How to Join the Twitter Jonathon Ross Book Club
Discuss Fiction and Non Fiction Using Popular Social Networking Site
May 25, 2009
Jonathon Ross has launched an informal book club on Twitter, the popular social networking site. The Twitter group, Atwossybookclub, will feature a different book and people from around the word can virtually meet to discuss the nominated book at 5pm (UK) each Sunday. Participants will be able to post 140 character comments about a book that will be nominated each week. One of the reasons that Jonathon Ross has given for setting up the book club is the demise of the popular Richard and Judy book club. The availability of a book club on Twitter is likely to open up this new generation form of book clubs to a whole new range of people.
While existing Twitterers will know how to join in, people new to Twitter may find it a little daunting. Here is a step by step guide to joining the Jonathon Ross Twitter book club.
Join Twitter
Joining Twitter is very straight forward. Simply go to the main page and click the 'Get Started – Join' button. This will take visitors to a sign-up page where basic information is required. This includes name, user name, password and email address. Once this information has been entered the account has been set up and new members can start posting their comments.
Find the Jonathon Ross Book Club Comments
Before posting comments, it is useful to find both Jonathon Ross's own comments and those of other followers. These can be found on twitter.com/atwossybook club. Participants can post their own comments, reply to other comments or just read what others have to say.
Add Comments
Comments and posts on Twitter are known as tweets. The maximum length of a tweet is 140 characters. This means that comments need to be kept very short and succinct. It is acceptable, and often necessary, to abbreviate words. Twitter language is generally not considered to be as informal as text-speak and words are spelled out wherever possible. More information about using Twitter, including a video guide explaining how to get started, is available on the help section of the Twitter website.
Twitter presents a wonderful opportunity for people to virtually get together and discuss books. This may open up book clubs to a whole new range of people and presents interesting and exciting possibilities.
One of the easiest ways to access books that are discussed in book clubs is digitally in audiobook or ebook formats. See Ebooks and Audiobooks for Online Bookclubs for more information.
Further Reading:
More information about starting or joining a book club can be found in these Suite101.com articles - How to Start a Book Club and Setting Book Club Questions.
