Our Story
Some dreams take six months. Some take a whole lifetime of wrong turns to find the right one. This is both.
The beginning
I spent years building software I didn't love, in a field that never quite felt like mine. I was good at it, but there was always something missing. A warmth. A story.
So I started making candles at my kitchen table. Romance-inspired, bookish, hand-poured with a lot of heart and a little too much fragrance oil. Sewing my crafty heart out into book sleeves. I put them online in July of 2025 and made $140 that month. By the end of the year, I was making over $3,000 a month, and somehow had 8,000 followers who hadn't even met me yet.
That viral TikTok moment changed everything. Thousands of people watched me document the life I was building, and said yes, that. We want that too.
So I gave myself six months to turn this dream into something real. Then I signed a lease, quit my corporate job, and never looked back.
Pages & Ink was officially born. Not just as an idea, but as a real place with real walls and a really beautiful storefront in downtown Conway, Arkansas.
What is Pages & Ink?
Pages & Ink is Arkansas's first romance-dedicated bookstore, and the only one in the state with an in-store candle bar.
Our shelves are stocked with over 300 hand-selected titles: contemporary romance, romantasy, spicy reads, clean romance, and everything in between. Every book is here because someone loved it, cried over it, or stayed up way too late because of it.
The candle bar is unlike anything else in Arkansas. Browse our bookish collections or build your own custom scent. Every candle is hand-poured with clean ingredients and wooden wicks and a whole lot of story behind it.
And beyond the books and candles, this is a community. Monthly book club. Author visits. Workshops. Midnight release parties. A place for the girls who read with a candle burning and a blanket pulled up.
Why I built this
Romance gets a bad reputation it doesn't deserve. These books carry us through heartbreak, through hard days, through the moments when we need to believe that love is still worth fighting for.
I built Pages & Ink because Conway deserved a space like this. A place where you can walk in, get a recommendation from someone who read it with their whole chest, light a candle that smells like the world you just got lost in, and leave feeling a little more like yourself.
Every romance reader deserves a bookstore that takes them seriously. Arkansas is full of those readers. We just finally have a home.
Come find us!
📍 1018 Van Ronkle Street, Conway, Arkansas
🗓️ Grand Opening: April 25, 2026
📱 Instagram & TikTok: @pagesandinkco / @madzmadon
We'd love to see you. Come in with a TBR list or without one. Ask for a recommendation, smell every candle, or just browse. This place was built for you.
— Madison, Founder