A monthly book club runs on a cycle, and the cycle is the thing to build. Someone proposes books, the group chooses one, everyone reads at their own speed, a few threads keep the reading honest, and one evening the group meets to talk. Then the cycle starts again, and a year later nobody can remember what was read in March.
This guide maps that cycle onto three Wbcom plugins. Jetonomy holds the nominations and the discussion threads. Eventonomy holds the meeting dates. BuddyNext is the community around them: profiles, spaces and polls. Reign is built to work with BuddyNext and every Wbcom plugin, so the whole site shares one design. All three plugins have a free version from the Wbcom store; Pro is an optional paid licence for each, and each step below says when it needs Pro.
If your club revolves around one author and their readers, with live Q&As and reading challenges, read the author and reader communities guide instead. This guide is for a peer group where the members are the content.
The month as a calendar
Decide the shape of the month before you install anything, because every setting that follows depends on it. Here is a four-week cycle you can change to suit your group.
| Week | What happens | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Members nominate books for next month and vote | A Jetonomy Ideas space, then a BuddyNext poll |
| Week 2 | The pick is announced, the schedule is pinned | Jetonomy pinned topic, BuddyNext announcement |
| Weeks 2 and 3 | Reading, with one thread opening per section | Jetonomy scheduled topics |
| Week 4 | The meeting | An Eventonomy event |
| After the meeting | The book moves to the archive | Tags and a “past picks” list |
Four weeks is a convention, not a rule. A group that reads slowly can stretch week 3. What matters is that each stage has one home on the site, so a member never has to ask where the thing is.
Choosing the next book without a fight
Book choice is where clubs lose members. One person picks every month and the others drift away, or a vote ends in a tie that nobody wants to break. A two-step process keeps it fair: an open nomination round, then a short final vote.
Nominations in an Ideas space
Create a Jetonomy space and set its type to Ideas. The type was built for feature requests, but the mechanics suit nominations: every member can post an idea, every member can vote on it, and the default sort is by vote score. A nomination is a topic. Ask nominators to follow a short template.
Title and author:
Why this one, in two sentences:
Length and format (print, ebook, audio):
Content notes a reader should know about:
An Ideas space also has an Idea Status, set by a space moderator or admin with one click, and each change notifies the person who nominated the book. The four statuses are fixed as Planned, In Progress, Shipped and Declined. They can be bent to fit a book club, as the table shows, but the words will not change, so decide whether that bothers you.
| Status | Suggested meaning in a book club |
|---|---|
| Planned | On the shortlist or chosen for an upcoming month |
| In Progress | This is the current month’s read |
| Shipped | Read and discussed |
| Declined | Not this year, ideally with a reply that says why |
The Ideas space also has a roadmap view that groups nominations into lanes by status. Used this way, it becomes a reading plan for the year, which is more than most clubs have. If the vocabulary feels forced, use an ordinary Forum space instead and mark the state of each nomination with a topic prefix. Prefixes are coloured labels defined per space, up to 50 characters each, so you can write “Shortlist”, “Current read” and “Done” yourself. They are labels only, and clicking one does not filter the list, so the roadmap lanes are the better choice if you want a visual overview.
The final vote as a BuddyNext poll
Votes on a long list favour whoever nominated early. Take the top few by score and put them in front of the whole club as a BuddyNext poll. A poll has between two and five options, one vote per member, and an optional closing time. Members can change their vote until it closes, and results update live. Poll creation is on by default in BuddyNext free, under Platform, Features.
Set the poll to close a day or two before the pick must be announced. With a closing time, the result is settled by the clock and not by the loudest voice, and a tie becomes a problem for the moderator, not the group.
A few habits keep nominations healthy:
- Limit each member to one live nomination at a time.
- Nominate in week 1 only. Late nominations go to next month.
- Allow a nominator to speak for their book once, then let the vote decide.
- Archive declined books rather than deleting them, so a suggestion can return next season.
A reading schedule members can follow
Once a book is chosen, the group needs to know what to read by when. People read at different speeds, so the schedule is a guide and not a deadline for conversation. Two things carry it: a pinned post and a set of dated threads.
One pinned post per book
In the discussion space, post a topic called something like “Schedule: the current book” and pin it. Pinned topics stay at the top of the space list whichever sort tab is selected, and a space allows up to three pinned topics by default. Use one slot for the schedule, one for the house rules and keep the third free for an announcement.
Put a simple table in the schedule post, which is plain text and can be edited by its author as the month goes on.
| Reading checkpoint | Pages or chapters | Thread opens |
|---|---|---|
| Part one | Chapters 1 to 8 | Monday of week 2 |
| Part two | Chapters 9 to 16 | Thursday of week 2 |
| Part three | Chapters 17 to the end | Monday of week 3 |
| Whole book | Everything | The morning of the meeting |
Threads that open themselves
Jetonomy lets a member write a topic now and publish it later. In the composer, the arrow beside the Post button opens a menu with Save as Draft and Schedule. You pick a date and time, interpreted in the site’s timezone from Settings, General and not in the device’s, and the topic goes live then. Drafts and scheduled topics sit in the author’s Drafts tab, where they can be edited or published early.
