Barb Hanley posted this image to my post in our FB group this morning, so I had to share it here on BCF. Whether you consider us beaver club friends or book club friends, we are, indeed, friends. And I’d like to check in with you all here. How are you doing these days?
Perhaps I wasn’t paying close enough attention last year, or in the past years, but I never imagined that the US administration would threaten Canada. I never thought that I’d have the feelings I’m experiencing these days, though I admit that I have never been very politically active. But I’m sure you all can see that my focus has shifted dramatically these past couple of months. I had hoped to participate with the book discussions more, but I find myself reading nonfiction and trying to learn as much as I can about everything that’s happening, and what I can do to help. But that’s only me – Tara is loving the discussions and completely committed to participating. We sent out our ARC requests long ago and will always fulfill all our promises and commitments. Fiction, art, poetry, humour, kindness, and groan-worthy puns will always have an important presence on BCF.
But because of current events, we’ve been discussing some changes here on BCF and are now starting to implement some of those changes.
The first change is that we’ve removed all links to Amazon, Google, Apple and other US retailers that were displayed on our book description pages. We’ve left a link to Kobo, a Canadian company, and may add links to other Canadian or independent bookstore supporting organizations for any books we add to the site in the future, but the book/author reference section of BCF is not our priority anymore. I’ve mentioned before that we earn very little from affiliate links here – Amazon was our most popular link used and generated about $90 since we launched BCF, not a significant amount at all and hardly worth the effort. So I’m pleased to get rid of those links, not just for this latest economic blackout, but permanently.
Other than the links to Kobo, BCF is ad-free. I worry that we may seem like we’re promoting BCF as a means to monetize our group, while the reality is that our LP FB group and BCF are just “hobbies” and have never been about making money from members. For me, my motivation now is to stop supporting FB/Meta, to provide a truly safe and manipulation-free space for my best online friends, and due to current events, to use whatever voice and platform available to advocate for the resistance against the current US administration. On this note, I’ll just add that I’ve had a back-up plan for our group here since we held the poll to host discussions of The Grey Wolf here vs on FB. If that vote had gone to discussions on FB, we would have closed down BCF completely. In that case, I would have set up a secure, private FB group, assigning you all as admins, where you could invite others from our larger LP FB group and moderate the group as you see fit. With a smaller group of trusted friends in a closed, private group, I don’t imagine the need for any real admin work. But you all could enjoy each other’s company on FB, as it’s clear that many of our friends from the larger FB group only feel comfortable using that platform. As Nancy posted earlier, it’s not the journey or destination, it’s the company we keep that is important. It’s important to me that you all are able to enjoy good company and good conversation with trusted online friends. If that means a new private group on FB and closing down BCF, I can make that happen easily, so please know that it is always an option.
We are planning for some other changes as well, although they will happen in the background, hopefully. We are looking to move our server and other BCF-related expenses to Canadian-based companies. Currently, most of the operations use US-based organizations. Once we identify suitable Canadian counterparts, we’ll make the transitions. There should hopefully be minimal downtime to the BCF site, but we’ll post a warning when the time comes so you will know what’s happening if BCF goes offline for a short period.
One other topic I’d like to address is the fact that BCF belongs to you and we are happy to accommodate your ideas and feedback. How do you feel about the current lineup or timeline of book discussions? Should we continue with our review of the Three Pines series in addition to the regular BOTM discussions? With my new pop-up discussion idea, I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed or pressured into anything. And I hope you will feel comfortable enough with us to let us know if we need to make any adjustments. We are always happy to hear your thoughts and make any changes necessary.
Lastly, I’d like to thank you. You have shown me that goodness truly does exist in an online world of Internet strangers. I genuinely appreciate you all more than I could ever express.
I feel much more comfortable and accepted here than in the FB group. (That was before it was made private) I don’t know what it would be like now. I haven’t participated in Louise Penny’s books because I just have not had the time to keep up with them and the BOTM at the same time.
