A book club is a group of readers. An author and reader community is a different shape: one writer, or a small stable of them, sits at the centre, and the readers orbit. That changes what the site has to do. The author has very little time, so questions must be triaged. Readers want contact, and a launch or live conversation matters more than a monthly meeting. Reviews carry real weight because they are social proof for the books. And the whole thing falls apart if the author is seen to rig the reviews.
This guide sets that up using Jetonomy for written Q&As and reviews, Eventonomy for live author events, and WB Gamification for reading challenges, all presented by the Reign theme. Jetonomy and Eventonomy are each free with an optional paid Pro licence. WB Gamification is free to download from the Wbcom store. If you are running a reading group among peers, our book club communities guide covers that, and this guide deliberately does not repeat it. Here the focus is on the author, the launch rhythm, and reader contributions.
Give the author two ways to answer: live and written
Authors will not answer forty emails a week, and readers will not wait six months for a book signing. Run two formats and let each do what it is good at.
Live: an Eventonomy event for the conversation
A live author Q&A is an Eventonomy event marked as virtual. The practical details matter more than the event page itself.
Collect questions before the day. Eventonomy’s custom RSVP questions let you ask something at sign-up. Turn on Custom questions under Eventonomy > Settings > Registration, add a Paragraph question such as “What would you like to ask?”, and tick it on this event. You get a stack of questions waiting in the attendee data before you start, which beats a chat window in full flow. Each question can be marked Required, and the bank holds up to 20.
Keep the join link inside the registration. For online events, the reminder email includes a personal Join the event online link. It opens the meeting only while that person’s registration is active, and reminders only go to confirmed registrants. Eventonomy sends reminders one day and one hour before, so there is nothing to set up for that.
Cap it and use the waitlist. Set a capacity if your video room has a limit. Turn on Waitlist when full under Settings > Registration, and when someone cancels, the oldest person on the waitlist is promoted automatically and notified. People answer Going, Maybe or No, and only Going counts toward capacity. Attendees can register as guests with a name and email, and a magic link lets them change or cancel without an account.
Follow up from the same screen. The free Email attendees panel messages everyone who is Going, or Going plus the waitlist. Use it afterwards for a thank you and a link to the recording, or beforehand for a change of room. It goes out in background batches and skips people who opted out.
A launch week, not just a night. If the book launches with several sessions, use the event agenda. Each session has a title, start and end times and a plain-text Speaker field, and they show as a timeline on the event page, grouped by day for multi-day events.
If you want to charge for a premium workshop or a signed-copy bundle, free Eventonomy supports free tickets and donation pledges where nobody is charged. Paid tickets, gateways, coupons and refunds are Pro.
Written: a Jetonomy Q&A space the author can triage
Create a Q&A space, for example “Ask the author”. Every post is a question and every reply is an answer, and the person who asked or a space moderator can click Accept on the reply that settles it. Three features make this workable for a busy writer:
- Votes decide what the author sees first. Readers vote questions and answers up or down, one vote per person per item, and nobody can vote on their own. The default Popular sort ranks by net votes, so a question many readers want answered rises. In a Q&A space voting is always on and cannot be disabled.
- The Unanswered filter is the worklist. It shows only questions with no accepted answer. That is the author’s inbox, or the assistant’s.
- Staff replies are labelled. Admins and space moderators get a role pill, Admin or Mod, next to their name on every post and reply, visible even to signed-out visitors. Readers can see at a glance which answers come from the author’s team. Give the author or an assistant the right role, and make the rule explicit: only team members answer on the author’s behalf.
Add two housekeeping habits. First, post a scheduled topic for each live event. Jetonomy lets you write a topic now and publish at a set date and time, using the arrow beside the Post button, so a “Questions for Thursday’s event” thread opens when you want it. Second, close topics when the window ends. A closed topic keeps all content visible but stops new replies for regular members, while moderators can still reply. That turns “ask me anything this week” into a finite, honest promise.
Keep a space per title if the author has a long back catalogue, and use tags for characters or recurring themes. Tags have their own pages across all spaces, so a reader looking for a character finds every question about them. For a general walk-through of building a Q&A site from scratch, see our guide to building a Q&A site with accepted answers. We will not repeat it here.