For a book club this solves a real problem. A moderator can write all four threads on the first day of the cycle and let them open on their own. Members who are ahead can read the post but should wait for the thread; members who are behind are not exposed to the ending because nothing discusses it yet. Scheduled publishing runs through a background queue, so a post set for 9:00 usually appears within a minute or two after that, and on a site with almost no visitors it may wait for the next page view. Run a real server cron if your club depends on exact timing.
BuddyNext also has a free schedule control in its feed composer, which is handy for a quick reminder post such as “Part two opens tonight”.
Threads that do not spoil the ending
Spoilers are the specific hazard of a book club. Before you design the rules, it helps to know what the software can and cannot do.
| Technique | Who applies it | Available in | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| A separate thread per section | The moderator | Jetonomy free | Relies on members posting in the right one |
| Section name in the title | The member | Jetonomy free | A convention, not enforced |
| Coloured prefix such as “Part two” | Member picks, owner defines | Jetonomy free | A label only, it hides nothing |
| Scheduled thread opening | The moderator | Jetonomy free | Prevents early discussion, not early posting elsewhere |
| Spoilers content warning | A moderator, from a report | BuddyNext free | Blurs a feed post behind a Show anyway button, applied after a report |
| A spoiler tag a member sets themselves | Nobody | None found | Not in the Jetonomy, BuddyNext or MediaVerse docs |
The last row is the honest one. BuddyNext has a Spoilers content warning, but it is a moderator action applied from a report row, and the author cannot set it on their own post. The Jetonomy composer toolbar has no spoiler control either. The club therefore has to lean on structure and a clear rule.
A rule that works is short enough to pin: “Discuss only up to the section named in the thread title. If you must go further, start a new topic with ‘Ending’ in the title and do not link to it from other threads.” Write the rule once, repeat it in the meeting event description, and have moderators move strays to the right thread. Jetonomy moderators can move a topic to another space, merge duplicates, and split a reply into its own topic, so a stray comment that deserves its own thread does not have to be deleted.
Two small touches help the quiet readers:
- Tag every thread with the book title. A tag page lists topics from every space that carry it, sorted by latest or popular.
- Let members follow the space. Following sends a notification for each new topic, which is how a late reader learns that part two has opened.
The meeting itself
The monthly meeting is an Eventonomy event. Create a separate event for each month and not one recurring series, and the reason is worth knowing. A recurring event shares one RSVP across every date in the series, so a member who says Going is signing up for all of them, and editing the series changes every date. A club whose meeting details change with each book wants a new event each time. My Events, the member dashboard, has a Duplicate action, so the second month takes seconds.
Practical settings for a club of friends:
- Registration. Choose “People register here” for a meeting with a headcount, or “No registration needed” for an open drop-in.
- Capacity and waitlist. Set a capacity if you meet on a video call with a size limit, or in a room. Turn on “Waitlist when full”, and the oldest waitlisted person is promoted automatically when someone cancels.
- Online or in person. For an online meeting, mark the event Virtual and add the meeting address. Registrants get a personal join link, and the address itself is never shown on the page. For an in-person meeting, pick the venue from the shared catalogue so the address is entered once.
- Reminders. Confirmed attendees are reminded one day and one hour before, with nothing to configure. They depend on the site’s scheduled jobs, so test them before the first meeting.
- Calendar. Event pages offer Google, Outlook and Apple calendar links. If you switch on the calendar feed under Settings, Connections, members can subscribe to the whole club calendar.
Questions worth asking at sign-up
Eventonomy can ask custom questions on the RSVP form: you write a shared bank in Settings, Registration, then tick the ones each event should ask. Two questions suit a book club. A paragraph box labelled “What do you want to discuss?” gives the facilitator a stack of prompts before the evening. A choice question such as “How far did you get?” tells the facilitator whether the room has finished the book, and the answer decides how far the conversation can go.
A rotating facilitator
A club lasts longer when the work rotates. Ask the facilitator to post three or four discussion questions in the whole-book thread before the meeting, and to close the thread afterwards. A closed topic stays readable but accepts no new replies from regular members, so the conversation has an end. Moderators can still reply to a closed topic without reopening it.
The archive: a year of picks in one place
A book club that cannot find last spring’s discussion has to start from scratch every time. Two features make the archive nearly free.
