The Return of the Snail Mail Club

Why, in a world of disappearing things, we're finding our way back to the mailbox.

It started, somewhat ironically, with an algorithm.

I was scrolling through social media when I began noticing snail mail clubs crossing my feed. One or two at first. Then a few more. The algorithm, doing what algorithms do, perked up. Oh, you like this? Here are seventeen more.

And I did like it.

At the same time, I was thinking about creating a business of my own. I was happy in my work as a copywriter and art director at The J. Peterman Company (perhaps you know and love their catalogue, The Owner's Manual, or you loved the parody of the company from Seinfeld), but I felt a strong pull toward making something I could put my own stamp on.

Quite literally, as it turns out.

A snail mail club sounded like the best way to bring together so many things I love. Paper, beautiful quotes, vintage artwork. A deep love of mail and the joy of finding something good in the mailbox. Feeling the weight (and lightness) of paper in your hands. 

I've been collecting literary quotes for over thirty years. For almost as long, I’ve felt the urge to put beautiful words on things. T-shirts, prints, jewelry, wall art. And now, ribbon. 

Words are wonderful on the page, of course. But I've always loved the idea of giving them another life off of it.

I love the astonishing scope of the world we can carry around in our pockets. I really do. But there are days when I feel like I can’t spend one more minute viewing the world through a piece of glass.

Scroll. Click. Close. Gone.

So much of what we see now disappears almost as quickly as it arrives.

Paper doesn't.

A letter can end up folded into a drawer and found again ten years later. A print can hang on a wall until you've looked at it so many times you can no longer remember the room without it. A postcard becomes a bookmark. A beautiful scrap of ribbon gets tied around something else and something else again. Words that first belonged to someone who lived two hundred years ago stake out a claim to a corner of your desk. 

I wanted to make something that could have that kind of life.

And I wanted the experience to begin before the envelope was even opened.

Because I have always thought that a walk to the mailbox can be one of the best moments of the day.

If there's something wonderful waiting inside.

Why Snail Mail Clubs Are Having a Moment

Turns out, I wasn't the only person craving this.

Snail mail clubs are everywhere lately: monthly letters, art, stickers, postcards, stationery, bookish things and all manner of charming little objects making their way through the postal system.

Even the news channels, on TV and online, are talking about them. 

Maybe we've reached the point where waiting for something to arrive slowly feels almost luxurious. 

I like to say this about my mail club: Think of it as a slow dance in a fast-scrolling world. 

And I think we're hungry for things we can keep.

Not because we want to abandon the digital world. I certainly don't. Six-Penny Stamp itself was born, in part, because an algorithm showed me something I might never have found otherwise.

But perhaps the pendulum has swung far enough in one direction that we're reaching for something on the other side.

Something analog and lasting. Something that doesn't require a password.

My Version of a Monthly Snail Mail Club

The Prose & Post Society became my answer to all of this.

Every month, I create an entirely new edition: two art prints pairing vintage artwork with literary quotes, a letter from me with each recipient's name written by hand in calligraphy, and a few bookish extras and bits of ephemera created especially for that month.

Then I put it all into an envelope and send it through the mail.

Again and again and again.

What began as an idea I encountered while scrolling has become hundreds and hundreds of envelopes traveling out into the world each month.

I love thinking about where they end up.

On refrigerators and bulletin boards. Tucked into books. Framed on walls. Passed along to someone else. Kept in a drawer for reasons the person keeping it may not even be able to explain.

That last one may be my favorite.

Because not everything has to be useful or optimized or engineered to disappear into the scroll.

We need things that anchor us to our place in the physical world. 

Something Wonderful in the Mailbox

I’m delighted by this return to snail mail, to letters, to paper. They said “Paperless society,” and we all said, “Nope.”

Chalk it up to nostalgia or screen fatigue. Maybe we remembered that anticipation can feel exquisite. 

Or maybe we simply miss opening the mailbox and finding something inside that was sent by another human being because they wanted us to have it.

I'm very glad we've found our way back to beautiful paper. That we haven’t lost our love for beautiful words that take up residence in that very particular place in our chest. And that so many of us are deciding we do care very much about letters, art, things worth keeping…

And that short walk to the mailbox.

Here’s to something wonderful waiting inside.