Every intelligent, articulate, book-minded person I know wishes he or she knew more avid readers. The readers I know thrive on the exchange of book recommendations, love to brag about their recent acquisitions and wish publishers paid more attention to what readers actually want. The writers I know like nothing better than having discerning readers to talk with about their work, and other writers to talk with about the traumas and joys of the craft. In other words, the people I know who love books love to talk about books and the ideas contained within them.

Which is why I launched Readerville. Readerville is founded on the idea that literature — and discussion thereof — is one of life’s finest pursuits. Since May of 2000, the Readerville Forum has provided a broad and flexible space for readers, writers, librarians, publishers, critics and anyone else who loves books to have thoughtful and engaging discussions about everything from favorite books and authors to why they buy what they buy, to current writing conundrums, to the latest literary news. It’s a welcoming, challenging, entertaining and endlessly fascinating environment that has proven deeply addictive to readers from around the globe. In July of 2008, we restarted the Forum on a new platform, making it freely available again after five years of charging for access, so if you’ve not dipped a toe into those waters before, now is a perfect time.

But Readerville has always been even more than the Forum. Readerville Events has brought a wide range of visiting authors and industry insiders to Readerville for week-long discussions of their work — we’ll be making those archives available again soon, as well as restarting the series in the near future. In 2001, we began publishing such features as Most Coveted Covers and The Odd Shelf on the website. From mid-2002 to mid-2003, we published an acclaimed print magazine, The Readerville Journal; and we brought TRJ‘s brand of original content to the web in January of 2008, combining it with those earlier features. We’ve done some version of a classic weblog on the front page of Readerville since day one (known originally as The Shortlist, and then Hot Topics), and that’s recently been expanded into the full-fledged Weblog. And in conjunction with redesigning and moving the entire site to a new platform in the summer of ’08, we launched Note:books, an easy and interactive way for readers to track their reading, and for others to get a peek at the results.

So if you want to know what’s going on in the world of books and what others think about it — whether you read mysteries or histories, science or spirituality — you’ve come to the right place! Welcome to Readerville.

—Karen Templer, Proprietor

KAREN TEMPLER, Readerville’s founder and editor, is a former graphic designer who, for the past five years, has earned her living as an author and managing editor of food and shelter titles for such publishers as Weldon Owen/Williams-Sonoma and Sunset Books. She launched Readerville after leaving Salon.com in 2000, where she had been an art director (and eventually forum manager) for several years. She has consulted on design, usability and content development for a number of high-profile enterprises. Karen and Readerville have been featured in Working Woman, Wired.com, The New York Times, O, the Oprah Magazine and many other publications since Readerville’s inception.
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