You may have noticed that we did not update our bookclub book for August. I apologize. I have spent the last few weeks working to reimagine what bookclub, and this community, can look like. And now I want to share a little bit about what's going through my head and what I have in mind for the future.

I have been fairly open about my ambitions for this community, and what I think real advocacy looks like in bookish spaces. And as I am sure you have caught on to by now, my thoughts are constantly evolving. As are the methods and tools that I employ to get the work done.

If you spend a lot of time in online bookish spaces, I'm sure you know that when it comes to Black and brown authors, I am everywhere. I am actively involved in nearly every bookish conversation, I am championing authors, pushing their books out there, helping to organize readers in order to amplify upcoming books, challenging standards and longheld opinions that I think harm the interests of Black and brown authors, and working to create more space for voices in the margins. And behind the scenes, I am doing just as much for authors in places you'll never see. I am reading manuscripts and offering feedback, dreaming with authors about how to make a difference in this industry, reading books that need a boost, meeting with and talking with authors and readers who have ideas and thoughts on what we can do here, and what needs to be done on a larger scale, to create change.

It's a lot. And the truth is, I only have so much time and energy to get it all done. And truthfully, I am a bit overwhelmed and that is impacting how much I can meaningfully get done. So I am making some adjustments. Not dropping things, just adjusting what they look like.

For me, bookclub has always been an opportunity to build community around these common interests. It has been about taking stories that need to be amplified and putting them into the hands of as many people as humanly possible, so that we can utilize this space to push those books further. And for a long time, it was very successful at that. But lately, I have found it very difficult to invest enough time and energy into it to make it as useful as it can be. And so I stepped back over this last month, met with people in my community, and dreamed. We sat down and tried to figure out how to reimagine this space so that it can be as effective as possible without sacrificing more time and energy than I can afford to.

Going forward, I am going to pull back from doing bookclub monthly and am going to instead add a layer to our Cost of Freedom quarterly reading project to incorporate the entire community.

What does that mean?

If you are not already familiar, I partnered with our team at Bindery to send a book to all of my $25 subscribers quarterly, along with providing exclusive content and a themed community reading experience. In the hope of making that as accessible as humanly possible, I shifted what they had in mind just a little and decided to offer my $12 subscribers access to the content, while keeping the book and the group meeting exclusive to the intended tier.

Over the last three months, we have been reading Tender is the Flesh together and discussing the dangers of our everyday complicity and how our choice to not resist helps to uphold the systems that perpetrate evil against us all, but especially the most vulnerable. And starting in just two weeks, we will be sending out copies of Chain-Gang All-Stars and beginning our discussions on the abolition movement and what the world can look like with a reimagined framework for addressing crime and the humanity of the people who commit it.

Like I said, that is something that has been focused around the higher tiers of our paid subscribers. Which was intentional. As I shared when I announced that new project, our hope was to take work we were already doing and to focus it into an incentive to get more people invested in our publishing efforts. We were hoping that by putting a lot of energy into this, we could build our budget and invest into more Black and brown authors.

And it's working. But now I would like to peal the layer back a bit further and also center our bookclub around this reading experience. With the intention of focusing our energy more efficiently so that we can get more done in our fight for authors.

Before I go further, let me say two things this does NOT mean:

1. This does NOT mean that you have to be a paid subscriber to be a part of our book club now.

2. This does NOT mean that if you are a paid subscriber, you will be getting less exclusive value.

My goal is to create an environment where the thousands of people who signed up for bookclub are reading these same books that I believe can shift the way we view the world, while also continuing to provide a much deeper and richer level of content and access for the people I promised it to.

So going forward, if you are a part of The Cost of Freedom, you can expect what I have already outlined for you. If you are a $25 subscriber, you will get your copy of our quarterly book as promised. And if you are in that tier, or the $12 tier, you will receive quite a bit of exclusive content. I have shifted what that content looks like a bit, based on watching what content you responding to and what content you did not respond to over the last few months, but you'll hear more about that later in the letter I sent you all.

You can also expect a new monthly meeting. One of which will be an in depth discussion of the book, which everyone will be invited to, including our larger bookclub. And then, two monthly meetings where we will go deeper and expand what we're looking at. Because one of the things I want to do is go beyond just reading. I want to resource you.

For this book, Chain-Gang All-Stars, I am already putting together resources and education that I can point you toward. Things to take us past a conversation about this story and to help us actually explore what it means to be an abolitionist. Resources on what the American prison system actually looks like. What restorative justice means, and how it is already producing results all over the world. Ideas and opportunities to put our politics into practice. I am already thinking about how to challenge the way we even approach the book space and the work we do here. So yes, there will be plenty of exclusive resources and content for you.

I will also be reaching out to authors to attempt to schedule events with them, if they are interested and their schedules allow.

My hope is that, in shifting things to work this way, I am creating a more community-driven experience for everyone while simultaneously condensing the amount of time and energy maintaining this community takes, so that I can pour more of myself into all of you.

Its also worth noting that our community also serves as a publishing imprint, as you know. So there are at least two books a year that we are publishing ourselves, and we will OF COURSE be reading those together as well. So going forward, you can expect to read six to seven books together a year, instead of twelve. BUT, the experience will be much more involved and there will be a lot more content and value offered to each of you.

I am still working to reenvision other aspects of the work that we do here to make sure we are being as effective as possible. As you know, I have very big goals for our community, and I want to make sure that I am investing my time and energy as efficiently as possible.

As always, thank you all for being here. And while I am excited to include everyone in our bookclub meeting each quarter, I would love it if more of you would come join us at that $12 and $25 tier.

Like I said earlier, one of my goals is to pull together the resources we need so that we can invest in more books. And while we have made huge progress in the last few months (you may have seen my 45 days of daily ads for our community on Instagram), we still have quite a ways to go. So if it is within your means to come join us for that more catered experience, I would love for you to go upgrade right now and engage with that content as it drops.

Either way, I am excited for these changes and for how much further I think we can go with more focused energy!

Happy reading, everyone! And get ready for Chain-Gang All-Stars. It is one of my favorite books of all time and I hope you enjoy it!