If you’ve ever ordered a Book-style Box Series from me, you’ve probably rifled through the contents at 2 a.m. when you thought no one was looking—same. That’s why I get a lot of late-night DMs (yes, I still check my personal inbox even after work) asking one specific question: Do the books in this series have a foreword? It’s such a small, specific detail, but it matters a lot to people who buy these boxes for themselves, as gifts, or even as part of their small personal libraries. Let’s cut the formal jargon here, since none of us have time for that—let’s talk about the actual process, the why, and the facts. Book-style Box Series
First, let’s clarify what a Book-style Box Series even is, because a lot of folks mix it up with random gift sets. Unlike generic “book boxes” you see on social media that throw three random paperbacks in a decorative box, our series is built around duplicate-bound books. That means every title in the line has a hard cover that’s designed to match perfectly—same color, same finish, same spine width—so when you stack five, six, or even ten boxes on a shelf, they look like a single, cohesive book set, not a hodgepodge of random titles. I’ve been supplying these boxes for 12 years now, and back when I started, every single book we included had a foreword. Why? Because that’s what people expected—back in the 2010s, forewords were standard for nearly every new release, and even most reprints aimed to have one. But around 2018, we started getting feedback that a lot of our customers were skipping over forewords entirely. They’d flip past them to get to the first chapter, and we realized that if most people weren’t reading that section, was it necessary to keep it?
Here’s the thing: it’s not a yes or no answer—it depends entirely on the book. I can’t just slap a “foreword on every book” rule and call it a day, because every title we source has its own story. Let’s break down the two main groups in our series, because that’s where the confusion comes in. The first group is what we call “classic reprints”—these are books like To Kill a Mockingbird or 1984, the old favorites that have been in print for decades. For those, almost always yes, they have a foreword. Not just a random one, either—we work with our republishers to pick forewords that add something new, not just a rehash of the dust jacket blurb. For example, the 2021 reprint of The Little Prince we included in our Summer 2022 box has a foreword from a children’s literature professor who talks about how the book’s themes translate to teens today—way more interesting than the generic one from the 1970s. We skip the forewords that are just “here’s how great this book is” and go for the ones that feel like a chat with someone who actually gets it.
The second group is “newer contemporary titles”—books that came out in the last 10 years, like Lessons in Chemistry or Project Hail Mary. That’s where the mix-up happens. A few years back, I noticed a lot of our newer titles didn’t have forewords at all. Authors and publishers started cutting them to keep books shorter (and cheaper to print, which keeps our box prices reasonable for you). But sometimes, a foreword gets added later, after the book became a bestseller. We had a customer last month message us panicking because she bought a 2023 copy of Lessons in Chemistry for her sister, and when we included the 2024 reprint with a foreword from Bonnie Garmus herself, she wanted to swap her old one. So here’s the rule I live by now: for every contemporary book in our boxes, I make a point to check two things—1) does it have a foreword that’s actually worth reading, and 2) do our customers in our Facebook group mention missing that section when a foreword isn’t there?
Wait, let’s talk about our Facebook group, because that’s where most of this feedback comes from. We started it in 2020, during the pandemic, because people were stuck at home hunting for ways to spruce up their shelves. Now it’s 17k members strong, and half the posts are people showing off their Book-style Box Series collections, the other half are questions like “why does this copy of Normal People not have a foreword?” or “where’s the foreword for Project Hail Mary that everyone’s talking about?” A few members even pointed out that some publishers put forewords in the back of the book these days, not the front—people forget that, so they flip straight past the title page and miss it. I’ve had so many people tell me they’ve been skipping forewords for years, but when the foreword is by someone related to the author (a friend, a family member, another writer), it actually changes how they see the book.
Let’s get real about why this isn’t a trivial detail. A lot of our customers buy these boxes as gifts—for a graduate, a book club member, a parent. If you’re giving a book as a gift, the foreword is that little extra touch that makes the present feel intentional. It’s not just a book; it’s a curation, right? I remember a customer last year who bought a Book-style Box Series for her 16-year-old niece who loved sci-fi. The niece left a review (in our group, obviously) saying she never read forewords until she found the one in Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir—his friend, who’s a NASA engineer, talked about how he wrote the book after a work trip, and it made the story feel way more real. That’s the stuff I care about, not just checking a box for “foreword included.”
