How to choose your WellRead subscription

Start with who it's for

Choose a subscription for yourself or someone else. If you're sending a gift, you can select a gift subscription during purchase.

Choose your subscription type

Select an ongoing subscription if you'd like books to continue each month. You can manage, skip, or cancel at any time through your account.
Choose a prepaid gift subscription (3, 6, or 12 months) if you're gifting for a set period.

How many should I order?

Most readers only need one subscription per person.
If you're purchasing for multiple people, we recommend placing separate orders, with a different email address, so each subscription can be managed individually.
Choosing a quantity of 2 or more on this page sends that many copies of the same month's book – it doesn't send different titles.

Confirm your details

Add your delivery information, include an optional message if gifting, and complete checkout.

From there, each book is thoughtfully selected and prepared for the next available delivery.

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing

What’s included each month?

Each delivery includes one carefully selected book, along with reading notes and a letter explaining why it was chosen.

Every title is thoughtfully curated from new literary releases—both local and international—with a focus on quality, discovery, and lasting reading experiences.

The reading notes are designed to deepen the experience, whether enjoyed personally or shared in a book club setting.

How does delivery work?

Books are carefully packaged and sent at the start of each month, with most deliveries arriving within the first week.

When you subscribe, your first book will be prepared for the next available delivery—often the upcoming monthly selection.

If a selected title is tied to a future release date, delivery may follow shortly after publication.

Shipping is calculated at checkout and starts from $5.

Billing & subscriptions

Subscriptions are charged on the 20th of each month.

You can choose a monthly or every-other-month delivery. With an ongoing subscription, you can skip a month, adjust your delivery frequency, or cancel at any time through your account.

If you need any help managing your subscription, feel free to contact us—we’re always happy to assist.

Can I gift this subscription?

Yes — we offer prepaid gift subscriptions designed specifically for gifting.

You can explore our gift options here: Gift Subscriptions

When purchasing a gift, you’ll be able to include a personal message and choose when the gift is sent.

Gift subscriptions are prepaid for a set period, creating a thoughtful experience that begins when the recipient redeems their gift.

What if I’ve already read the selected book?

We carefully select new and notable releases to minimise the chance of this happening.

If you’ve already read the book, many customers choose to pass it on—sharing the experience with a friend, family member, or fellow reader.

As each selection is curated in advance, we don’t typically offer exchanges. If something doesn’t feel quite right, please contact us and we’ll do our best to assist.

In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work drew her into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long association with gardens. 

Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change.

The result is a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of gardens: not as a place to hide from the world but as a site of encounter and discovery, bee-loud and pollen-laden.

Readers & Their WellRead Moments