A few months ago I heard about The Bookworm Box on a Facebook page I follow. The premise is pretty amazing: for a fee, you receive a monthly box subscription where you are promised books (signed by the author/s) along with some author swag. The contents of the box are a surprise until you get them and 100% of the proceeds goes towards charity. So all of the money you pay for this box, aside from the shipping costs, is going to worthy charities. The entire program is organized by Colleen Hoover, a popular author in her own right, so you know that the books and contents of the box would be pretty decent considering her connections already.
So I obviously jumped right in.
Now, I debated long and hard between this and Lit-Cube, which is a similar service however they are a profit based business versus charity. Of the two, Lit-Cube is hands down almost half the price. Their boxes contain a t-shirt (most months) and far more "goodies" than The Bookworm Box does. The downside to Lit-Cube is that the books you get are more of what I would consider indie-published books versus The Bookworm Box where these are more developed authors, usually under larger publishers. But for that difference, you are paying for more. My first month subscription cost me $52. They have since changed the shipping service they use, so I believe my next box will cost me around $47. Not a huge price cut, but it helps. The Lit-Cube subscription is about $30 a month. The other thing? The Bookworm Box has a cap on how many subscriptions they can take because their items are collected by donation, so if you want to sign up, you have to check their website to see if they still have openings. Lit-Cube does not have that kind of cap so you can sign up whenever you want. Which is why I bit the bullet and signed up for The Bookworm Box a few weeks ago, they were close to being full.
Now with all of that, you want to see what I got, don't you?
Well this is what shows up in your mail. A cute little box that honestly is the perfect size for mailing gifts, so I'm saving that. I'm doing a lot of swaps in the next few months so I'll use this for that.
When I open it up there is a small note from Colleen Hoover talking about new things happening, etc.
Here are all of the contents. I got TWO books (which was nice because I thought I'd only be getting one), two pens (which both write very nicely), two bookmarks, a worm magnet, and two other magnets.
Both books were signed, as promised.
Overall? The "swag" is kind of lame. If I had to choose a box subscription based on swag alone, given the pictures I've seen of Lit-Cube boxes, that's the subscription to go with. Based on books, which is the point of your subscription, The Bookworm Box had better books. I haven't read these yet, but based on covers and back cover descriptions, these both sound like books I would enjoy.
Do I feel like I got $52 worth of stuff? No, not even close. Both books together would cost me maybe $30 at a bookstore, less if I ordered online. The pens are nice, but are we getting pens every month? That will get lame real quick considering all my pen cups are full. Magnets? Meh. I don't really care for them and the one shaped like a heart was so badly printed I just tossed it out.
I've already paid for my July box, so I figured I would give it three months to see if I'll continue. To be honest, I'm interested in the Lit-Cube subscription as well because for the cheaper price, it might be the way for me to go.
3 comments:
Great review. Let us know what you think after the three months
Cynthia @craftoflaughter
I haven't heard of a book box subscription. I like the idea, but it would be disappointing to feel like you weren't getting your money's worth. Maybe the next one will be a better deal/more impressive. Fun to try, though!
I'm so bummed out for you. The description of everything sounded so cool! Hopefully the next box will be better!
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