Now, let’s address the exceptions, because there always are. A small subset of books in our series never have forewords, and that’s intentional. First, really short books—we don’t want to add a foreword that would make the book’s total page count longer than necessary. For example, our copy of The Tao of Pooh has 128 pages total, so we skip the foreword to keep it tight. Second, some indie-published books—small presses rarely have the budget for a foreword, so we don’t add a random one just to check a box. I’d rather have a honest, no-frills book than a fake, thrown-together foreword that no one cares about. Third, a lot of poetry collections—forewords for poetry are usually the worst, just a critic rambling about the author’s life, not talking about the poems. We’ve had so many members say they skip poetry forewords, so we just leave them out.
Wait, I also get a lot of people asking if we add forewords ourselves, if the original book doesn’t have one. The answer is no. I never wanted to mess with the original text of a book. That’s a line I won’t cross. Part of the reason our Book-style Box Series works is that every book is the exact original edition (well, mostly original—sometimes we use reprints with matching covers) with no edits, no added content that the publisher didn’t approve. Adding a foreword would change that, and I think that’s important. If you want a book with a specific foreword, you can find it on your own, but our boxes are for the book as it was meant to be, plus that little curatorial touch of choosing which books to include in the first place.
Let’s talk about recent changes, too. This year, after our group survey last quarter (we sent out a 5-minute survey, like, who has time for longer?), 68% of members said they cared more about forewords than they did two years ago. So I made a call: for all 2024 Book-style Box Series titles, we’re prioritizing books that have a foreword—either original, or a newly added one from the publisher. That’s why our Spring 2024 box, which includes The Poet X and The Night Circus, both have forewords by the authors (wait, The Night Circus has a foreword by Erin Morgenstern’s friend, yes, that’s the one people love, not the old dust jacket blurb). I even worked with a few of our republishers to track down older editions that have better forewords, instead of just using the latest edition. For example, the 2015 edition of The Great Gatsby we’re using in our upcoming Summer 2024 box has a foreword from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s granddaughter, which is way better than the generic one in the 2020 reprint.
I know a lot of suppliers would just give you a generic answer—“it varies” or “some do, some don’t”—but I like to be honest with you. This isn’t a corporate line; this is what I’ve learned from 12 years of listening to customers, scrolling through our group, and opening boxes at 1 a.m. when I should be sleeping. The Book-style Box Series isn’t about selling a fancy box—it’s about giving people books they’ll actually care about, and small details like forewords add up. They turn a book on a shelf into a conversation starter, a gift that feels thought out, even a book that someone will reread because of that one extra page.
Wait, also, let’s clear up a myth: some people think forewords are just for old books, but that’s not true. We had a member last month who said she read the foreword in our 2023 copy of Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, where she talked about how she wrote the book after quitting her job to raise her daughter, and it made the book hit way harder. That’s a contemporary foreword, and it’s exactly the kind of thing we want. We’re not stuck in the past with our classic reprints; we’re keeping up with what readers actually want.
If you’re reading this and you’re someone who’s been on the fence about ordering a Book-style Box Series, or if you’re a returning customer who’s noticed the foreword change over the years, that’s all part of the process. I don’t have all the answers, and I change things when our customers tell me they want something different. That’s why we started the group, that’s why we do quarterly surveys, that’s why I still check my personal DMs at 8 p.m. after a long day of packing boxes. This isn’t a job for me—it’s a thing I do because I love books, and I love seeing people connect with them.
If you have more questions, or if you’re ready to place a wholesale order for your store, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m here to answer any question, whether it’s about forewords, cover colors, or where we source our books from. We can walk through the series, pick the right boxes for your needs, and make sure you get exactly what you’re looking for. No sales team, no confusing contracts, just someone who knows the Book-style Box Series inside and out, ready to help.
Flip-top Gift Box Series References:
- 2023 Book-style Box Series Customer Feedback Survey
- Publishers Weekly 2022 Report on Foreword Trends in Trade Books
- Internal Sales Data: Book-style Box Series Foreword Inclusion Rates, 2012-2024
- Facebook Book-style Box Series Community Forum, Member Discussions, 2020-2024
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