There is a question we’ve been asked several times over the past year.
With four subscription clubs now at Goldsboro, what makes PREM1ER special?
It's a valid question. On the surface, the answer might appear straightforward. We now have clubs dedicated to crime, science fiction and fantasy, and debut fiction. Each has its own identity, community, and rhythm.
So where does PREM1ER sit in all of this?
The answer is that it doesn’t sit alongside them at all. It sits apart.
PREM1ER was never designed to be a genre club. It was created for something much harder to define, and much rarer to find.
Not the best crime novel.
Not the best fantasy novel.
Not the most exciting debut.
Simply the best book.
But the truth is, it didn’t begin as a strategy. It began as a frustration.
I didn’t want to read the same kind of book over and over again. I didn’t want my shelves to become predictable. And I didn’t want to miss the books that, years later, everyone would wish they had discovered earlier.
I wanted discovery. And I wanted to fill my shelves with books that would last.
That was the beginning of PREM1ER.
For over twenty years, it has been built on a single, slightly obsessive idea. That somewhere among the hundreds of books published each month, there are one or two that feel different. Books that carry weight. Books that linger. Books that you finish and immediately know will still matter in ten years’ time.
Those are the books we choose. And crucially, they do not belong to one genre.
One month it might be a sweeping historical novel. The next, a quiet debut literary masterpiece. Then a thriller that feels sharper, more precise, more lasting than the rest. Occasionally, a speculative novel that transcends its category and becomes something universal.
PREM1ER follows instinct over category. Taste over trend. Longevity over immediacy.
The introduction of our other clubs has not changed this. If anything, it has clarified it. Each of those clubs does something specific, and does it brilliantly. They allow readers to go deeper into the genres they already love.
PREM1ER does something different. It pulls you out of your comfort zone.
It is a club for readers who do not want to read the same book again and again under different covers. Who are willing to be surprised. Who trust that the best reading experiences often come from the books they might not have chosen for themselves.
It is, unapologetically, a club for the promiscuous reader.
The reader who moves between genres. Who resists being defined by a single taste. Who understands that great storytelling does not belong to one shelf in a bookshop.
And it is also a club for the collector. Because discovery is only part of the story.
The books chosen for PREM1ER are not just powerful in the moment. They are chosen with an eye on what they will become. Books that will be talked about, returned to, passed on. Books that grow in significance, both emotionally and, often, materially.
Books you will be glad you owned early.
If the other clubs are beautifully curated rooms, each with their own atmosphere and their own conversation, then PREM1ER is something else entirely.
It is the front door. It is where discovery begins.
And perhaps that is why it matters now more than ever. In a world of increasing specialisation, PREM1ER remains deliberately broad. In a market that rewards categorisation, it resists it.
Each month, it asks a simple question.
Not “what is the best in this category?”
But “what is the best, full stop?”
And then it places that book directly into your hands.
Goldsboro PREM1ER
For readers who collect instinctively, read widely, and want to discover the books everyone else will be talking about tomorrow, PREM1ER remains the only place to start.
