That's why, mere days before the birth of her second son, she called up her book publishing friend Laura Brading and suggested they get cracking on a business idea they'd been mulling over for several years.

"We met at mothers group with our first kids and then became friends though a book club Laura started," Ms Cranston said.

"I would always go to Laura to get book recommendations, because I just hate being on my phone all the time, so on the first day I went on maternity leave earlier this year I got in touch and said that we should have a chat."

That's how, in early February - at almost the same time as Ms Cranston's son, August - the two women's start-up, WellRead, was born.

The book subscription service, which delivers a brand new, carefully-curated brown paper package to subscribers each month, launched publicly in July.

"We're sending people books you might not necessarily hear about until they get nominated for awards, and they're the books that will end up forming the best books of the year - but you'll be reading them as they come out," Ms Brading, of Austinmer, said.

"If we'd existed last year, you would have been among the first people in Australia to have read Sally Rooney's [multiple award winning, Booker Prize longlisted] Normal People.

"We're doing that so people don't already own the books, but also because there's something special about having read these books in the early days.

"They'll be books that reflect a diverse range of themes and authors, but we want them to have that magic quality of just being a really terrific book."

In its first three months, the business has proved much more of a success than the pair could have imagined.

"We now have strangers that we're sending books to," Ms Brading said, noting their audience stretches through country NSW, regional Queensland and Western Australia.

"We'd get a new subscriber and we'd be like 'do you know this person?' and there'd be these people just trusting us to curate their library."

"A few weeks in, we got to the stage where we could tell each other when we actually did know the person, because there were more people we didn't know," Ms Cranston said.

With a lean, canny business model that they can run from home, mainly through Instagram and Facebook, and that taps into the growing subscriptions economy and the on-trend rejection of overexposure to the digital world, the success should be no surprise.

"It is a bit of a trend, that people have been on their phone and now they're getting into this slow living type thing," Ms Cranston said.

"That's kind of what I aspire to in my life. I just think you can get a much fuller experience from a book, you get involved in these characters, in their lives and they stay with you for a really long time and for a good reason.

"That contrasts with the anxiety driven Instagram feeds that some people have. I also just feel so guilty when I'm on my phone all the time."

Ms Brading said they were well aware of the irony of starting an Instagram-based business asking its customers to reject their phones in favour of old-fashioned printed books.

"You've got to make sure you're on your phone to begin with, but then get off it!" she joked.

"But then back on again, because we have a Facebook book club group that you can be part of too," Ms Cranston laughed.

Perhaps the most risky part of their idea was that readers are given absolutely no choice in what they receive each month, and have no idea what it is until it arrives on their doorstep.

"This was definitely something we thought might be limiting," Ms Brading says.

"We toyed with the idea of building a website so that we know people's preferences. But it actually something people love because I think it takes away from that anxiety of choice. It also puts a lot of pressure on the book, so it means we have to believe in each book 100 per cent."

They launched with one of the most controversial books of the year, Three Women by Lisa Taddeo. The non-fiction account of three American women's sexual desires in raw and gritty detail has attracted a cavalcade of critical attention since its release.

"I was thrilled we could launched with a book like that, because I think it's part of an incredibly important conversation being had in society at the moment," Ms Brading said. "But I was apprehensive too, because my father-in-law was an inaugural member."

Thanks to the success of their adult offering, the women have launched a kids' subscription, which will deliver a new, hard-back children's book to subscribers each month, starting from November.

This venture is just as much for their own sanity as for their children,.

"We believe surrounding yourself with books and literature and doing the same for your kids is one of the most important parts of childhood," Brading said.

"And we know it's so important to have books at home, and read books - but it's also very important, especially for parents, to have fresh books to read," Cranston said.

"Your kids' book library can get exhausted pretty quickly, so being able to freshen it up every month is, we think, a good idea."

While Ms Brading works at Thirroul's Collins Booksellers and Ms Cranston plans to return to her job in Sydney when her maternity leave comes to an end, both are hoping their little venture continues to grow, allowing them to eventually do it full-time.

"We would just love it, because books are this little corner of society that you can feel really good about," Ms Brading said.

"It's sort of like an antidote to the vacuousness or brevity of some of the other things we consume.

"I think right now people really do want to go deeper and experience something that last longer than a few minutes or a flick of the thumb."