Yes, I understand completely about keeping up with the discussions. And now I’ve added the pop-up too! So that’s one reason why I posted this today. Our plans for everything here on BCF are not set in stone. We’re very flexible and can accommodate anything. Above all else, BCF should be a space to relax and enjoy. So if the pace and timing of discussions are not relaxing or enjoyable, we can change that easily; just let us know. If everyone’s happy, then I’m happy. I just wanted to check in.
BCF is the safest space I have online. I know that changes will come because that’s what life is about. However, I also know that the friendships I have made in this group will always be cherished by me. It amazes me that it is my Canadian friends who have gotten me off my duff so to speak and involved in fighting what is happening in my country. Like you, Jane, I never followed politics much before. At least not since the 60’s. It has only been since the inception of this Republican administration that I have become alert. But it is you, Jane, who has led the charge and made me feel comfortable in joining you. I trust your judgement when it comes to the online world as you understand it far better than I do.
Thank you my dear Canadian, online friend, for all you have done and all you continue to do for this group.
I am blessed to know you.
Hugs and Love from an American friend who did not choose the present course her country is on.
I have a lot of love and admiration for you and all our friends here. I’ve come to realize how difficult it is for many to adapt to change, how some of our friends from our FB group will not or cannot join and participate here on BCF, as Jane mentioned last November. But you all here crushed the shack challenge. And I know it wasn’t easy or comfortable. All of you just being here and participating daily inspire me in many different ways, and I love that we are all adapting to change and facing new challenges together.
AOC, Timothy Snyder and so many others have said repeatedly that every small effort counts. That there is no action too small. And so here we are with our initiatives, which I am sure nobody could have expected or prepared against. And as you’ve mentioned before about exponential effects, who knows if our little actions might actually have larger effects down the line.
Hugs and love right back and to all our friends here. We really are all in this together.
I have to say that current events are making it difficult for me to focus on anything other than the threat that is looming over Canadians. It’s been an increasingly bigger worry. I know that I shouldn’t let myself get consumed with the news. We have to live one day at a time and try our best to enjoy each day. I keep telling myself that, but then I wake up and check the news in the morning and, well, you know. At least I’m still taking Jane’s wise advise of not reading before bed.
Thank you, Jane R. (it is an unusual experience to share a first name) and all of the admins.
I wholeheartedly endorse everything you all are doing, especially cutting ties with the US entities that have monetized social media and online communications and have aligned themselves with the current US administration! Have at it! The sooner the better.
I am going to defer to others on the current discussion timeline because I am rereading the BOTM for now and find the pop-up so relevant, I am comfortable with adding it to our discussion. I am open to seeing how this unfolds.
I am a bit of a politics junky, mostly local and statewide. Sadly, our current U.S. administration makes it pretty much impossible for me to look away. One advantage of living in a state like N.M. with a relatively small population is that one can actually meet the people who represent you. And I derive a lot of energy from the events that I attend.
I want to see BCFs remain a financially viable site and a continuing opportunity for all of us. Every comment about how valuable, welcoming and safe this space is totally represents my perspective. While it may be a “hobby” for you all, I do not expect you all to keep it afloat if/when support is indicated. So, please let us know where support is called for.
Finally, this post reminds me of the work of our local beavers! Yes, the N.M. bosque is home to quite a few beavers and they represent quite a challenge to the riparian ecosystem because they do what beavers do naturally, they chew tree trunks and make dams. When you have a river one can wade across, that is a BIG problem. I will return soon and take a photo of some of their work to post.
Thank you Jane! Let’s call you Jane, and JR will work for me. I agree with you about cutting all ties and am quite happy about that, although it’s largely symbolic as we’re not a high volume seller. Still, those links and displays of their logos are gone and won’t ever come back.
I would love to leave FB completely too, but we can still use our group to share important information and hope that we can have some impact with the larger audience over time. I think, to be honest, we are having some impact from what I can see, so I do see our efforts as worthwhile. Ideally, more friends would join us here to enrich our conversations. Maybe our May BOTM will have some influence on our group’s perspective on FB and at least cause more people to think more seriously about decreasing time on FB.
