February 14th, 2012 / 1:00 pm
 Presses

A Book Prescription For Your Reading Pleasure

I often stumble across unique ways of exposing readers to new books. Chin Music Press (which I’ve discussed before here and here), has a pretty cool new program, BooksRx, where each quarter, a writer or artist curates a selection of independently published books and/or magazines around a theme. Their third installment, the Mardi Gras collection, will be available on the 21st and looking ahead, they want to incorporate titles from other presses. One installment is $40 and a yearly subscription is $100.

This seems like a great idea for indie publishers, who could band together and sell their books in curated, thematic packages. It will be interesting to see if this idea succeeds.What presses would you like to see participating in a venture like this?

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7 Comments

  1. February 14th, 2012 / 1:13 pm leapsloth14—

      Any of them. More interesting is to me is this theme idea. Who bundles them, or are the presses notified when a bundle is ordered? I’d probably buy some of this, though. Like a Pain bundle or a Breakup bundle or a Cheese bundle, whatever. Would be pretty cool.

  2. February 14th, 2012 / 1:26 pm Roxane—

      They are going to approach different artists and writers to curate a bundle and I believe they will say who curated the bundle, moving forward, when they announce it.

  3. February 14th, 2012 / 1:33 pm Sugar Bear—

      I hope the cheese bundle comes with cheese. And not some Kraft block of medium sharp cheddar. I want the good stuff.

  4. February 14th, 2012 / 2:03 pm Michael Filippone—

      I really like this. Thanks for sharing, Roxane.

      A couple years ago, in my university course Music Business Entrepreneurship, I devised a business plan for a company/product that would release quarterly bundles of totally exclusive music, merch, memorabilia & random cool stuff curated by indie-rock superstars (Flaming Lips, Spoon, Pavement, Mountain Goats, Neutral Milk Hotel, Bright Eyes, Sonic Youth,Pixies, Fugazi, etc.) Each bundle would be compiled by a different band or artist, and the idea was that you could have the artists you love send you a big fat package of the things they love.

      I was really excited by the idea, but when I presented my plan to a board of faculty – strictly for advice/critique, not funding or backing or anything – they were completely unimpressed. They also thought it lacked ambition because the plan purposefully strove to service very few people (about 1000 people for each mailing), even though it was priced at a high premium.

      It’s great to see that people are doing things similar to this when they said it can’t be done.

  5. February 14th, 2012 / 3:35 pm sam salvador—

      indie video games do bundles like this, and they’re pretty popular. i know the first one was pay what you want, not sure if they changed that yet, but a lot of people were willing to pay good money for good products that were worth supporting.

  6. February 14th, 2012 / 11:53 pm deadgod—

      Not sure if it’s “indie” – eh, pretty sure it’s Not Indie – , but NYRB Classics.  ‘J. G. Farrell’, say, or ‘Russian Lives’.

  7. February 17th, 2012 / 12:34 pm Carrie Jones—

      I love this idea! I would love to see Sparkplug (comics), McSweeney’s, Two Dollar Radio, Small Beer Press, Picturebox (comics),NYRB, Coffeehouse Press & Red Lemonade. I would love any and all cross genre, cross medium jimjammery as long as it is theme- or curator-based.