In Today’s Newsletter:

• Meelworm’s meelworld

  • What’s a cooperative????

  • Calling all business wormies

• Hot Worm Trends

• Around the web

  • An absolute gem of an article about Bookworm (!!!)

  • The Twilight review you didn’t know you needed (thx @sambivalent)

A couple updates from Meelworm (business worms come thru)

You may remember from the last Dirt that Bookworm is entering our reader-owned cooperative era!! I’m excited & honored to announce that we were accepted into the very cool, very ~selective~ Start.coop accelerator, which provides training & support to up-and-coming cooperatives. The program kicked off this week IRL in Washington DC. I obvi brought the worms:

As it turns out, most people don’t actually know what a coop is or why they’re important. Let me tell you babes, it’s an ancient way of doing business that allows for much more equitable outcomes for all parties involved. Cooperatives are people-centered businesses that are owned, controlled and run by and for their members. Coops work for the benefit of their members, rather than earning profits for investors. And coops can look really different from one another! Think REI compared to your local cooperative grocery store (both coops, with totally different structures and rewards).

So over the next 12 weeks, Bookworm will be ironing out the details of how our cooperative will look, and how exactly it will function. What I do know is this: you will be able to be a member-owner of Bookworm, because you deserve it! The work you put in to our beautiful community should be recognized and rewarded (with decision-making power & $$ cash kickbacks $$). I fundamentally believe that social apps don’t have to be the exploitative, attention-demanding, data-selling toxic mess that most are today (*cough cough* meta *cough*). And Bookworm is going to prove it!

And for all of you out there (me) whose secret dream is to open a bookstore/cafe, soon you’ll be able to be a co-owner of a book app (almost as cozy! and with more worms! and much less financial risk!).

I’ll let that be a segue for my request:

Around the web:

Make me cry why don’t you???

I sat down with RitaMarie Pepe for Grain of Salt magazine to talk about bookworm, community, and the cooperative future we’re all building together. It’s a really beautiful piece that I am so honored to share with you.

The Twilight review you didn’t know you needed

I distinctly remember reading Twilight when it came out and thinking “wow. THIS is the epitome of romance.” Which is to say, I really needed this review 15 years ago, to drag my teenage self back to reality.

So, without further emotional unloading, I present the Twilight review of the century written by @sambivalent:

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more updates about our cooperative business model!

xoxoxo,

Amelia Goodman (@meelworm)