Have you heard of THE BOOKWORM BOX yet??
Colleen Hoover, one of the most talented and generous authors ever, has started an amazing new charity called The Bookworm Box that is pure awesomeness!! The way it works is that they have a special box that includes two signed books and swag sold on their website, and the proceeds all go to charity each month! Today I have a special interview with her explaining for us about how it works AND offering a chance for you to win one of the August boxes! Check it out… and scroll to the bottom to enter the giveaway!! 😀
THE BOOKWORM BOX: GOOD DEEDS. GREAT READS.
HELPING PEOPLE DISCOVER GREAT BOOKS
& GIVING BACK IS WHAT WE DO BEST.
Aestas: Hi, Colleen!! The Bookworm Box is such an amazing project! How did it all get started?
Colleen: I’ve wanted to do something for charity on a larger scale for a long time. I’ve had such a tremendous amount of good luck in the past three and a half years and I’m a big believer in paying it forward. I knew I wanted to do something that would make readers happy and also be able to support charities. I thought about doing a subscription box last year, but never got around to it. Then when I turned in Confess, I had a little time on my hands, so I called up my sister and said, “Let’s do it!”
Aestas: Can you tell us briefly how it all works? And what would be included in a “bookworm box”?
Colleen: I contact authors or publishers and either get donations or, depending on the amount of books I need, purchase the books at cost. The only catch is that the books have to be signed by the author. We then hold a “packing party” where all the books and donated swag are packaged into subscription boxes. Each subscriber gets a box with two signed novels, at least one of them a guaranteed bestseller, and book swag. The boxes ship out monthly and are $39.99, which is a great deal considering the books are signed.
Aestas: How has it been doing?
Colleen: How has it been doing? The first month, we had a cap of about 400 boxes. I thought it would take about a week to sell, but we sold out in four minutes! The same thing happened the following two months, even though we kept doubling the amount of boxes. We now sell 2,000 boxes a month and our subscription list is full, but we have cancellations, so we open up for sales one day each month. That’s 4,000 books I have to coordinate with authors and publishers each month, so even though we could probably open it up to more, we are at our max for our workload. The entire project is ran by volunteers and all profit goes to charity. The first subscription boxes went out in March, and as of July, we’ve donated $120,000 to various charities.
Aestas: It seems to have grown quite quickly! Do you have a main location now?
Colleen: We do! We actually opened a bookstore as an extension of the online store. All the books are donated by the authors and they’re all signed, so it makes it a one-of-a-kind specialty bookstore. It’s at 204 Main St. in Sulphur Springs, Tx. The store is also ran by volunteers. We were one of just a handful of bookstores to host EL James for a signing for her Grey release, so that was our first author signing! We are setting up a schedule to hold more author signings in the future.
Aestas: You’ve had so many awesome authors donate books to this project. Who are some of them?
Colleen: Oh, goodness. There are way too many to count! We’ve had a tremendous amount of support from the book community. The most surprising thing is when the authors donate books and ask that I not post about it. It’s inspiring to see these people donate without wanting anything in return. (Note: if you go to the main website and scroll down, there is a list of featured authors to check out!)
Aestas: What can people do to help?
Colleen: We are in great need of more books for the bookstore. 95% of our books are New Adult romance, and we would love to branch out and have different genres. We have very few male authors on the shelves, so that’s another area we would like to grow in. If anyone writes books, has signed books or knows an author, please let them know about our project. They can send as few or as many signed books to the bookstore. We’ve recently started having readers collect donated signed books from authors when they’re at signings and that’s been a tremendous help!
Aestas: What’s up next for the The Bookworm Box?
Colleen: Well, right now we’re just trying to adjust to the rapid growth of everything. We’ve had some kinks with third party shipping and payment processing and now that we’ve got those worked out, we hope we just have a couple of smooth months ahead of us so we can see if we’re capable of growing beyond the 2,000 books each month.
Aestas: Wow!! Thank you so much for chatting with us today! I can’t wait to watch this project keep growing!
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THE BOOKWORM BOX LINKS
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
To donate books/swag: go here.
To visit their physical store: go here.
If you are a publisher or an author and you want your books to be considered for The Bookworm Box, please email [email protected]
*** SPECIAL GIVEAWAY ***
Open Internationally. Void where prohibited by law. Must be over 18 to enter.
1 winner will get an August Bookworm Box