One Book, One Twitter ... aka #1b1t

Cross-Posted from the Crowdsourcing Blog

I have a dream. An idea. A maybe great notion. Actually, as Auggie March might say, "I got a scheme." What if everyone on Twitter read the same book at the same time and we formed one massive, international book club? Usually such programs are organized by big city libraries. Seattle started the trend for collective reading in 1998 when zillions of Seattlites all read Russell Banks' book, Sweet Hereafter. Chicago followed suit with To Kill a Mockingbird a few years later, and then other cities started jumping on the bandwagon. When the program works—and it doesn't always—it gets more people reading, more people talking, and more people generally appreciating the written word. What's not to like?

A few weeks ago I was reading about the Chicago's read-along for a grad seminar on social capital I'm taking with Robert Putnam this semester. My strong suspicion (and I'm hardly alone) is that networks like Twitter are rife with social capital, especially the so-called "bridging" social capital that connects communities of people who have little else in common. The thought struck me that Twitter would provide a much better platform for a book club than the mere accident of physical proximity. Just think, we could supplant #howyouathug with #chapterfourexegesis in trending topics! Actually, no, we probably couldn't, and that's not the goal anyway. I love books. So do you. Let's love one book together, our actual geographical location be damned.

Here's how it'd go:

• Now: We collect nominations for what book we want to read.

• Soon: We pick a winner out of the top selections. Why not just pick the one with the most votes? Because it's not too hard to game the system. The final selection needs to be of general interest. It needs to be translated into many, many languages, and ideally it should be freely available.

• Soon After That: We start reading, and tweeting, and reading, and tweeting.

In the meantime, the hashtag for One Book, One Twitter is #1b1t. If you want to keep up to date, follow me, @crowdsourcing.

A few quick notes: This is not a book club, per se. There are some wonderful book clubs on Twitter, including #thebookclub and the Twitter Book Club (#tbc). The aim with One Book, One Twitter is—like the one city, one book program which inspired it—is to get a zillion people all reading and talking about a single book. It is not, for instance, an attempt to gather a more selective crew of book lovers to read a series of books and meet at established times to discuss. The point of this—to the extent it has a point beyond good fun with a good book—is to create community across geographical, cultural, ethnic, economic, and social boundaries. 

At best we start an annual summer Twitter tradition, and bring a bunch of people from all over the world to read together. At worst a handful of us pick a book in an ad hoc fashion and we'll simply have started another Twitter book club, and—if you're a word nerd—how bad could that be?

Comments

[Jesuisami]

love the idea! let's all discuss this further under a common hashtag.

[Suzanne]

I'm in, Great idea. I'm sure it can be started sooner than June :-)

[Dan Holloway]

Jeff, this is a great idea and a great opportunity. "Crowdsourcing" is a word that makes me ever so slightly bilious, but this seems to be more about an established platform using the power of crowds to create a trend than tapping up the collective intelligence, and I'm all for that.

I would just say, please don't waste the opportunity to do something really innovative. Why not devote this to discovering new, independent talent from outside the published world altogether. There are so many amazing authors out there who have ignored the mainstream altogether and plough their own furrow tirelessly - something this high profile should be taken as an opportunity to unearth new, independent talent, and give it the audience it deserves. Ask your readers to scour the web for something new and exciting. Let me start with the extraordinary Benny Platonov by Oli Johns:
http://yearzerowriters.wordpress.com/our-books/benny-platonov/benny-chapter-one/

[Correlationist]

Disclosure : I have read very few books in my life (novels etc.)

Read through all the comments, and seems choice of book will be a challenge (as Jeff had already hinted at in his post). I also see very sparse geographical representation in the feedback loop here. I have two suggestions for what it is worth :

1) Quickly (and maybe even arbitrarily) choose the appropriate # and start propagating this idea throughout twitter. This is bound to draw in other interested participants - as Jeff would say, increase empowered diversity.

2) Start reaching out to other geographies - East, and the Orient, most notably.

Would love to hear your initial reaction, and planned next steps, Jeff :)

This is beginning to feel like a movement, folks! No, seriously.

Cheers,
Prince

[Alexandrak]

a few friends and i tried this. http://twitter.com/twittybookclub but on such a small scale, the response was not huge.
I'm in and suggest Jean Rhys - Good Morning, Midnight, though it's a tad on the depressing side, it's amazing.

[Wayne Senville]

I'd suggest Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species -- available online: http://darwin-online.org.uk/ AND highly relevant to our own times (as it will be to future times)

[KenCarpenter]

Great idea!! You'll need a good central account -- somebody already has @TweetBookClub -- and a unique hash-tag!

[Gypsy]

Fantastic idea! I am most definitely in. I think the decision on what book we read needs to be made as democratically as possible. Publishers would love to get their hands on something like this. The prospect of 25,000+ people all going out and buying the same book on the same week is enough to make the presses I know weak in the knees. The potential for bribes and sneaky stuff is pretty high.

My cynicism aside, kudos on the idea. I can't wait to get started!

[Ciboulette]

Yes. I'm in! I say fiction!

[Andrew Lightheart]

Great idea. Of course it may be hijacked, but maybe you/we could just start?

Decide on a book, start small, make a (short) hashtag, set a launch date and go.

Might not get all of Twitter reading the same book, but could set up the idea of Twitter book clubs...

[Rebecca]

I'm in. So is the Word Nerd Army (the group of followers who voted me to Ms Twitter UK and 3rd in Shorty Award for literature).

Might I suggest Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford? I'd suggest my debut novel too but I think that may be way too much exposure for a first novel. Slowly, slowly and all that.

Love anything that brings word nerds together.

Rebecca
http://blog.rebeccawoodhead.com

[Barnet Hellman]

I am on-board.

where do we nominate books?

[Wandaedwards]

I'm in. Great idea!

[Philistine]

Not to throw cold water on your "great idea", but several of these already exist. Maybe check the hashtag #tbc while you're congratulating yourself on your originality.

[Nina Sutton]

It starts with a dream Jeff. Go for it !

[Shiari]

I love this idea, and I'm in. Farenheit 451 is perfect in so many ways, but I do enjoy Neil Gaiman as well. Can't wait to see how the voting goes. I'm almost as interested in watching the voting process as I am in the actual reading - how long will votes continue to come in, and how we'll all know that it's time to stop voting and start reading ...

[Bgaffnbk]

formally submitting Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist for consideration for #1b1t: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alchemist_(novel).

[Ryan Chapman]

Glad to see Fahrenheit 451's one of the favorites so far. It makes sense for a lot of reasons: it's stood the test of time, so we know a broad swathe of readers respond to it (unlike recent books), and its themes work across cultural boundaries. It's something readers in Alabama, Iran, and South Korea can respond to.

[William Shaw]

ERRATA-DATA The Workings of an American Jester
Just Published! The timing is right!
http://www.errata-data.com/Bookin.html or follow link to Amazon.com.
Yes, it is only available in English and only in paperback, but there is more than enough to tweet about!

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[Theory of Crows]

Brilliant idea. Finally a viable use for Twitter that I can buy into.

Can't wait for June (secretly hoping for Ray Bradbury).

[joemmama]

Terrific idea!

[MotherLodeBeth]

As an avid three books per week reader you have whet my appetite yet are making me wonder how many books would be non fluff non fiction? I don't eat junk, and dont like reading junk.

[nike air force 1]

it will be good to get people READING and discussing. I'd love to trade off between fiction and non-fiction works.

[nike air force 1]

I'll be throwing in David Weinberger's "Everything Is Miscellaneous'' and two novels from far afield