Jeff,
One thing that we/you could think about doing to really take things up a notch is to invite an author on every so often to discuss their (new) book. You need a host. It takes about two hours. And you end up getting a thread of 150 or so comments. You have a preview thread a month in advance. It is not essential that everybody has read the book. The host must read it and lay out the main points for discussion and pick up the slack if their aren’t enough questions from the audience. The only thing that might be difficult is ensuring that you have enough of an audience. I participate in some on other forums and they are great. If you have at least 20 people who are willing to actively participate it would work. It would really increase visibility. I’m not positive about classicists being willing to participate. They usually get a $500 stipend plus expenses to go give a talk at a university. The other forums that have them usually find eager authors because they are selling topical books and really want to increase buzz and thereby sales. Classics not so much a sales business. Still worth seriously considering.
I guess I have my answer.
Sounds like an interesting idea. I wonder how one sets something like that up. Do you use NetMeeting? What kind of software? PalTalk? Skype? Do you record it? What exactly is it? 
We might consider such a thing for Hebrew study. Why not?!
You just use the forum. No extra software needed. You have to hit refresh a bunch. That’s it.
So, what’s the first step? You have to invite someone who wrote a book and have them agree to present on your forum, then advertize a time and date for the interaction and make sure that your forum community knows about it and commits to being there at that time?
Interesting idea. We’d need to figure out what kind of books/authors people would want to talk about. Hopefully we could strike a balance between too specific (some grammatical treatise) and still relevant to these forums.
Right. Need a moderator for each who has read the book. Need a few others who have read it also.
Figure roughly half of the books would be new commentaries and the other half would be studies,say a new book on Pindar. Could also consider new translations.
We would really need our heavy hitters to show an interest. Maybe they don’t look at the open board?
Jeff hasn’t said anything yet which makes me wonder.
It would be really awesome. Would give the whole textkit community some common reference points. Plus the discussions would be great. We flail around in the threads, but here you could have the expert on Pindar talking to us.
I would be up for discussion, and we might consider using some of the online books that University of California Press has made available - that way, everyone can have access to the book. There is a good listing of Classics books available for free from UCPress online here:
http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/2010/12/uc-press-e-books-collection.html
A good candidate in terms of language might be this one…?
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8v19p2nc;query=;brand=ucpress
Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity
Robert A. Kaster
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1997 The Regents of the University of California
That would be something different. This is about recently published books. We invite authors who are eager to talk about their work.
I guess 1997 still falls in the category of what I would call recent, but Bob Kaster is definitely not someone I can imagine chatting at Textkit…
You’d be surprised about Bob. He and I were hanging out with Paul Auster one night at an old man’s pub—you know the type of bar I’m talking about: they’re filled with hardhats who just finished work, the immovable barflies who seem to live there, and the occasional cop ducking his shift.
Anyhow, we three were talking about Milton’s visualization of Christ as a militant warrior when Bob looked up at the ceiling, looked back over to us and suddenly said,
“Guys! Are you ready for darts?”
Would you believe he hit the bullseye every time? I did fairly well; Auster finished third.
It could be a good idea, who knows 10 years from now I may well be joining in. 
EDIT: Ty to whoever posted the list to online books, there are two in there that I REALLY need yet are hard of me to get hold of right now…TY!
I think this is a very good idea.
It would be interesting to try with older books as well–just as a book discussion, if an arrangement with an author proves difficult to work out.