An advance reader group
If the author runs an advance copy team, make that a separate Jetonomy space with visibility set to Private and join policy set to Requires Approval, so the author or assistant approves each request. A Private space is listed for signed-in people with a Private badge, but its posts are gated and do not leak into search, link previews, tag pages or trending lists. You can use a link-only Eventonomy event for a private reader call, but remember that anyone with the link can pass it on.
Reading challenges with WB Gamification, and what they can and cannot count
This is the part to read carefully before you promise readers anything. WB Gamification scores things that happen on your site. It does not know whether someone read a book.
What it counts on its own
It auto-detects actions from active plugins. Eventonomy adds actions for reserving a place at an event (10 points by default, with a daily cap of 10), submitting an event (25 points, capped at 3 a day) and completing a ticket order (20 points). Eventonomy Pro adds attending an event, which is a check-in at 30 points by default, and following an organiser at 2 points. Jetonomy adds actions such as joining a space, having a join request approved and moving up a trust level, plus Jetonomy Pro actions such as creating or voting in a poll. On top of that, Jetonomy reputation changes are mirrored one to one into the points ledger. Point values for every action are editable, and you can set cooldowns and daily caps. Points go to member accounts, so a reader who RSVPs as a guest without an account has nobody to award points to. If challenges matter to your launch, ask readers to register.
Challenges
A challenge asks a member to perform an action a set number of times in a period, awards bonus points when they hit the target and shows a progress bar. You pick the action from the list of triggers active on your site. Start and end dates are optional, so a seasonal challenge closes by itself. A member cannot earn the bonus twice for the same challenge. Display them with the Challenges block or the [wb_gam_challenges] shortcode.
For an author community, challenges fit event-shaped goals well. Examples that map to real triggers: reserve a place at three author events this season, or attend two (Pro check-in).
A community challenge works differently: all members contribute to one shared counter, and when the community reaches the target before the deadline, everyone who contributed gets the bonus. A shared goal such as a total number of RSVPs for the launch is a natural fit, because it gives readers a reason to invite each other. If the deadline passes first, the challenge expires with no bonus.
Streaks measure activity, not reading
A streak counts consecutive days on which a member earned at least one point from any action. It is not tied to logging in, and it cannot see pages read. So a “read every day” streak is not something the plugin can run. Use streaks to reward showing up on the site, and be clear with readers that this is what they measure. A one-day grace period is on by default and adjustable from 0 to 3 days.
Claiming a finished book
There is no built-in “finished a book” action. You have three honest options:
| Option | How it works | What it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Submissions | The member submits a title, a short write-up, an optional proof photo and an optional link. An admin approves it, and points fire through the normal pipeline, so badges and levels update | A developer must define the action as submittable in a small manifest file |
| Manual awards | An admin awards points, or a manual badge, from the Award Points screen with a note | Nothing, but it relies on a person |
| Challenge on a proxy action | Count something the plugin can see, such as a review posted, if the action is in the trigger list | Check that the action you want appears in the list |
Submissions are capped at five per member per day by default and the cap is configurable. Only a curated subset of actions is submittable by default, mostly volunteer-hours style. For most author communities, manual awards or a small amount of developer work for submissions will be the realistic route. Do not promise automatic book tracking.
Badges, seasonal limits and recognition
Badges can be awarded on a point milestone, on an action count, or by an admin only. Optional limits suit a reading season: a close date after which the badge stops awarding, and a maximum number of earners for “first one hundred readers” style badges. Badges are not awarded retroactively when you create them. Members can share a badge, which gets a public page with an OpenBadges 3.0 credential and a LinkedIn link.
Peer kudos help the review culture. A member can thank another with an optional message of up to 255 characters, and both people earn points, 5 for the receiver and 2 for the giver by default. The points are limited per day, and a second kudos to the same member within an hour earns nothing, which stops two friends trading them.
Rewards come from the redemption store. A reward can generate a WooCommerce coupon for a percentage or fixed discount, which suits an author who sells books or merchandise through the same site, or a custom reward that you fulfil yourself.
Check how it interacts with Jetonomy
When Jetonomy is active, WB Gamification defers its own leaderboard display to Jetonomy’s reputation ranking, so you do not show two identical boards. The leaderboard and top members blocks and shortcodes render nothing for the leaderboard, and a developer filter can override that. Badges are not deferred, so both sets of badges show. If you want one clear ranking for the community, that is a good default, but know it before you design a page around the WB Gamification leaderboard.
The store page and the plugin documentation should be your reference for what the plugin includes in each edition. The Reign plugin overview describes WB Gamification as free to install, so confirm the edition details on the store page before you build a plan that depends on one specific feature.
