How to pick the next book club book

Four ways clubs choose, and where each one breaks

Shortlist-then-vote wins because it splits the two jobs that get tangled together. Curating takes taste and effort, and one person can do it. Deciding takes everyone, and takes ten seconds each. Clubs that merge those jobs end up with one person doing both forever.

Building the shortlist

• Rotate the curator, not the choice. Each month one member builds the shortlist. They get to steer — every title is one they'd happily read — but the club still decides. The curator gets influence without the blame.
• Or take one nomination each. Everyone puts forward a title, you shortlist the first four or five, and the rest roll over to next month. This works well in clubs of four to six.
• Say what a nomination has to include: title, author, page count, and one sentence on why. The page count is the important one — half of all book club regret is length regret.
• Check it's actually gettable. Is it in the local library system, is there a paperback, is there an audiobook, is it under whatever everyone's happy to spend. A brilliant pick that four people can't source is a wasted month.
• Don't repeat the last month's shape. If you've just done a 600-page historical, the shortlist wants something short, or funny, or nonfiction. Variety keeps the quiet members in.

How many books to shortlist

Four to six. That's the range that works, and here's why the numbers either side don't:

• Two or three feels like being handed a decision rather than making one, and one member always feels their taste is unrepresented.
• Four to six is enough that everybody finds one they want, few enough that people read all the blurbs before voting.
• Eight or more splits the vote. You get a winner on three votes out of twelve, which means nine people are reading a book they didn't choose — the exact problem you were solving.

If your list keeps growing past six, don't fight it: vote on a longer list but let people pick more than one. Everyone ticks every title they'd be happy with, and the winner is the book the most people can live with rather than the one a passionate third adore. For a book club that's usually the better outcome — the whole point is that everyone turns up having read it.

Run the vote — free, no signup

Running the vote

1. Write the options as one per line — "Title, Author, 320pp" is enough. Don't add your own commentary to some and not others; that's campaigning.
2. Decide single or multiple choice before you send it. Single pick for a tight shortlist of four; allow multiple for anything longer, or whenever attendance matters more than enthusiasm.
3. Turn off "voters can add options" for a book club shortlist. The whole value is that someone curated it — otherwise you're back to the open thread, with a new title arriving after half the club has voted.
4. Give it a deadline in the message, not just in your head. "Votes by Sunday night, I'll post the winner Monday." Three days is plenty; a week and people forget twice.
5. Post the winner with the date and the page count. One message, in the same place as the vote, so nobody has to scroll for it later.

A free group vote does this in about a minute: type the shortlist, share one link, and the bars fill in as people pick. No signup for you, no account for them, and the running tally means the decision makes itself. Close the poll when the deadline hits and the result freezes.

Tie-breaks, decided in advance

Pick one of these now and write it in the group chat, because the month it happens is the worst month to decide:

• Runner-up rolls over. The tied book you didn't pick becomes next month's automatic entry. Cleanest rule there is, and it makes the tie feel like a queue rather than a loss.
• Shortest wins. Blunt, and quietly good for attendance.
• The curator breaks it. They read all the blurbs most recently, and it's a small piece of reward for the work.
• Fewest picks wins. Whoever nominated the tied title that's had fewest books chosen over the year takes it. Fair over time, needs someone to keep track.
• Coin toss, publicly. Genuinely fine. Nobody resents a coin.

Meeting rhythm

Conventions vary, but the common shapes are worth knowing:

• One book a month is the default and suits most novels. Same weekday each month — first Wednesday, last Sunday — beats picking a date each time, which is its own forty-message thread.
• Six weeks for anything long, dense or translated. Better to give it six weeks than to have five people arrive at page 140.
• Vote two months ahead. The single highest-value habit a club can adopt. It gives people time to reserve it at the library, wait for a cheap copy, or start early because they know they're travelling.
• Skip a month deliberately. December, or whenever your group's version of December is. A planned gap is much better than the accidental one where the club just quietly stops.
• Announce the read and the date in the same message. Every time.

The person who never finishes

Every club has one, and in a good club it's a different person each time. This is not a discipline problem — it's a design problem, and the clubs that survive are the ones that build for it.

