Huntsville is home to a rather unique bookstore…a bookstore without an actual store.

What began as a pop-up book shop in 2017 has grown into quite the sophisticated operation for Lady Vowell Smith, founder and owner of The Snail on the Wall independent bookstore. A bookstore without a physical store certainly has its challenges, for which Smith has creative solutions.

For decades, independent, locally-owned bookstores have been displaced by large national bookstore chains and then online bookstores. But Smith said she’s noticing a resurgence of the independent bookstore and the sense of community that it brings.

A former college English professor and former editor at Southern Living and Coastal Living magazines, Smith started The Snail on the Wall as a pop-up bookstore, opening a booth at the annual Under the Christmas Tree holiday event. Her primary business model combines book recommendations and book sales with personalized, home delivery.

Front porch book delivery in a brown paper gift bag with a hand-stamped green snail logo on the bag is a personal touch that sets apart The Snail on the Wall from other book sellers.

Another creative idea for her store that became very popular right away was book bundles by genre or by interests, which made great gifts.

“I had very few books at that first booth, but I did book bundles and that kind of took off. I did themed book bundles, which I still do, especially around the holidays. It might be a historical fiction bundle, or it might be the mystery bundle, and people liked that it felt like gifts,” said Smith.

The name “The Snail on the Wall” comes from the story “The Mark on the Wall,” by one of Smith’s favorite authors, Virginia Woolf, and was the name of Smith’s blog at the time.

“This woman is sitting in a chair and she sees something on the wall and it makes her think about the war that’s just ended. It makes her think about the history of her life and her family, of time passing, and it makes her think about all these things. She’s not sure what it is on the wall. Her husband walks in at the end and says there’s a snail on the wall. So the idea of the blog was, I’m going to talk about books, but I’m going to make you think. Then when I decided to do the bookstore, it was kind of the same mission and it is still,” Smith reflected.

Today, Smith has delivery drivers, sometimes delivering 50 or 60 books a week after a big book release. But at first it was just her, often with her kids in tow, delivering four or five books a week.

The Snail on the Wall offers a quarterly book subscription where customers complete a questionnaire to help Smith and The Snail team learn customers’ reading interests and personally select books especially for them. This can be challenging but fun, Smith said.

“There are people that say, ‘I can’t find books, I can’t find anything I like. I like to read everything.’ But then we send them books that they’ve never heard of, and they find a new author that they didn’t know about. They are happy and that makes us feel like we did something good,” said Smith.

Smith partners with local businesses and organizations on bookish events including pop up events like “Books & Brews” book fairs for grown-ups at Straight to Ale brewery and this summer’s pop up bookstore at Constitution Hall Park.

Her favorite events, though, are bringing authors to the Rocket City.

She saw friends and family traveling to nearby Nashville, Tenn., and Birmingham, Ala., for author events, and recalled thinking to herself that Huntsville is right between these two cities and missing out.

“I knew that (author events) was one of the missions early on. What I didn’t know is how to bring authors,” Smith shared. “That was the biggest surprise, that not only am I marketing my bookstore to readers, I’m also marketing my bookstore to publishers to get them to send authors to us, and that is very important. You are trying to tell them that you can host an author event successfully, and that you know how to do it, that you can bring an audience, and that you can sell a certain number of books.”

The Snail on the Wall has done quite well bringing author events to Huntsville, with packed houses for well-known authors like Sean Dietrich, aka Sean of the South, Ian Morgan Cron, best known for writing about the enneagram, and the four bestselling authors who make up the “Friends & Fiction” podcast – Kristy Woodson Harvey, Patti Callahan Henry, Kristin Harmel and Mary Kay Andrews.

“Authors are willing to come if you reach out to them. I won’t say everyone’s coming free of charge, but most of them will come because they’re looking for a way to connect with readers,” said Smith.

The Huntsville Library Foundation has been a constant partner for Smith, sharing her passion to bring authors to the community. Bringing author events to Huntsville is very important to Smith because she said these events start conversations that we, as a society, need to have.

“It goes back to what the snail on the wall is about, and it is about making you think. Sometimes we read books and if we’re just reading them by ourselves and we’re flying through them, we may not stop to consider what they’ve taught us,” Smith shared. “But when we hear an author talk about their inspiration for a book, when we hear them talk about their process of writing it, and what they put of themselves into it, then I feel like we walk away knowing so much more. Then we think about our own lives and the way we move through the world.”

Smith said it’s important for Huntsville to have an independent bookstore because independent bookstores in communities everywhere are doing so much more than selling books.

“They are encouraging literacy. They are talking about tough subjects. They are contributing to the fabric of their community, and they’re bringing people together to have conversations. Libraries certainly do that, but libraries can’t do everything, so it’s nice to have bookstores that also do that,” mentioned Smith

While she’s grown a successful retail business without a dedicated retail space, Smith is interested in establishing a more permanent space for The Snail on the Wall, which would allow her to expand inventory and host more author events.

Like many businesses today, Smith uses social media to engage with customers, sharing book recommendations and new releases. This has expanded her business to include authors and readers around the world.

“There are a lot of people in other places that don’t have a bookstore in their town, and so we’re happy to be their bookstore. They follow us on social media or they get our newsletter and see books they want. We always say ‘If you see it on The Snail, buy it from The Snail,’ and a lot of people do, so that’s nice to get support from people that aren’t even here,” shared Smith.

She interacts with a lot of book clubs looking for recommendations on what to read next and wanting books that they can discuss.

“The bookstore feels like I get to use all my different skills. I get to use my passion for books and the teaching aspect, but, also, I really love trying new things and trying new ideas and collaborating with community partners. That’s been one of the most rewarding parts of the job to work with a lot of organizations that either have book clubs or they want to bring an author to town, or they want books to give away to kids that need them.”

Reading between 30 to 40 books a year on average, Smith guesses she’s read several thousand books in her lifetime, with many more to come. She said she was “just born loving books” and credits the school library with fostering her love of reading.

“I started working my way through a series like ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ and I had to read every single one in order. When I was in about third grade, I made my own little library cards and put them in books and I wanted my friends to check them out,” reflected Smith. “They didn’t check them out nearly as much as I thought they would.”

Today, though, readers are checking out Smith’s books, with many loyal, local customers in the Huntsville area and online.

For more information, please visit www.snailonthewall.com.