I started a book club with 29,000 members

In 2020 I re-read Bram Stoker’s Dracula with my daughter. It’s an epistolary novel, which means it’s made up of letters, diaries, telegrams, newspaper clippings, and so forth. Every part of the novel has a date, and the whole story happens between May 3 and November 10.

We realized as we read through the book: you could almost slow down and read this book in real-time, experiencing the novel with the characters.

So: I set up a free email newsletter to do this, Dracula Daily. I did most of the setup one Saturday in January, and then actually shared it around April 2021. The first year we had about 2000 people join in... and and I thought we were done in November, when the book was completed.

But some people asked to do it again! (Hundreds of people, actually). SO we are ready to kick it off again... and this time we've got about 29,000 people on board so far.

This seemed to have really struck a chord this year. I think the tailwinds helping grow this project:

• people already know Dracula
• it's a classic, so it's on people's 'someday I should read this' list
• everybody loves an email newsletter
• everybody loves free
  and most importantly:
• it's got a deadline! The story starts on May 3, so if people want to share they need to do it NOW.

It's been really fun to see the idea spread more this year. And there's still time to join if you want in! https://draculadaily.com