When It’s Right & When It’s Not: Bookish Candle Making with Kristen

Reading is not an isolated activity. While the consumption of words is between the reader and the page, communities have formed around written work since ink first dripped onto a page. Instagram has become a place for many book lovers to post aesthetically pleasing photos of books and to talk about their current reads. This community is known as “bookstagram.” I sat down with Kristen, a “bookstagrammer” and bookish candlemaker, and asked about her experience with the Instagram book community and her candle making business.

LEX: What I really love about your Instagram account is not only are you taking gorgeous photos of books, but you have made this side business of creating candles based off books. I love it; I think that it’s a really interesting form of “fan art,” if you will.

KRISTEN: Yeah, it’s kind of a weird, random thing when you tell people that you do it and they’re like, “You do what on your weekends?” [Laughs.] Like, yeah, it’s random but it’s a lot of fun.

LB: Tell me a little bit about how you got started. The chicken or the egg: which came first? Your Instagram or your Etsy shop?

KW: They both started out at the same time for the same purpose. It was due to where I was in my life at that point. It was 2019, I was just graduating with my master’s. I was working full time doing technical writing work. All day I would be going through manuals of engineering writing: things that were really dense and difficult and took a lot of brain power to do. Then I’d go home and work on my master’s. It was heavy rhetoric reading. It’s very theoretical, and I’m very practical so it was tough for me.

When I got to the end and graduated in December of 2019, I had a weird period where I felt like I had my life back. It was so weird, and I didn’t know what to do with myself because I had time for once. Like, what’s that? I was trying to reconnect with different hobbies. When I was young, I always loved to read, as a lot of people on bookstagram were big readers as kids, too. I was the same way. And then I realized that due to school I had only read about 8 books that year. I thought, “God, I’ve really got to get back into reading, that sounds like such a fun thing.”

During Christmas my sister had gotten me a little Pemberley candle [based off Pride and Prejudice], which was the first time I realized that having book candles was a thing. The Pemberley candle was from From The Page, and they’re a fantastic candlemaker. I fell in love with that, I thought that was cool. I thought, “I’ve got to learn how to do this, and I’m going to read, and it’s going to be great!” I started the [Instagram] account, started my Esty shop, and learned from the internet how to make candles. l live in Dallas now, and we have two really good candle suppliers in the area that are local. I stopped by to talk to those people, got all my supplies, learned how to make them, put them out, and started both accounts at once.

LB: Whenever I comment on your Instagram, I see the same people in the comments. Do you feel like you’ve formed a community on Instagram?

KW: Totally. That was one of the exciting things about getting back into reading and finding that bookstagram community. I’ve heard so many people tell the same story, but you get on there and you’re like, “My people!” Because in my own real life—not that Instagram isn’t real—but in my own day-to-day life, the people I interact with are not readers. My husband is just now going through Lord of the Rings. Meanwhile, I’m reading like ten different books, and this is so exciting! It actually takes a lot of pressure off him, because I can go to bookstagram and just talk to people about books and it’s wonderful. I love that.

LB: What do you like to read? What genres do you gravitate towards? Because there will be something that pops up on your Instagram story and I think, “Oh, that’s interesting!”

KW: Well thank you, that’s exciting. I stick mostly in the vein of chunky fantasy novels, apparently. Most of what I read right now is fantasy. Every time I deviate I don’t feel as much of a connection to it. Fantasy and sci-fi is my happy place, and then on top of that: classics. I’ll read Jane Austen; I love Jane Eyre; I love the Brontë sisters—all their stuff, really.

LB: Do you feel like you’ve influenced people to read a certain book, or have people influenced you to read a certain book? Can you talk about that type of influence in the book community?

KW: When I go and look at books on Instagram, usually the things that pull me out of just like, “‘Wow, pretty picture,’ scroll” versus, “Wow, I’m going to read that post, or I’m going to check out that book, or I’ll add it on Goodreads.” The difference between those two: One is, do I know that person? If it’s someone I know and I talk to a lot and I engage with, I absolutely am more likely to put it on my to be read list. And two, if I really like them and trust their “book sense.” When they post a review and the review is really honest, I feel like it’s not just “everything is great.” I love when they’re like, “No, no, I have a real problem with this book, but it’s still really great”; I really appreciate that honesty. If it’s a person I trust and it’s a person I like and I engage with a lot, I absolutely pay a lot more attention.

As a small business, I don’t make a ton of candles, so what I do make I have to be very purposeful about. As much as I’d love to make candles for every really exciting book that comes my way, those don’t sell. So I have to mostly stick to the big names that people really recognize, because if people recognize it, they’ll buy it. But every now and then I’ll get a book that I’m like, “This is too good not to have a candle for.” Or I’ll just get really emotional about it and I just need to go design a candle to get over my book hangover.