With respect to the book discussions, I love the ideas behind of all of them: exploring different authors and topics with the BOTMs, revisiting Three Pines to refresh our love for the series and maybe find new perspectives, and the pop-ups now that focus on disseminating important information and using our “expertise” effectively for the resistance. For me, the pop-ups are my priority because I’m so alarmed by what’s happening and I feel an intense need to do what I can to combat it all. But that is only my opinion and I don’t want to dominate or put pressure on anyone else. Everyone has equal voice here and I love hearing everyone’s thoughts. I feel that I can learn quite a lot from you all and I’m incredibly thankful for that opportunity.
It seems that about 150 people have watched the video on the FB site.
Do you mean the video you posted of Timothy Snyder? Here are the numbers that I can see:
Yes. On FB, it says 154 thumbs up, smiley faces and hearts. On what you have, does link clicks mean the number of people that looked at it? If so, FB is not reporting correctly. What does post engagement and people reached mean?
Yes, exactly. Link clicks are the number of times people actually tapped the link to go view the site you linked to. Post engagement is the total number of times people interacted with your post, including liking, sharing, commenting, clicking through to watch the video and also clicking through to see your profile. The people reached metric is not totally accurate – it’s an estimate of the number of people who may have seen your post in their feed.
But these numbers show that your message was seen by many more people than you thought – 154 is only the number of people who bothered to tap an emoji response.
Imagine a meme that contains some soundbite – for every person that likes it or comments, there are maybe 10-1000x who see it, read it and may just scroll past, but have still consumed it. Most people don’t necessarily interact with a like or comment.
Hopefully, it will cause more people to participate in the pop-up discussion. At least, that was my intention in posting the video.
Yes, that would be great. We can see that if most people can’t be bothered to even like something they’re interested in (515 people clicked through on your link, but only 155 tapped on the like button), we can expect far, far fewer to actually engage in thoughtful discussion. We’ll see tomorrow and for the next weeks though!
In a similar way, the calls to reps that we’ve been encouraging have greater impact than people may realize, particularly when there’s no meaningful response or no response at all. I think people feel like their efforts are pointless without any feedback, which is discouraging and be an effective response to stop the resistance. But the reality is that all actions do have some impact, so it’s worthwhile – your post is a good example of that.
With social media, the more people who tap some kind of reaction, even angry faces, the more lift a post will receive and that gives it more reach to new eyes. That’s why every tap counts and helps in some small way for messages that deserve more eyeballs.
With your video, I think it’s wonderful that so many people at least watched it even if they didn’t tap any kind of reaction. Thank you so much for sharing it!
First off, I want to thank you sincerely for all that you do for us. I can’t imagine the time and energy it must take to keep all the plates spinning. I enjoy coming to this site more than FB, but I can do either; whatever works for you and for the group best is great. I don’t understand much of anything about how these things operate; I started using FB to find an answer to a question I had about something in an LP book, and stumbled across your FB page, and found a place where I could pull myself together after some stressful times in my life and discuss books that I love and get those questions answered, with people that I have ended up loving and respecting for their wit, wisdom, and kindness. I love our community here, and would try to keep up with it in whatever format you ultimately choose. But if it ever gets to be too much, I will totally respect any decision you make on that, too.
As for our current pace, I’m spending a lot of time these days trying to keep up with current events from multiple sources and do my part to combat the craziness, and am some days drowning in information and getting behind on things, but I still try to keep up with my leisure reading, too, and so far, I’m handling it. I just picked up On Tyranny this afternoon from the library (finally!) and so after this weekend, should be good to go with that. I’m enjoying the discussions of Still Life, and like dropping in on Three Pines again, as that is a particular comfort place to go in my mind, and I always enjoy a good conversation about those books and those characters, and I have them all in my personal library for quick access. However, I’m open to whatever is the best use of our time. I’ve sometimes had difficulty getting hold of our other book selections because I do those through the library and sometimes the waits are long and I have to return them and rely on my memory to discuss them, but I’m managing so far.
