1. Recruit interested people. We asked friends, co-workers, partners of co-workers. We also put up some posters in relevant places. For us that meant around different parts of the university, local libraries and so on. We also used the electronic circular that goes out to university email addresses every week, and Gumtree (http://dundee.gumtree.com/).

2. Set up an appropriately named hotmail account if using posters or the other methods above; people are probably more likely to respond to an official sounding email address. Create an email contact list, or even an MSN group of all interested people.

3. When you have your minimum number of people (we aimed for 10) decide who is going to host the first meeting.

4. The first host should set a date, probably about 6 weeks away in the first instance and email those recruited so far with a choice of two or three books. Set a date to reply by e.g. within 7 days.

5. Or you may wish to forget about a choice for the sake of simplicity first time around. Just suggest a book you like and think has wide appeal. I wouldn't think having a meeting to "organise" things first would be a good idea, as having a book to discuss is a good ice-breaker for people who don't know each other. 

6. You now have a date, location and book choice. Send this out, with travel directions to the group. Save the email and you can just pass this on to everyone else recruited in the lead up to the meeting. In the 6 weeks before, we doubled in size.

(By this time the website had been set up and I gave the address to everyone in this email too. It's obviously not necessary but was really simple to do. It means people can check the Calendar any time, have a look at the book choices and give it some thought before the meeting, as well as have their ratings and review comments recorded. It has also led to further members joining. I'd never created a website before and used Microsoft Office Live to create and host the site for free. No knowledge of code was required, just a little patience to complete the templates and a little prior experience of formatting word documents.)

7. Prior to the first meeting, look for a volunteer for the second meeting and ask them to think about a choice of books to discuss at the end of the first meeting. From then on, the next months choice will always be decided at the previous meeting.

8. At the first meeting, the host should run through how things will work (see the About Us tab on the left for our rough guide and agenda) and look for volunteers for the next few meetings, reminding them that they should be prepared with choices the meeting before theirs.

9. If the group wants a record of reviews and ratings, each host in turn should take some notes during the meeting.

10. The reviews and details of the next meeting (date, location, host, book) can be emailled around the group after each meeting. Decide whether one person wants to take responsibility for this (maybe on a 6 monthly basis) or if this will be the responsibility of each host. This website was created to store this kind of info but is obviously not necessary!

Obviously starting a second group from our waiting list will be much more straight forward than following all of these steps. I'd suggest starting by emailling the waiting list, find out who is still interested and start at step 4. We'd be very happy to create a calendar etc for a second group on the site, if this is wanted.