• Say out loud that unfinished is welcome. Once, in the first meeting, and again whenever a new member joins. Otherwise people don't skip the book, they skip the night — and a member who misses two nights usually never comes back.
• Ask better questions than "did you like it". "How far did you get, and where did you stop caring?" gets a genuinely interesting answer from someone who bailed on page 60, and abandonment is real information about a book.
• Handle spoilers with a simple convention: first twenty minutes stays spoiler-light, then someone says "right, all in", and the people who'd rather not hear the ending know exactly when to tune out.
• Cap the pages. A club-wide limit — 350 or 400 pages unless everyone agrees otherwise — does more for attendance than any amount of encouragement.
• Audiobooks count. This shouldn't need saying and somehow always does.
• Never quiz anyone. No plot checks, no going round the circle for a verdict. The moment the meeting feels like homework being marked, the non-finishers stop coming and the club shrinks to four.

House rules worth agreeing once

Settle these early and you'll never relitigate them: a page limit; whether nonfiction and memoir are in scope; whether re-reads are allowed; whether the person who nominates also hosts; how heavy is too heavy on subject matter, and whether the shortlist should flag that; and how much anyone's expected to spend. None of these have a correct answer — they just need an answer, written down where new members can find it.

Other things worth voting on

Once the club is used to a link and a tally, the same trick clears the rest of the admin: which date suits most people, whose place next time, whether to do a themed month, whether to move to six-weekly, and which genre the next shortlist should come from. Any of these beats a thread where three people answer and everyone else scrolls past.

Common questions

How many books should be on a book club shortlist?

Four to six. Fewer feels like being handed a decision; more splits the vote so a book can win on a quarter of the votes. If the list must be longer, let people vote for every title they would be happy with rather than just one.

What if the book club vote is a tie?

Agree the rule before it happens. The best one is that the runner-up rolls over as next month's automatic entry, so the tie becomes a queue instead of a loss. Shortest book wins, curator decides, or a public coin toss are fine alternatives.

How long should you give people to read a book club book?

A month for a typical novel and six weeks for anything long or dense. More useful than the window is the notice: decide two months ahead so people can reserve a library copy or start early if they will be away.

What do you do about book club members who never finish the book?

Make it explicitly welcome, out loud, or they will skip the meeting instead of the book. Ask how far they got and where they lost interest, cap the page count, count audiobooks, and never quiz anybody.

Should the book club host pick the book?

It is the most common arrangement and the most fragile, because it ties choosing to hosting and excludes anyone who cannot host. A better version keeps the rotation but makes it a shortlist: the host proposes four, the club picks one.

How do you choose a book club book fairly?

Split curating from deciding. One member builds a shortlist of four to six titles they'd all be happy to read, then the whole club votes and the highest count wins. Rotate the curator each month so the influence moves around, and nobody has to feel like they're imposing a book on everyone else.

How many books should be on the shortlist?

Four to six. Fewer feels like being handed a decision; more splits the vote so a book wins on a quarter of the votes. If the list has to be longer, let people vote for every title they'd be happy with rather than just one.

What if there's a tie?

Agree the rule before it happens. The best one is that the runner-up rolls over as next month's automatic entry — the tie becomes a queue instead of a loss. Shortest-book-wins, curator decides, and a public coin toss are all fine alternatives.

How long should you give people to read a book?

A month for a typical novel, six weeks for anything long or dense. More useful than the length of the window is the notice: decide two months ahead so people can reserve a library copy or start early if they're going to be away.

What do you do about members who don't finish the book?

Make it explicitly fine, out loud, or they'll skip the meeting instead of the book. Ask how far they got and where they lost interest — that's a real discussion, not a confession. Cap the page count, count audiobooks, and never quiz anybody.

Should the host pick the book?

It's the most common arrangement and the most fragile one, because it ties choosing to hosting and quietly excludes anyone who can't host. A better version keeps the rotation but makes it a shortlist rather than a decree: the host proposes four, the club picks one.

Put it to the group

You don't need an app, a subscription or a membership for any of this — one shortlist and one link will do. Group Vote is free, takes about a minute, needs no signup for you and no account for anyone voting: paste the shortlist, share the link, watch the bars, close it when the deadline hits. Then go and read the book that most of you actually chose.