Shipping & Deliveries

Unfortunately we can only ship to the UK at present. We don’t have any plans to offer our service internationally at present, because the shipping costs of regularly sending and returning books would be prohibitive.

On most plans, you’ll receive up to eight books in each delivery. When you send us a set of books back, we’ll swap the same number you sent us (and that counts as your “swap” for the month).

If you send us eight books back, we’ll send you eight new ones. If you send us six, we’ll send you six new ones. You get the idea! You can either return the full eight books each time, or choose to keep one or two at home to tide you over while waiting for the next set.

The number of times you can swap books in a month depends on your plan:

• Bronze: Swap books once a month, giving you up to 8 books per month
• Silver: Swap books twice a month, giving you up to 16 books per month
• Gold: Swap books three times a month, giving you up to 24 books per month

If you’re on our “Extended” band, we use a limit of six books instead of eight, because they’re much larger and longer! While we’d love to send more, we’re unable to ship more than six at a time because of the postage limits (weight and thickness).

Your very first delivery when joining is treated as a “swap” for that first month.

You’ll receive your first set of books within 2-3 days of joining Reading Chest. Then, the number of times you can swap books in a month depends on your plan:

• Bronze: Swap books once a month, giving you up to 8 books per month
• Silver: Swap books twice a month, giving you up to 16 books per month
• Gold: Swap books three times a month, giving you up to 24 books per month

When you send us a set of books back:

1. If you have a “swap” left in the current billing month, we’ll send you some new books out straight away
2. If you’ve used up your swaps for the current billing month, we’ll wait until your next payment goes out, and send your new books out either that day, or the following day

Your very first delivery counts as your“swap” for that first month.

We’ll do our best to get your first shipment sent out the same day you join (depending on the time of day!), or the day after.

Most of our shipments are sent by Royal Mail 2nd Class post, which takes a couple of working days to reach you. We can’t guarantee a specific timeframe, but you should have your first books within 3-4 days of signing up (hopefully sooner!)

We do offer the option to pause your account for a period of time. It’s most helpful if you’re going away for a longer period.

Just head to our cancellation page, and choose “We only need it over the holidays / we need to take a break”. This will let you pause your membership until a future date of your choosing.

Please note that your subscription will only be paused once we receive all your current books back from home, so don’t forget to pop them in the post back to us!

On the future date you chose, we’ll process a new monthly payment for you, and ship out a fresh set of books.

Only going away for a week or two? It’s probably easiest to keep your subscription running. All our packages of books are designed to go through a regular letterbox, so they’ll be on your doorstep waiting for when you get back!

Your books should usually within 48 hours of being sent. All our shipments are sent by Royal Mail 2nd Class post, which takes a couple of working days.

If your books have still not arrived one week after being sent, please let Reading Chest know by contacting us. Don’t worry — we’ll take responsibility for books which are lost in the post and issue some more.

You can check this any time by logging into your account and looking for the box that says “Wondering where your books are?”.

It will let you know if we’re still waiting to receive books back from you, if they’ve already been sent out, or if we’re waiting until an upcoming payment date to send your next shipment (if you’ve used up all your swaps for the month).