Reading Between the Wines Book Club is a pet project that I’m very proud of! What started off as a joke has now become a structured club that meets once per month somewhere on the west end of the Twin Cities. I’ll answer your burning question right now…yes, we read the books. Well, most of us do. As the self-proclaimed/nominated President of the club, I take on the responsibility of updating the club’s website, sending out a Doodle scheduler in order to plan upcoming meetings, check the club’s email, make the dinner reservations for the month’s meeting, and when it’s book-pick night, I organize the what-looks-complicated procedure so its seamless.
It started by me being bored one day and thought it would be funny to create a book club application. It was merely a funny way to “screen” potential applicants and to communicate the overall tone of our club. It was completely unnecessary because every member of the book club is either related to me, one of my closest friends, or is a neighbor of a book club member. Oddly enough, a woman who ran the last book club we were participating with but fizzled after the birth of her child, had gone on-line and actually submitted an application for membership through our website! There was no question that we would accept her but sadly she never actually followed through with driving from East St. Paul to some western metro book club location…
Domain Registry of America, America’s fastest growing Domain Registrar, had emailed the club with the offer to buy the website’s domain name of readingbetweenthewinesclub.com Up until now, it was hosted on the free Weebly.com template and every time I updated the site, I crossed my fingers and said a little “book club prayer” that no one had stolen our web address. For just over a year, things were smooth sailing but I began to wonder…what if the name was taken by some other super classy, sophisticated, and educated women of a book club?! I had spent so much time crafting the website with corresponding email and Facebook page that I began to panic! I saw the offer in the inbox and jumped at the chance to preserve the gold standard of book clubs that we had created.
The price was affordable enough that sales promotions weren’t in order so I felt comfortable with approaching the other ladies of the club.I took donations, or at least let the other ladies buy me a drink which was the equivalent of their share of the website’s cost, and gathered enough money to cover the domain’s registration cost for one year. We have been contacted by other book club’s wanting tips on how to create and run a successful book club. I see this as a WIN for the club and our perceived image.
MollyCule3 