As far as America threatening Canada and this whole ridiculous series of events, you are not alone, Jane, in never having imagined it. When I first heard what T was saying about your country, and Greenland, and the Panama Canal when he got into office, I thought it was one of his poor jokes. I couldn’t believe that anyone would take that sort of talk seriously. I had never heard that come up during the campaign before, so either I missed something along the way, or it wasn’t a well-known or advertised idea. I don’t know it he would have lost any votes if he’d advertised that plan or not, but I think he would have, and we would have averted this disaster. I’m afraid a lot of people wouldn’t have taken it seriously, though, so would have ignored it. If you’ve ever heard any of his campaign speeches, you would understand why I say that– his thoughts were often all over the map. But then he has his devoted followers who would have been nodding their heads and pumping their fists, too — there’s nothing he can say that they won’t back, I’m afraid. However, they are NOT the majority of our population (despite what he says); unfortunately, enough of them are now in power that we need all the help we can get to combat their control and overreach, so I thank you for your advocacy for resistance, and wish you the best in advocacy of your own wonderful country. Stay strong, and pick the best and brightest leaders you can find!
Thanks Susan, I always appreciate your thoughtful comments.
With respect to FB vs BCF, I wanted to present options for you and everyone here, to be honest. It’s my preference not to be on FB, but it’s not my place to force anything on anyone. So that’s where my idea of a small, private group for you all comes into play. Making you all admins means that you can invite or kick out anyone you’d like, but likely you’d only invite other members from our larger FB group that you are comfortable with and wouldn’t need to do any real admin work. It would just give you opportunity to have a safe space on FB to connect to all the lovely people who didn’t make the jump to BCF – it’s important to me that we all enjoy ourselves as much as that’s possible while we can, despite any personal boycotts (namely mine). So that’s my point here; just want you all to know that if you miss our other friends, there are options. We will reunite with many of them for our pop-up. I hope the experience will be enlightening, rewarding and enjoyable for all.
For our book discussion schedule, shall we keep it as is then? We’re happy to make any adjustments if anyone has suggestions. With current events on everyone’s minds, I think we’ll see how the “On Tyranny” pop-up goes and, if the consensus is that the idea is effective, we could have ongoing pop-ups if there’s interest. Book selections would work the same ways as our BOTMs, with suggestions and votes (but would have to deal with current events and ideally be useful in our resistance). Then perhaps when one book reaches a certain threshold of votes, say five or ten??, we could schedule the pop-up discussion.
It’s so on point that you mention that most didn’t take seriously the “jokes” that were first made to threaten Canada. I certainly did not take it seriously at first either, but had I been paying closer attention, or been more aware of the tactics dictators use to progress their plans, I would have been alarmed. Was it in my earlier post containing Timothy Snyder’s interview that he mentioned the importance of time in raising awareness and taking action to fight against tyranny? Or maybe that was Nancy’s post? In any case, I feel that one goal with the pop-up is addressing this point as effectively as we can on social media within our book club. We’re all coming to realize the seriousness of the situation over different time frames, with some of us more alarmed earlier (if I remember correctly, Kathi commented on it during our discussion of The Grey Wolf) and perhaps others in our group not alarmed at all or not wanting to be bothered to be alarmed. So I think we have a good opportunity to have a considerable impact here.
I’m so happy that you’ve managed to get a copy of “On Tyranny” to read! I’m reaching out to some of our friends to check in on their status today, so hopefully we can schedule the discussion to start sometime this upcoming week or next weekend.
I’ve also been a little caught up in the news. I had no idea that 2025 would be such an eventful year. But I think some people knew it was coming and tried to write books and warn others. It is just as Susan points out with thinking things are superficial when really there is quite a serious intent behind the action. We are all starting to realize the situation but definitely at different rates. And I agree that it is important that more people recognize the situation and start to take action.
I also agree though that it is important to celebrate other books, art, groan-worthy puns and all the rest, as we work together to do what we can to support each other and the resistance.