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Indie Book Advent Calendars

We've been creating Indie Book Advent Calendars since 2020. Each one is personalised to the recipients reading tastes and matches our love of independent publishers with our love of the festive season and all of its traditions and history. Each week you'll get:

  • A preloved indie book in great condition, wrapped in pretty paper 

  • A parcel with a gift made by a small business, or made by me, and also including a festive recipe and an Advent Tradition from around the world. 

  • Access to our archive of recipes from the past 5 years

  • Weekly Cosy Advent Lives to open your parcels together with us and other bookish folk on Instagram 

  • A weekly email with additional festive or non-festive recommendations of some of our favourite things

We know it can be a tricky time of year for some people so we give you the chance to choose whether you'd like any festive books in your calendar, and whether you'd like to receive festive or non-festive recommendations in your weekly email. Advent Calendars are available for all ages from 0 upwards. Children's calendars are tailored for their age & reading confidence level, as well as giving the option to have double the books instead of the gifts. 

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Indie Book Advent Calendars exist because I (Bex) am an obsessive of all things festive season related, and because I couldn't quite let go of the amazing world of independent publishers that I spent so much time in over the 7 years I ran Ninja Book Box. Indie's publish some incredible things - they vary in size from the tiny micro presses to the bigger publishers like Faber, but they mostly have a niche or speciality that they are brilliant at and reading more indie books is a brilliant way to expand your bookish horizons. 

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I also love creating beautiful, quirky and immersive boxes of bookish goodies, and this is the last remnant of Ninja Book Box, which was, potentially, one of the weirdest book boxes out there but definitely one which put the emphasis on immersing, engaging and learning. The Indie Book Advent Calendar includes preloved books, because there are so many books circulating around the place that choosing second hand books for you all feels like a great way of keeping the cycle of book love going. I also love reading all of your preferences and then going hunting! 

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In my family, both growing up and nowadays, the winter season was one to be absolutely enjoyed from the earliest possible point (as a kid, that was absolutely no earlier than November 1st. Now it's maybe a little earlier, but that's because I now celebrate the transition of autumn into winter all the way through from September, in the interests of living mindfully blah blah blah and nothing to do with my love of bonfires, drinking hot chocolate, growing pumpkins and watching fireworks. I wish I had a firepit...). We have brought this through into the Advent Calendars, with our weekly Cosy Advent Lives on Instagram being a favourite tradition of many of you (and us!) and a lovely weekly moment to snuggle up and open our parcels together with festive snacks, fairy lights and whatever else brings the festive feeling for you. 

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Our calendar includes one book a week, because overwhelm is a real thing. As a person who acquires books as a hobby (a separate one to actually reading them), I appreciate the option to have just one book a week to focus on, and I know this is something our recipients also appreciate. Also, the expense of creating a calendar with 12 or 24 books would be prohibitive, especially while keeping the indie focus!

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The children's version of the advent calendar has recipes and traditions that are appropriate to their age range and there is a choice between four books with gifts or eight books without gifts, as (especially with younger children) books tend to be shorter, and additional books also means we can personalise the advent calendar for two children of different ages to share. 

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