date

The Well-Fed Writer book club discussion will begin on Monday, June 21st. It’s scheduled to end Sunday, June 27th. As noted previously, if discussions are still active at that time, it may be extended for an additional week.

So get to it! If you have the book, start reading it. If you’ve already read it, refresh your memory. If you don’t have a copy yet, go out and get one.

I’ll announce July’s picks for voting at the start of our June discussion. The two books not chosen this month will be on the list, accompanied by one more targeted to the author / aspiring author segment of our book club target group.