“I thought it would be too hard to compete with the big book selling companies like Amazon,” Mackay says. “We wanted to offer a service that mirrored the way music streaming services like Spotify use your personal taste to inform what you listen to.” Mackay believes his customers have picked up long-term reading habits – subscriptions are continuing to grow, even as many Australian cities enjoy life post-lockdown. “From our first month, we grew an average of 112% in sales per month until the end of 2020,” he says. “The last three months of the year were our biggest period of growth.”
On New South Wales’ south coast Laura Brading – who previously worked in publishing at HarperCollins and worked as a bookseller – found runaway success with WellRead: a curated subscription service with monthly picks dictated by Brading’s own tastes. WellRead launched in late 2019 but really took off in May 2020, with subscriptions tripling since the pandemic, and Brading sendi