FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE · July 30, 2026
More Than 50,000 Readers Are Taking On a 2,500-Year-Old Book, One Page a Day
Family-run press Airplane Mode Publishing House puts the complete Tao Te Ching on a daily schedule, and gives the whole year away free by email.
July 30, 2026. While the wellness industry sells calm by subscription, one of the fastest-growing wisdom books on Amazon is a Chinese text written around 2,500 years ago, sliced into daily pages. 365 Days of Tao, from the independent family-run press Airplane Mode Publishing House, spreads the complete Tao Te Ching across a year: one verse and one short reflection each morning, about five minutes a day.
The format is working. The book sold close to 9,000 copies in its first year, reached #1 Best Seller status in its Amazon category, and holds a 4.7-star average across more than 200 ratings. Sales tripled in December's gift weeks, then stayed elevated through January as resolution season met a book that conveniently begins on January 1. Across its catalog of daily readers, which includes 365 Days of Philosophy and 365 Days of Zen, the press counts more than 50,000 readers, with a 4.6-star average across 1,000+ Amazon ratings.
The unusual part of the model: the press gives the entire book away. A free daily email delivers the same page every morning, in step with the print edition, along with a printable companion journal. Readers can take the whole year without paying anything.
The press began as a household complaint. Co-founder Casper Oppenhuis de Jong - Baerts, who previously worked at Uber, kept looking with his wife for daily readers with substance and coming back with the same two books. "There's The Daily Stoic, there's Tolstoy's A Calendar of Wisdom, and then the shelf runs out," he said. "Everything after that was either homework or wishy-washy self-help. We wanted daily pages that are substantial and genuinely fun to read, so we started making them ourselves."
"Nobody needs another app promising calm in 30 seconds," Oppenhuis de Jong - Baerts added. "The Tao Te Ching has been telling people to slow down for 2,500 years. All we did was put it on a schedule a modern morning can actually survive: one page, with coffee, before the phone comes off airplane mode."
The books are written under the house pen name Dae Lee and edited by Robert Morgan.
The press pairs the book with a growing library of free guides on Taoism and daily practice, written for people arriving at the tradition for the first time, from what the Tao actually means to which translation to pick and what Taoism says about burnout.
365 Days of Tao is available on Amazon in ebook, paperback, and hardcover, in English and Spanish. The free daily email is at airplanemodepublishinghouse.com/tao.
About Airplane Mode Publishing House
Airplane Mode Publishing House is an independent, family-run press publishing one-page-a-day wisdom books for adults (the 365 Daily Reads series: Tao, Philosophy, Zen, Psychology, Mythology, World History, Forgotten Words) and watercolor early-learning books for children (Doodle Dogs). Less noise, more depth: every book turns a big subject into a five-minute daily page. airplanemodepublishinghouse.com
Media contact & assets
Casper Oppenhuis de Jong - Baerts, co-founder · hello@airplanemodepublishinghouse.com · casperodj.com · LinkedIn
Brand & logo kit (zip) · Book page · Review copies and interviews available on request.