Joining a Reading Circle
For readers and authorsUpdated 1 min read
A Reading Circle is a group reading together. Circles are public (listed), unlisted (reachable by link) or private (members only); joining is instant, by request (Request sent while the owner answers) or by invitation link, sometimes with a question or two to answer first.
The short answer
What a Circle is
A Reading Circle is a group reading the same book at the same pace, with a plan, a discussion, polls, challenges and meetings. Circles in the top bar lists the public ones and yours. Every reader account may run up to ten Circles of its own (Running a Reading Circle); an author can anchor an Official Circle to a book.
Who can find a Circle
- Public: listed in discovery; anyone can find and read it.
- Unlisted: not listed, but reachable by its link.
- Private: members only; its existence is not shown to anyone else.
How people get in
The owner chooses one:
- Anyone can join: Join and you are in.
- Ask to join: Request to join; you see Request sent while the owner answers, and you can still read a public Circle's posts meanwhile. The owner may ask joining questions first (an answer type of their choosing); your answers are seen by the owner and moderators only.
- Invite only: an invitation link the owner made. Opening it signed out takes you through signup and back into the Circle. A link can carry an expiry or a limit on uses; a revoked link says so to whoever opens it.
Once you are in
The Circle's tabs: Discussion, Plan (the book and the schedule), Polls, Challenges, Live, and, for the people who run it, Manage. Its house rules, written by the owner, sit with the description. See Posting in a Reading Circle.
Leaving
Leave from the Circle's menu at any time. A Circle that has been archived is read-only for everyone: you can read it, nothing new can be posted.
Where this lives
Related
- Posting in a Reading Circle: The Discussion tab is the conversation; a post has a type (general, chapter chat, checkpoint, theory, character, quote, prompt, announcement, endgame) and follows the Circle's spoiler policy, which can hide posts past your recorded progress. Report and remove work as everywhere.
- Polls and challenges in a Reading Circle: The Polls tab runs single-choice, multiple-choice, book-nomination and date-and-time polls, with the owner choosing when results show and who sees who voted; the Challenges tab runs group goals (books finished, books in a genre or series, pages read, one book together) whose progress counts from your own reading.
- The reading plan, checkpoints and meetings: A Circle's Plan tab holds the book, the checkpoints (by chapter, percent or date) and the group's progress; a checkpoint can carry a meeting time, shown in your own timezone, and being in the Discussion during the meeting window counts as attendance. Owners can make recurring schedules and author drop-ins.
- Running a Reading Circle: Start a Circle from the Circles page (up to ten of your own); the Manage tab has one section per job (Details, Book and plan, Schedules, Access, Members, Appearance, Moderation, Polls, Challenges, Live). Moderation is a preset you read before applying, with the previous configuration kept so you can restore it; invite links can expire, be limited or revoked.
- Official Author Circles: An author starts an author circle around one of their books or series from the Circles page or the Studio; it shows the Official Author Circle mark once the author profile is verified. It works like any Circle with the author as owner, plus drop-ins and, where a video provider is connected, live sessions. "Author participating" marks a Circle the author is in but does not run.
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