Please give us your elevator pitch:

What problem is your business solving?

Tell us three unique things about your business:

For every book sold, we donate one to a child in a rural community and plant a tree on your behalf!

All our packaging is recycled, recyclable, and biodegradable – from the hemp twine to the sticky tape. Upcycling non-renewable resources is a core value of Secret Book Stuff.

Amy and Laura’s love story has its roots in Secret Book Stuff… Amy was the anonymous person gifting Secret Book random acts of kindness around town, and Laura (a fellow writer and book-lover) was determined to meet the human behind it all. We had coffee, fell in love, and magically organically grew Secret Book Stuff into the social enterprise it is now.

What can attendees expect to see from you at TCS?

We are excited to offer on-the-spot Secret Book gifting, and a Secret Book Club subscription service where we send a pre-loved book to your door each month, personalised to your reading tastes. Nothing brings us more joy than having a conversation and finding the perfect book for you in that moment.

Can you tell us a little about your background and where the inspiration came from for your business?

Two years ago, Amy started wrapping her own huge book collection in recycled brown paper and leaving them around Newcastle with a handwritten note for people to find and take home as random acts of kindness. She was posting the locations on Instagram, and people started donating their books to keep the kindness project flowing, and also asking if she could send a secret book to a friend somewhere else in Australia who was maybe having a hard time. So Amy set up a simple website where you could tell her what your friend liked to read and why you’re sending a secret book, and she’d choose a book from her shelves, write a personalised note, and post it as a gift. When Amy and Laura met and fell in love, they started selling Secret Books at markets with a one-for-one initiative and working with different charities to get books into the hands of people in need. We’ve worked with so many different organisations and in 2019 donated 984 books to kids in remote communities by driving out to schools in NSW and QLD with limited resources, running kindness workshops and gifting books for the kids to take home. We are both writers, booklovers (Amy even has a PhD in literature!), and eco-conscious humans dedicated to spreading the power of books and kindness. We know firsthand that all it can take is one book, or one act of kindness, to change your life.