The funny thing about those books is they never sell very well—they don’t. But they're also the ones that have the most conversation. People will come and they’ll say, “Oh my god, I've never heard of this, but it was obviously good enough that you wanted to make a candle. What's it about?” And so those almost get a little bit more influence just because it’s boosting awareness. If it’s a book no one’s really heard of, they’re like, “Oooh, what’s that? It’s good enough to have a candle made for it.” There have been a few people who will buy books based on that. I think that awareness factor really makes a difference in just being able to see it. And then if someone shares it with you if they don't have the book, and they're sharing a candle—that conversation keeps going. I think it does influence, maybe not a ton, but sometimes it's just a game of getting in front of people's faces. And finally they start to recognize, “Oh, I know what that book is!” As opposed to: they've seen one post and it’s great—that doesn't really convince people. So when they start seeing it multiple times, it starts something in their brain where they're like, “Maybe I do need that!” And it goes that way. Yeah, that's kind of the game.

LB: Can you tell me a book or two that comes to mind as an example for that kind of situation?

KW: Have you ever heard of Crown of Feathers by Nicki Pau Preto? It’s a really excellent title where she poses two sisters against each other, and  there's something about their dynamic that's just really cool. On top of that, the main character has to dress as a boy to get into the school, because they don't let girls into the school. And the magical creature they focus on is phoenixes, which I thought was unique.

For me that book was just a standout; like wow, this is going to be a big thing because it was new at the time. The candle I made to match was called Phoenix Riders. I think to this day there's not a lot of people who have heard about it as much as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. It's not one of those, but I still get people who will post the candle, and they're wow’d, and the conversation is continuing that way.

LB: I really love that! I wish I was artsy enough to create something based off a book.

KW: It’s a weird, fun process.

LB: I’m just curious: what is your process? When you have a book and you want to make a candle for it, how do you figure out what you want it to smell like?

KW: That’s a good question. Sometimes the author is really nice where they’re like, “This character smells like this”; and I'm like, “Yes!” And then I go and figure out what that would be like. And then there are some candles where I'll make three or four different scents and just poof, it comes out like a witch’s brew. But it’s a very creative process. You know when it’s right and you know when it's not, and there's no real good explanation as to why. There's a lot of different ways that it comes out, but it's very fun when I have a new idea. I go to all my scents and start mixing and matching and seeing what's going on. And then bug my husband to smell all of them.

LB: Since being in this candle making process, have you met a lot of other candlemakers both on Instagram and in person? Especially maybe with that bookish aspect to it as well.

KW: I've built up a small community of candlemakers that I harass into talking with each other every now and then. The group comes and goes. Some makers really don't want to talk a lot because it's their business or some of them feel like they don't want to have trade secrets out. So there is a really fun little community for bookish candlemakers that I've been slowly trying to build up. They're really helpful whenever something goes wrong. It's a good support system.

LB: You've been doing this for about two to three years now. Do you have any future plans for the next few years?

KW: I was thinking about this earlier, because I feel like if you had asked me in a week I’d have a different answer. For me it's a passion project. I have a full-time job that, since my role has transitioned, has become very, very busy. You might have noticed, too, if you were looking through my Instagram profile. I used to post every single day, and now it's maybe once a week.

Now my candle making process is just when I have inspiration and when I want to do it. I used to be much more methodical and planned, though. I have a small community of people I talk to regularly. It's a small business principal—an Instagram marketing principal—that you know you have your core group of people that you talk to a lot and who buy from you regularly, and then the rest of it is a game of getting new people in.

Someone is only going to buy a candle so many times. If they buy a candle once, that’s great; they might come back, and they might come back a third time if they really like me. But then I have people who, every time I make a drop, they’ll grab something. In Instagram marketing you really have to bring in those new faces.

That's what I see when I think of my growth in the future, knowing that I'm not going to have as much time to post and give attention to my business. I almost see it stagnating a little bit, which is good for me because it fits my life better. It's still profitable, so I'm able to continue doing it in a more manageable way.

LB: I really like that: not every passion project has to become your day job and that's totally fine.

KW: It would terrify me if making candles was my day job. And I write a little bit, too, on the side; I’ve been trying to gain more creative writing skills. You only have so many hours in the day. It's what makes you happy at the end of it, so what makes me happy is having these conversations, connecting, and just being creative.

LB: My final question is: what is your current favorite book? Favorite author? What would you recommend to me?

KW: In general, what I like to recommend is Pride and Prejudice. I think it's a fantastic book: it's funny; it's pretty accessible compared to some of the works of that time; I just love it. I reread it at least once a year, sometimes twice. It’s a comforting thing for me.

What I'm reading right now—have you ever read the Mistborn series, or are you familiar with Brandon Sanderson at all? The Mistborn series is really great on its own as a book, and then he finished that trilogy. He then did a big time skip before starting a second one. It is not as good as the first trilogy, but I am in it for him. So I've been reading through that; I don't know if I'd recommend the second one, but the first is really good.

What are you reading that you're really excited about right now?

LB: I’ve never read the Percy Jackson series before, but it’s my boyfriend’s favorite series. We're in a long-distance relationship right now, so whenever I see him, I take my copy of The Lightning Thief and he reads me a few chapters.

KW: That’s a very good, fun series; it's a really great one to read with him.

You can find Kristen on Instagram at @candles.lit.creations and on Etsy at CandleLITCreations20.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.