What I Think of Bookish Subscription Boxes

With yesterday's post, I thought I'd share my thoughts on bookish subscription boxes as a whole. If you don't know what a bookish subscription box is, it's a box that usually contains one book along with some bookish merchandise that relates to the book somehow. As the name suggests, you do subscribe to getting a bookish box, and most bookish box subscriptions arrive around once a month.

The bookish subscription boxes I hear about the most on BookTube and Bookstagram are Illumicrate, Fairy Loot, and Book of the Month. Personally, Book of the Month called out to me the most. This is because, as I mentioned yesterday, most bookish subscription boxes cater to genres like YA, fantasy, and contemporary fiction. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these genres. However, as someone who reads maybe 2-3 books from those genres per year, bookish subscription boxes weren't really calling to me. (When I'm talking about those genres, I'm talking about YA, fantasy, and contemporary fiction on their own with no connections to history or historical fiction.)

I had toyed with the idea of subscribing to Illumicrate, mainly because you get a bunch of other bookish merchandise along with the book of the month. However, while I was a bit interested in the books that Illumicrate sent out previously, the genres that Illumicrate supported and contributed to aren't genres that I go for a lot. As I mentioned before, I read around 2-3 books outside of the history, historical fiction, and mythology genres per year. Getting to 3 books outside of those genres per year is a once every 5 years type of situation.

I'm not saying any of this as a way of saying "bookish subscription boxes are bad." They're not. They're fun, they can be cost-effective for many people. (Think of BotM - 1 to 3 hardcover books for 10-20 USD? That is an amazing price.) However, I do think that bookish subscription boxes should cater to more genres.

Here are some book subscription box recommendations, according to Esquire: The 15 Best Book Subscription Boxes for Avid Monthly Readers.