Why post, not email

Every so often, someone asks whether the letters could simply be emailed. They could. We have the words, we have your address, and a PDF costs nothing to send. We still don’t, and the reason is not nostalgia.

It comes down to what happens to a story after it arrives. On a screen, it lands in a crowd. On the doormat, it lands alone. Everything else, the reading, the rereading, the wondering in between, follows from that one difference.

The screen is already full

Children in the UK aged eight to fourteen spend close to three hours a day online on phones, tablets and computers, measured passively rather than asked, and that figure leaves out games consoles (Ofcom, 2025). Adults, meanwhile, stay on one screen for about forty-seven seconds before switching to another (Gloria Mark, UC Irvine).

Picture where an emailed chapter would go. Into an inbox, most likely a grown-up’s, between a school newsletter and a parcel notification. It would be forwarded, or opened on a phone, or saved for later. A story sent to a screen joins a queue of things competing for the same forty-seven seconds. It would be read, probably, between two other things, and it would be gone the moment something brighter arrived.

None of that is the story’s fault. It is simply what screens are like now. They are wonderful at many things, and holding one quiet thing still for a child is not one of them.

A letter has nothing to compete with

An envelope on the mat is alone. It does not ping, it does not refresh, and nothing autoplays underneath it. It has a child’s name on the front, which in most houses is rare enough to be news.

It gets picked up, carried to the kitchen table, opened, and read, often out loud, often twice. Then it goes somewhere: on the shelf, under the pillow, into a shoebox with the others. Nobody has to remember where they saved it, and nobody has to unlock anything to find it again. The families who write to us describe children running to the door at the sound of the letterbox. We have never heard of a child running to an inbox.

The wait does some of the work

A letter ends with a P.S. and a choice. Then nothing happens for a fortnight.

That nothing is busier than it looks. In the gap, the child wonders what their choice will do. They retell the chapter to a friend at school. They ask at bedtime whether the next one has come yet, and then again the next night. An email would collapse that gap to zero, or worse, put the next chapter one tap away and make waiting feel like a failure of patience. We think the gap is where a lot of the reading happens: in the head, between letters.

Something to look forward to

There is a quieter reason, too. Very little in a child’s week now has to be waited for. Programmes start when they are pressed, games load in seconds, and the next episode begins before the credits finish. Post is one of the few things left that keeps its own time.

A child who knows a letter is due starts listening for the letterbox. They check the mat on the way down to breakfast, and again after school. That small habit of looking forward is worth having, and it is one a screen cannot easily teach, because a screen never makes anyone wait. An envelope does, and then it rewards the waiting with their name on the front.

Paper stays put

A file can be anywhere and so, in practice, it is nowhere in particular. A letter has a place. It can be propped against the cereal box, pinned to the fridge, read under the covers by torchlight, lent to a grandparent on a visit. It is the same on the hundredth reading as on the first, and nothing appears beside it to suggest something else to look at instead.

For a story with a child at its centre, that matters. The letter is theirs in a way a link never quite is: something they were sent, by post, with their own name on it, that they can hold in both hands.

What this costs you

There is a trade here, and we would rather name it than pretend it away. Post is slower than email, and sometimes a letter takes a day longer than we would like. A printed letter costs more to make than a file, and that is in the price. We think both are worth it.

If you ever disagree, there is an audiobook add-on for the car and a keepsake PDF for the drawer. But with Journee, the letter itself still comes through the door. That is the one part we will not move.