While the bricks and mortar stores have readings, visitors to Readerville.com can take part in has week long events with authors of renown who field questions and discuss what they write about and why. Some recent events included Jim Crace and Philip Pullman. On the calender for March and April are Jane Smiley and the novelist/journalist/Pulitzer finalist David Gates.

Within the discussion area of the Readerville site is The Forum, featuring over 200 topics to pick from. And it is akin to finding an oasis in a desert for passionate readers and writers alike, with active message boards sometimes containing thousands of posts.

And who’s posting? Readers, writers, publishers, librarians, and booksellers, who discuss anything and everything about books, authors, and reader/consumer behavior.

"People come to Readerville for the intelligent and hilarious and only rarely combative – even though we disagree with each other constantly – discussions. It's the forum that makes Readerville what it is," says Karen Templer, the site's owner and former SalonTable Talk manager.

Publishers have even been known to use the site to track consumers' behavior and follow discussions such as: "What do you buy and why?" "How big is your to-be-read stack?" "What book can you not be shamed into reading?" or "What book jacket made you put the book down?"

There are also more esoteric discussions going such as: "What's the role of conflict in fiction?" "Do lit crit terms add any value to the reading experience?" "What about the increasing blur between fiction and non-fiction?" and "What's the future of publishing going to look like?"

Templer does takes limited advertising dollars, put will not take co-op dollars from publishers to promote any titles. If a book is promoted on Readerville it is because Templer feels the members of her community want to know about it.

"The books we talk about — we talk about because we love them or hate them," Templer said. "Not because a publicist sent me a free copy of the book."

 

M.J Rose is Signum’s alt.books columnist. She is the author of a new novel and non fiction book about epublishing.

All Illustrations from www.corbis.com
Photomodified by Oates

 

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