First, tags. Tag each nomination and thread with the book title, and give the event the same tag, and every tag gets its own page. Searching the space also covers titles, content and tags. Second, a “past picks” topic. Pin it at the start of each season, and the moderator edits it to add each finished book with a link to its whole-book thread. The Ideas roadmap does the same job if you use the Shipped status for finished books.
BuddyNext adds the people side of the archive:
- Profile fields. Build a field group such as “Reading life” with fields like favourite genres or a currently-reading line. Fields you mark Include in search become searchable, so a member can find others who read the same genre.
- Visibility per field. Each member decides who sees each value, up to the ceiling you set for the group.
- The member directory. Members can browse, search and sort it, and follow people whose taste they like.
- Bookmarks. BuddyNext lets a member save a feed post privately. Jetonomy also has a Bookmarks tab on each profile for saving topics. Either works as a personal reading queue.
If members do not need to be told which pick was theirs, a simple pinned list is enough, but give the archive an owner. Left to chance, it stops being updated in the third month.
When some members pay
Many clubs stay free. If yours charges, there are two sensible routes. BuddyNext Pro adds membership plans, gated spaces and Stripe or PayPal checkout, so the monthly discussion space can sit behind a plan while the nomination round stays public. If you already run Paid Memberships Pro, Reign includes a styling layer for it, including a setting for how many membership levels sit on each row of the levels page. Keep the free half useful either way. People pay to join a conversation they can see is worth joining.
Whichever you choose, say clearly what the fee covers. A book club fee usually pays for the host’s time and the tools, and it should not look like a payment for access to books or any content you do not own.
Costs by job
| Job | Plugin | Free or Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Nominations, votes, discussion threads, scheduled topics, tags, pinned posts | Jetonomy | Free |
| Ideas status lanes and the roadmap view | Jetonomy | Free |
| Monthly meeting, RSVPs, waitlist, reminders, custom questions | Eventonomy | Free |
| Final vote poll, spaces, profile fields, member directory | BuddyNext | Free |
| Events shown in the BuddyNext feed, search and profile tabs | BuddyNext with Eventonomy | BuddyNext Pro |
| Paid tickets for a meeting | Eventonomy | Pro |
| Membership plans and gated spaces | BuddyNext | Pro |
Direct messages in BuddyNext run through WPMediaVerse, installed with Messages on. The plugins overview lists each product, and the free versus Pro page shows what you get before you pay. To see how a ready-made community build fits together, read the BuddyNext community build guide.
Moderation for a friendly group
Even a club of friends needs three small policies.
- Reviews and opinions. Disagreement about a book is the point. Remove abuse and spam, and leave dissent alone. Jetonomy has a moderation queue and reporting in the free plugin.
- Content notes. Some books deal with difficult material. The nomination template above asks for content notes so members are not surprised, but it is the nominator’s judgement and not a software feature.
- Quoting. Short quotes to make a point are normal in a book discussion. Posting long passages or whole chapters is a copyright question that depends on where you live, so ask members not to do it and check the rules that apply to you.
For a short code of conduct to adapt, see the community guidelines template.
Your first cycle, step by step
- Create the Ideas space for nominations, and write the nomination template as a pinned topic.
- Create the discussion space and pin the schedule and the spoiler rule.
- Add a “Reading life” profile field group in BuddyNext, with the genre field searchable.
- Seed three nominations yourself so the first round does not start empty.
- Run the poll and announce the result.
- Schedule the section threads on the first day.
- Create the meeting event, duplicate it for next month, and note the date in the schedule post.
For a wider checklist of what a community needs before it opens, see how to build an online community, and browse the Reign demos to see the theme with these plugins.
Frequently asked questions
Can members vote on next month’s book?
Yes. Use a Jetonomy Ideas space for nominations, where members vote on each idea, and a BuddyNext poll for the final choice among up to five books. Close the poll with a closing time so the result is settled by the clock.
Is there a spoiler tag members can use?
Not one that members set themselves. BuddyNext has a Spoilers content warning, but a moderator applies it from a report. Use one thread per section, put the section in the thread title, and schedule each thread to open when readers reach it.
Should the monthly meeting be a recurring event?
Usually not. A recurring event shares one RSVP across the whole series and editing it changes every date. Create one Eventonomy event per meeting and duplicate it each month.
Do I need Eventonomy if I just meet in a group chat?
No. Jetonomy and BuddyNext cover the nominations and discussions. Eventonomy adds a calendar, RSVPs with a waitlist, reminders and a personal join link for online meetings.
Can the club charge a membership fee?
Yes. BuddyNext Pro adds membership plans, gated spaces and checkout. Paid Memberships Pro also works with Reign. State what the fee covers, and keep the nomination round free so new readers can see what the club is like.
Do the three plugins look like one site?
They do. Reign is built to work with BuddyNext and every Wbcom plugin, so members move between the feed, the threads and the events without a change in design.