Donate To A Book And A Hug

What Makes A Book And A Hug Unique?

Our site was started in 2009 as a place for kids, parents, teachers, librarians, and more find great books in a safe environment. Unlike many other book sites that allow anyone to find materials that aren’t appropriate for minors, our site is focused exclusively on helping find books for kids. We developed the four Reader Personality Types that can help kids begin down their areas of interest and serve as a starting point on their reading journey. And we built on that foundation with a robust search system, the ability for readers to write their own reviews, and a database of almost 28,000 books and counting.

And everything we offer is totally free. We don’t run ads. We don’t charge membership fees. We don’t lock our content away behind a paywall. And we don’t try to get you to buy stuff on Amazon. Sure, that’s what everyone else does. But we do it because we believe that every child deserves a book and a hug, not just the children whose parents or teachers have enough cash to pony up for a premium plan.

We Do A Lot With A Little

Our site works best when used hand-in-hand with your local library. And in many ways, our site does resemble a library, as every book is carefully categorized and tagged with meta-information to make it more searchable. But libraries are subsidized and supported by a steady income, whereas everything we do, we do at our own expense—and have done since 2009.

The simple fact of the matter is that running a website like this isn’t cheap. In addition to the cost of good web hosting, we also pay monthly premiums for specialized software that makes our site run, such as JReviews or SiteSearch360 (both of which are great, BTW). We also have to pay for things like website security and domain name registration. But perhaps our biggest expense is that of ongoing web development. Websites are a lot like houses—if you don’t take good care of them and maintain them constantly, they can easily burn down in front of your eyes. Plus, web technology is always changing, so unless we continue to evolve and iterate, our site will become obsolete and useless before you know it.

All of these things cost money. But we’ve learned over the years how to be efficient, how to run lean and mean, and how to do a lot with a little. Think about it: Other book sites are run by big companies with big incomes who often are hoping to profit off of you somewhere down the road. But we’re not here to make a profit. And that means that everything we offer, we offer because we want to help kids find books they love. That’s it. And that passion has helped us stay afloat and keep the lights on for over fifteen years and counting, despite the challenges (and the expense).

How You Can Help

Your donations help in two ways. First, they help keep the lights on—literally. We’ve already made the case for how much a site like this costs, and any help with that will go a long way. But your gifts also help by empowering and enabling us to build bigger and better things. One of the great things about A Book And A Hug is that we’re always looking forward to the next big feature or improvement that makes our site that much more useful. With the aid of your generous donations, we could do so much more. And since there are no additional administration costs, 100% of your donation goes directly to helping us fulfill our mission. We will always strive to use every penny in the most efficient way possible—it’s in our DNA at this point. And a few extra pennies would go a long way to that goal.