Black Friday 27 Nov, Cyber Monday 30 Nov
Most Black Friday shopping is the same few gadgets in a box, fought over in a parking lot or a checkout queue that keeps timing out. Here is a different idea for this weekend: get three people off your Christmas list in one order, each with a novel written for them, starring them, that they will not find in any store.
Black Friday is when a lot of people make a dent in the Christmas list, and the hard names are always the same: the dad who says he wants nothing, the sister who already has every book on the shelf, the friend you swap gifts with every year and are running out of ideas for. A novel with them as the hero solves all three. You tell us who they are and what the story should be, in a few lines of your own words, and we write a whole book around them after you order.
There is nothing to ship, so there is no shipping cutoff to worry about, no tracking number and nothing that arrives in the wrong size. The book comes as an EPUB and a PDF that open on any phone, tablet, e-reader or computer. You can have it written now and held for Christmas morning, with your own message on the card, so the shopping is finished this weekend and the surprise still happens on the day.
You stay in charge of what you get. Before you pay a cent, you read page one of the actual book, written from your brief. If the tone is wrong, change the brief and try again. Pick up to two genres: mystery for the puzzle lover, romance for the couple, adventure for the one who books every trip, comedy for the friend who will read it out loud at dinner.
The Bundle is three Medium novels for $13.99, against $4.99 each bought one at a time. Here is how it works as Christmas shopping:
The two codes are for the people you give them to, not for you to schedule: each person writes their own brief, and their book is ready, usually in about two hours, after they redeem it.
This is how one of our books begins. The brief: Marisol Ortega, night manager of a big-box electronics store in Columbus, Ohio, has survived eleven Black Fridays, until the year's must-have toy vanishes from a locked cage one minute before the doors open (comedy and mystery). The hero is invented.
Marisol Ortega checked her reflection in the glass of the automatic doors and gave herself the exact pep talk she had used for eleven Black Fridays. You look like you slept three hours, you did not, and you will do spectacularly. She adjusted the name tag that still said "Marisol" in neat block letters and not "Manager" like some of the newer ones insisted on, and then she smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her polyester vest.
At 4:59 a.m. her phone vibrated with the regional manager's name lighting the screen. She put it on speaker and hoped the ringing did not wake the shoppers already wrapped in blankets outside. Clarence Pridemore's voice came through bright and insistent. "Marisol, status. Remember the promo. Don't let it be a headline."
"I'm on it," she said, which was a small lie because technically she was leaning against a light pole pretending to be a mannequin for warmth. She could hear the thud of cinderblocks under sleeping bags. The parking lot was a row of faces; some were smiling, some were fierce, and several smelled like duct tape and the kind of determination she admired and feared. The store's automatic lights blinked awake; the yellow bulbs made everyone look friendlier.
A real opening Novellum wrote for an example brief, quoted unedited: the first three paragraphs of page one. Your book starts from your brief, and you read its page one free before you pay.
| Short novel, about 30,000 words | $2.99 |
| Short novel with its narrated audiobook | $7.99 |
| Medium novel, about 60,000 words | $4.99 |
| Full novel, about 95,000 words | $6.99 |
| Bundle: three Medium books, one now and two codes to give | $13.99 |
Prices in US dollars, the same everywhere. You pay only after you have read page one.
No. The prices on this page are the prices. The way to get more for your money is the Bundle: three Medium novels for $13.99 instead of $4.99 each.
Yes. Tick "This is a gift" and choose 25 December. We can hold a gift for up to a year, so you can order this weekend and it arrives on the day with your message: morning in the Americas, early afternoon in the UK and South Africa.
No. Every book is digital, an EPUB and a PDF sent by email, so there is no shipping cutoff and nothing can arrive late or damaged.
They come in your order confirmation. Give each one to a person, in a card or a message. They go to novellumbooks.com, design their own story, read page one free and enter the code at checkout. Each code is one Medium book and works once.
The Bundle is three written books. For a narrated audiobook, choose the Short novel with its audiobook, $7.99, which you can also send as a gift on 25 December.
Anyone with an email address. An adult places the order (you must be 18 or older to buy). If a story is for a younger reader, choose fairy tale or adventure and say so in the brief, then read page one before you pay.
Yes. Every book is written by AI for one reader and says so on its final page.
Questions? Write to us. Novellum books are written by AI, for one reader only.