You pick how many books each month? You just use an algorithm though, right? I bet you just give everyone the same book, don’t you?
These are just some of the disbelieving questions I get when I tell people I hand-pick up to 500 books each month for Mr B’s reading subscribers. Yes, 500. Yes, each individually hand-picked. It’s a big job and not something any of the booksellers at Mr B’s take lightly.
What sets us apart from other subscriptions out there is our team’s vast experience with recommending books to bibliophiles. As one of the country’s leading bookshops, Mr B’s has built its reputation on unrivalled book knowledge and passion, helping us hand-sell thousands of books in store each year. It is that vital experience that we bring to our reading subscribers as well.
So, how do we do it? Well, every picking day starts the same way: a large pot of coffee and a round of toast. Then it’s time to try and find the perfect book for hundreds of customers. Every one of our subscribers has filled in a detailed questionnaire, outlining their reading tastes, including genres, books and authors they love, and – often as indicative as anything else – those they hate. And every subscriber is different – our job is to read between the lines and find them their ideal next read.
Sometimes, I open a new subscriber’s questionnaire and immediately see the path ahead. The dots all connect and experience tells me what they will love. Or, as is often the case, I have just read something perfect for them. Others leave me wandering around my library, scouring the bookshelves and trying to remember that Venezuelan magic realist novel I read a decade ago. Another might need the expertise of my colleagues, who are always there to lend a hand. Having by now selected more than 20,000 books for subscribers, I usually have a good idea of what to pick. But we are always learning; there are always new customers, new books, changing reading tastes; each one adding to our knowledge, building connections, and making us even better at what we do.
Every new subscription presents a fresh and exciting challenge, whether they are looking for non-fiction, something light and breezy, dragons and orcs, Nordic noir, dense literary fiction, or any other genre. This knowledge, experience, attention to detail, and determination to get the right book in the hands of our customers, is what makes the Mr B’s Reading Subscription the best on the market. This is tailored, dedicated customer service you don’t get from an algorithm.