Subscription services are everywhere these days. We subscribe to watch shows or listen to music, we subscribe to get sent recipes and their ingredients, we can even subscribe to refill the ink in our printer. But for book lovers, there's Illumicrate.
Illumicrate delivers the book equivalent of Gucci directly to your door, with gorgeous and exclusive editions of fantasy and science-fiction titles for young adult to adult readers. The box also includes extra book themed goodies that straddle the line between specific book merchandise and products that general book lovers will covet. Founder of Illumicrate, Daphne Lao Tonge spoke at the 2023 Bookseller Children's Conference on a panel about curating book-based subscription boxes, praising her curation team's ability to create items that will appeal to a wide range of fandoms and those that love books regardless of the fandom.
While they don't want to just focus on fandom, Daphne did express that she wants to level the playing field between fandom for TV and film and fandom for books.
"In YA there's a lot of fandoms. There's a lot of merchandise associated with film and tv fandoms but not so much about books, so that's the kind of experience that we're trying to give to our subscribers. The fact that you can also have beautiful bits of merchandise for these books that you're a really big fan
of, much like if you were a fan of a tv show or film."
To this end, each box contains (as stated on Illumicrate's website):
In addition to making products for die-hard fans of books, Illumicrate also aims to shed light upon creators and communities that often fall along the wayside in the publishing industry, selecting stories by authors from underrepresented communities such as authors of color and authors with disabilities in addition to debut authors who are trying to emerge into the fantasy and science fiction scene.
And by presenting these authors' books to readers as collectible pieces of art, Illumicrate ensures that the book is given the attention and treatment it deserves, whether that treatment is a beautifully sprayed and foiled edge or a custom-designed cover.
"It's really nice for people to think of books as sort of tangible, beautiful objects," Daphne remarked on the gorgeous Illumicrate special edition books. "All of these things, I think, draw customers to the books and make books seem kind of cool and fun…a beautiful object to own and cherish and interact with…it's almost like a little present every month."
Readers who wish to sign up for a monthly subscription can do so by joining a waitlist and will be notified via email when a spot opens up. In addition to their fantasy and science fiction boxes, Illumicrate also offers Afterlight, a bi-monthly subscription box featuring contemporary romance and the recently released Evernight quarterly subscription box for the horror genre, both of which also require joining a waitlist.
For those who can't wait to get their hands on Illumicrate's specialised products, their special edition
books and single boxes from past months are available for purchase.
After all, who doesn't need a little literary light in their life?
References
Nicholls, K; Tonge, D Lao & Saran, J. (2023) 'Books unboxed: the rise and impact of subscription boxes', Bookseller Children's Conference. County Hall, 2 October.
Illumicrate. (2021). Illumicrate | Book Subscription Box & Special Editions. [online] Illumicrate. Available at: https://www.illumicrate.com/ [Accessed 15 Oct. 2023].
All photographs, including cover photo, courtesy of Illumicrate.com
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