Whither book groups?

I'm a member of a Cheshire book group that has just received a letter from Chester saying that they have 75 book groups with 40 on a waiting list so rather than invest in the scheme they are going to cut the older ones loose! We've had a short discussion, I've created this blog - I've blogged entries previously elsewhere and here. A number of avenues to explore were suggested:

• Suggest to Cheshire that if they introduce subscriptions for the 'older' groups then the groups will continue to expand rather than potentially stifling them - there is also the potential of more people appearing at their author events rather than depriving us of this information
• the letter suggests reserving the books (which we'd have to decide upon) but getting all the books at the same time would seem to be difficult to coordinate (unless they have something in mind?)
• Use Waterstones 3 for 2 offer buying 12 identical books at a time
• Suggest to Waterstones - that's really the only bookshop in town (Macclesfield) for us - that we'd buy 12 identical books 12 times a year and what discounts do they do?
• Do groups of similar books so we're not all getting the same book every month
• Combine with other local book groups with some sort of rotation of stock (aha!)
• Get a base of suggested books by each producing a list

Some of these suggestions overlap!
If other book groups in Cheshire who have also received this letter read this and want to comment on this entry - maybe we can share ideas and get other suggestions and maybe a bit more pressure.
I'm going to link back to this entry from my other blogs and so - hopefully - this blog will get some reasonable google listing!