Reviews that readers and the author can trust
Reviews are where an author community most often goes wrong, because the author has an obvious interest.
Structure
Create a Forum space called Reviews with one topic per book. Each reader posts a top-level reply as their review, and replies thread three levels deep so an author or another reader can respond. Sort by Oldest first while reviews arrive and Best when you want the most useful ones on top.
Consider turning voting off here. In a Forum space, voting can be disabled per space, and that removes vote controls and scores from the listing. Votes work well on questions, but on reviews they can turn into a popularity contest or retaliation against a critical reader. Keep voting on in the Q&A space, where it does a job.
If you want a visible rating, Jetonomy Pro Custom Fields can add structured fields to posts. A required Select field with options one to five gives each review topic a score. Free Jetonomy has no rating field.
Governance
Write these down before the first review arrives:
- Disclosure. If readers received a free advance copy, ask them to say so in the review. Check the disclosure rules that apply where you sell, since they vary.
- Criticism stays. Remove abuse and spam, not disagreement. Jetonomy lets a moderator trash a post, and only marking content as spam applies the reputation penalty, with a default of 20 points.
- The author does not moderate their own reviews. Give the review space to a moderator who is not the author. The author can reply like any other member, and the role pill shows when they do.
- Every moderation decision has a reason. Members can report posts and moderators see them in a queue, so keep a note of why something came down.
Posts waiting for approval are another option for a new review space: Jetonomy’s Require Post Approval holds each post from a non-moderator until a moderator approves it, with a Pending label visible to moderators. It is useful in the first weeks and tiresome later.
A launch rhythm you can adapt
This is a template, not a record of any author’s launch.
| When | Action | Tool |
|---|---|---|
| Six weeks out | Open the advance reader space; approve requests | Jetonomy |
| Four weeks out | Create the launch event with a question field and a waitlist | Eventonomy |
| Two weeks out | Start a reading challenge with a close date and a seasonal badge | WB Gamification |
| Launch week | Scheduled “ask the author” topic opens; community challenge on RSVPs | Jetonomy, WB Gamification |
| Event night | Live Q&A; questions from the RSVP form | Eventonomy |
| After | Email attendees; close the topic; open the review thread | Eventonomy, Jetonomy |
| Ongoing | Manual badges for finished challenges; kudos for helpful reviews | WB Gamification |
Free and Pro at a glance
| Need | Tool | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Q&A space, voting, accepted answers, Unanswered filter, scheduled topics | Jetonomy | Free |
| Private spaces with approval | Jetonomy | Free |
| Rating field on reviews | Jetonomy Custom Fields | Pro |
| Virtual events, RSVP questions, waitlist, Email attendees, agenda | Eventonomy | Free |
| Paid tickets and gateways, check-in | Eventonomy | Pro |
| Points, badges, challenges, streaks, kudos, submissions | WB Gamification | See the store page |
The plugins overview lists each product and tier. For ideas on mixing streaks into a wider engagement plan, see streaks and challenges that bring members back, and for hosting online events beyond a single call, see our guide to virtual and hybrid events.
Frequently asked questions
Can readers send questions before a live author event?
Yes. Add a Paragraph question in Eventonomy’s custom RSVP questions and tick it on the event. The answers are stored with each registration, so you can read them before the session. The question bank holds up to 20 questions and any can be required.
How does the author avoid answering the same question repeatedly?
Use a Jetonomy Q&A space. Readers vote questions up, the Unanswered filter becomes the worklist, and accepted answers stay visible with an Accepted tag. Moderators can merge duplicate topics, so repeated questions collapse into one.
Can WB Gamification track whether someone finished a book?
No, not automatically. It scores actions on your site. Use manual awards, or have a developer define a submittable action so readers can claim a book and an admin approves it.
Do streaks measure daily reading?
No. A streak counts consecutive days on which a member earned a point from any action on the site. It measures activity on the site, not time spent reading.
Should the author moderate reviews of their own books?
It is better not to. Give review moderation to someone else, keep a written policy that criticism stays and abuse goes, and let the author reply as a normal member. The Admin or Mod pill shows who is speaking for the author.
Do I need all three plugins?
No. Jetonomy alone handles written Q&As and reviews. Eventonomy adds live events with registration. WB Gamification adds challenges and badges once there is enough activity for them to reward.