We've just posted out our latest quarterly book box and now we have a week before we need to start up the next quarterly cycle. We call this our fallow week and we usually spend it catching up with other work*, tidying away, clearing the decks.
Before we know it, it's week one of the next quarterly cycle and the first job on the list is to start narrowing down the theme.
Weeks One + Two
First up, time to go back through our megalist, a document containing hundreds and hundreds of non-fiction titles, all published in the past year or so, which we've compiled from checking publisher catalogues, reading The Bookseller magazine and browsing bookshops.
A little snapshot of just part of our megalist
The megalist is grouped into broad topics like "planet/nature", "women", "LGBTQIA+", which are too generic for an actual box theme and don't in any way capture the actual essence of each book or how it might speak to other titles. But you've got to start somewhere!
Task one is to work back through the megalist and see what jumps out. There are always a few that have a kind of vibration about them, ones we just want to read.
So, while we're waiting for them to arrive at the library, we'll talk around what topics they might fit into and start scanning the megalist for other titles that could fall under the same theme.
More books are ordered from the library and requested from publishers. Our brains are starting to hum along the developing theme and ideas begin to jump out, perhaps for gifts or magazine covers.
Weeks Three + Four
By week three we know we have enough possible books to confirm our theme, so we debate the exact word we're going to use (weirdly harder than it sounds!) and start the search for a magazine cover image so we can send a theme announcement message out to our newsletter list.
For Autumn 2024, we've just this week settled on the theme WRONG. Here's a mock up of the magazine cover.
It's a fun challenge to find a visual image that expresses something about the theme without being too prescriptive
By now, books are arriving from publishers and the library orders are in. Our TBR pile is full of directions this theme might take us, including:
- How morals and ethics differ between generations and cultures
- Scandals and cover ups in the criminal justice system
- How we can learn from our failures and mistakes
- Whistleblowers
- Forgiveness, retribution and redemption
- Miscarriages of justice
- Why wanting to be right is destroying public debate
- Memoirs of people whose lives have gone spectacularly wrong
Now it's time to read in earnest.
Bearing in mind that when we launched Drift + Focus in Summer 2022, we'd both somewhat lost our reading mojo, it's a testament to the fact that you can re-ignite your reading focus that a stack of beefy non-fiction books to read no longer gives us the fear.
In fact, we both feel pretty thrilled to get stuck in. Here's the current TBR pile.
Trying not to reveal the actual titles!
Full transparency, this is actually for the next two boxes. We thought we'd get a jump on our Winter box so we can include info on the theme when we start to promote it to the Christmas gift guide press, which is pretty much starting now. We thought it might be easier to promote as a gift if people know the theme in advance.
So, that's where we're currently at. It's the end of week four and we're working our way through the pile.
One Autumn book is (almost 100%) decided, so now we're narrowing down which other book makes the perfect pair.
We really need to have decided by the end of next week (or the one after, at a push). Better get back to that TBR pile!
Wish us luck...
* Dave's main job is helping community businesses raise finance for community owned projects. Emma is a freelance illustrator and copywriter.