Shakespeare & Co's Tumbleweeds & Community vs Audience(Cafe Society Quick Bite #3)
Paris's Shakespeare & Co's Membership Program is really a formalization of stellar decades-long community building efforts
Cafe Society is Maxwell Social’s weekly magazine on the intersection of community and society — an anthropological look at the underpinnings of what makes the world tick, written by David Litwak (@dlitwak) and the Maxwell team.
A few weeks ago Shakespeare & Co, the famous Paris bookstore near Notre Dame, announced that they had launched a membership program that was supporting them through the pandemic — up to $500 euros a year for exclusive content, a book club and more.
On digging deeper it became clear that this was actually simply an extension of community building they had been doing for decades with their famed Tumbleweed program, a writers in residence (literally) program that Shakespeare & Co run where they let writers sleep among the books in exchange for reading a full book every day and helping out around the shop.
Shakespeare & Co is a great example of building a true community, not simply an audience, of advocates that truly identify with your product, and investing and trusting your customers to be active parts of your business.
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And check out some of our deeper dinner discussions like why Soho House has had trouble scaling its community (and why we think miniclubs are the future), Possibility-As-A-Product: Superbad, Clubhouse & the Inciting Incident, Gatekeepers & The Wing, Inclusive Exclusivity, Sofar Sounds & Self-Cancelling Greek Life, Ford Bronco, Blockbuster & Nostalgia Porn For A Simpler World and Amsterdam’s Radical Anarchist White Bikes & Community Hobbyists.
Have a great rest of the week!
David (@dlitwak) and the Maxwell Social Team
This was an interesting read. Tumbleweeds certainly inverts common presumptions on the audience vs community dichotomy
Was such a joy to read this.