Club Read (club-read.com), a book club get-away sponsored by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance and the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association, will hold its inaugural event this fall at the Mariner’s Resort and Conference Landing in Huddleston, Va., the weekend of October 15-16.
“It’s something Wanda [Jewell, executive director of SIBA,] and I had been fantasizing about privately for a while,” says NAIBA executive director Eileen Dengler. “It’s like taking an author event a store would provide and amping it up more. What’s really important to us is that it’s something we can offer our stores, and they can offer their customers. Even if their customers don’t come, it gives them credence.”
NAIBA and SIBA are hoping to attract 165 to 180 consumers for the two-day event, which will enable readers to interact with 12 authors. The organizations worked with HarperCollins’s bookclubgirl.com to line up authors evenly divided among premier names, midlist writers, and debut authors from both regions. They include Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project), Andriani Trigiani (Don’t Sing at the Table), and new writer Matthew Norman (Domestic Violets).
To date 15 bookstores have signed on to sell $500 tickets for the event, which include a registration fee, overnight accommodations, and four meals. Core member stores that act as ticket outlets earn $100 back for each ticket they sell. The bookstore that sells the most tickets in each region will be able to send a bookseller to Club Read.
