Book End Babes is more than a club, it’s a par-tay. We’re partying between the pages with a modern concept that marries a girls night out with great reads. Fodder for amazing convo for you and your girlfriends plus delicious menus and recipes provided on our web site. You’ll get to know authors with Tweet Chats, guest blogs and even call-ins to your book club!
MISSION: We want nothing short of starting a READING REVOLUTION, to make books the ultimate “it” accessory and to make reading fashionable.
MOTTO: Real babes read books. Books rock, girlfriends rule.
Book End Babes is a real-world book club with chapters around the country to support the book industry and our girlfriends with a great website to support the book clubs and help build community. It’s a sorority of super smart & sassy literary sisters. We’re looking for queen B’s to host setting up local chapters. You’d be the social diva that gets your girls’ signed up and all organized. (Because you rock at that.) You can host your book club anytime, anywhere you choose. While the site will be geared towards house parties in the evenings, anytime your gals can gather is acceptable! We recommend hosting at least every other month for six fun parties in a year or monthly if your schedule allows. We encourage tweets from your party and if you send in video and/or photos and a brief note about what all went on and what books were discussed and how your party went, we’ll get it up on the site to share. Totally optional.
If you’re not ready to join or start a book club, you can still enjoy the web site and discussions. (But we hope you’ll come on board, eventually.)
KILLER WEB SITE:
- 4 top picks for great reads for each month with a suggested menu of great food and drink tie-ins
- Books Rock, Girlfriends Rule blog on the home page with guest posts from queen b’s, chapter members and authors
- Reviews on the home page (and archived reviews from our former site AthenasBookshelf.com)
- Theater room with videos of author readings, book trailers and footage from BEbabes parties (also searchable)
- Recipes
- Contests
- TwitterBEbabes Directory so members can follow each other and build friendships
SWAG
Ah, yes. The free stuff. Membership has its privileges, mainly in free swag from Book End Babes and publicists and publishers. You’ll have a chance to win a weekly Impulse Prize (something girlie) and get entries in bigger contests including free books (mostly advanced reading copies.) To kick things off, any queen B who signs up in September is registered to win a cute heart book bag with a free book. (4 total winners
PROMOTION
To help you promote members to your chapter, we will send you an invite with a brief description and an invite as a pdf to send to the girlfriends you’d like to invite to join your club. You can decide if you’d like to have an Anything Goes chapter where your members read anything they want (including one of the Top Picks) and come discuss it OR an All 4 One chapter where you all read one book or a book from the Top Picks. Either way, we’ll send you discussion questions the first week of the month – some conversation starters for books in general and then a few specific ones for the Top Picks.
E-Newsletter
In addition, members will get an e-newsletter on the 1st and 15th of the month with the latest news, winners and fun stuff. Book End Babes is on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BookEndBabes where we’ll do daily postings and have a Facebook group page where more discussion can take place. (currently in development)
HOW TO JOIN
To join, e-mail bookendbabes@me.com to start a chapter or join your existing book club to our network.
We’ll need:
1. The queenB’s physical address to send bookmarks and materials to.
2. The names and e-mail addresses of your members. This will be added to our club database so all members will be included in our weekly Impulse Prize drawings & other contests. All club members will receive an e-newsletter on the 1st and 15th of the month.
3. If your members have Twitter IDs, send them to us so we can add them to our TwitterBEbabes directory page. This is an additional way for club members to get to know each other.
That’s it! Easy-peezy. As more members join your chapter, just send the info to us via e-mail.
NOTE: E-mail addresses will NOT be shared with publicists or anyone outside of Book End Babes. ONLY the physical address of the queen B will be shared for promotional mailings from Book End Babes or publicists.
SEPTEMBER SPECIAL: ALL QUEENB’S WHO SIGN UP IN SEPTEMBER WILL GET A CHANCE TO WIN A HEART BOOK BAG FILLED WITH BOOKS!
Book End Babes is Girls Night Out meets great reads, celebrating books and girlfriends. With real-life chapters around the country, we'll feature 4 Top Picks each month, share book reviews, recipes and prizes to start a reading revolution. The reviewed books are typically supplied by the publisher, though reviews are not guaranteed. BEbabes was founded by author Malena Lott. If you'd like to start a BEbabes chapter, click the envelope button below to contact me! 
Hi,
wandered in from Booking Mama.
This sounds fab, and I’m thinking of floating it in my IRL bookclub,however the picks there are usually more in the litfic area.
How are the four books per month chosen here? The ones I see for September look great (had two on my personal TBR already) but I wonder about the selection process.
Hi, Maya. Thanks for checking out the site and great question. I’ll actually be covering this in a Q&A page for the site I’ll be launching next week, so I’m glad you asked. Because the site is geared to make reading fun again, the four picks will hopefully cover the spectrum – with a keen eye on issues relating to women and those that can spark good discussion. Since our philosophy is “anything goes,” we know some book clubs may want to pick a different selection and some chapters may have members that all want to individually read different titles. That’s fine, too. Each month the selections will be based on what I’ve personally read as well as recommendations from others. Though there isn’t a formula, I would guess there would be 1-2 mainstream or litfic/wom fic titles and perhaps a memoir or non-fic title and a pop fiction or romance title (or at least love story whether or not the genre is actually romance). THE VARIOUS FLAVORS OF COFFEE has a male protagonist and goes into alternating POV, so that’s an example of how the picks won’t all be female main characters, either. And it has a nice love story in it, too. I will also lean towards publishers and authors who have reading guides and/or the authors are willing to participate in more interaction with the readers, again making it more fun and memorable. I hope as the membership grows we’ll all be able to share good titles and encourage each other to read new authors and different genres we may not have tried in the past. Oh, and none of the picks are paid for or sponsored, which is an important thing to note. -Malena
Hello!
I too just wandered in and am very impressed with your website. I wonder how I might go about having you consider my debut novel ORGANIZING ELIZABETH (Hold That Thought Publishing, 2008), a mystery-romance for a book club reading. The story centers on a driven and compulsive professional organizer who finds herself thrust into a double murder mystery and a highly unlikely romance with a grocery store owner with whom she teams up to keep herself from becoming the third victim. Among the dozens of reader comments received, most reflect a deep appreciation of the character development in the novel. I am currently working on a sequel: Everything in it’s Place. Book excerpt and purchase available at http://www.iriskaras.com
I am pleased to offer book club discounts!
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Iris karas