Showcasing Black Authors. Start your show today

Step1
Have a plan. How many people? Intellectual or light discussions? Best-sellers or classics?

Step2
Organize the details. Will you meet in your home, take turns in members' homes, or locate a welcoming bookstore, hall or school room?

Step3
Create a reading list before you find members if you want to control the types of books you'll read. But keep in mind that working folks have little leisure time, so they may want to have a say about how they spend it.

Step4
Advertise your book club via various methods, such as e-mail to friends or flyers in bookstores and on library bulletin boards. Get into literary chat rooms, visit online book clubs or put an ad in the local classified section, if necessary.

Step5
Network where you work, go to school, exercise or shop.

Step6
Create an outline listing the first book, the meeting place, what you expect from each other and a mission. For example, "This is an irreverent group whose aim is to dish characters, gossip about authors and muckrake bad plots." Or, "We will dissect this book in its original Latin to pinpoint cultural, political and social contexts."

Step7
Get together once or twice before the first book is finished in order to meet each other and suss out personalities.

Step8
Serve refreshments at the book club gatherings. If the meetings are at members' homes, rotate the location.
Step9Read great books.