He already has the gadgets, the hoodie and the game he wanted. This Christmas, give him something nobody else could: a novel built from his life, with your story running through it.
Christmas gifts for a boyfriend tend to be either too safe (another bottle of cologne) or too much (anything with both your faces printed on it). The best ones show that you have been paying attention all year.
That is what a Novellum book does. Write a few lines about him: his job, his dream, the city you live in, how you met, the thing he does when he thinks nobody is watching. Pick up to two genres. A thriller with a love story underneath works well; so does an adventure, or a comedy if he is the one who makes everyone laugh. We write a whole novel with him as the hero.
It costs from $2.99 and arrives by email on Christmas morning with your message. Add the narrated audiobook so he can listen at the gym or on the commute, or print page one and put it in his stocking.
This is how one of our books begins. The brief: Marcus Oyelaran, 29, a line cook in Chicago who dreams of opening his own supper club, has his grandmother's handwritten recipe notebook, the one with the jollof rice that made his girlfriend Dana fall for him, stolen from his locker on Christmas Eve, and has one snowy night across the city to get it back before lunch with her parents (thriller and romance). The hero is invented.
The night wound around the brownstone like steam from a pot. Marcus Oyelaran stood under the kitchen hood of The Marigold and watched the snow tattoo the alley. He could feel the heat of the line on his forearms and still knew, in the small underbone of him that had nothing to do with knives or burners, that tonight was wrong. Tonight the batter of his life had gone soggy.
He had left his locker open for five minutes while he finished a plate of escargot for Chef Anton. He had left it because it was Christmas Eve and because Dana had scolded him all week about being overworked and had laughed when he promised he would close early enough to buy her mother something decent from the market. His locker had been a shrine in a way; inside, his grandmother's notebook sat wrapped in wax paper. The pages smelled of smoked fish and palm oil even when closed. The jollof recipe on the second page was in her curling hand, the ink smudged in one corner where she had once dropped a tear for a lost cousin. Dana had told him, half facing the couch and half into the phone, that the first time she tasted his jollof she had understood him. That had been the night he had kissed her in the kitchen after her fourth helping and promised a supper club with his name on the door.
A real opening Novellum wrote for an example brief, quoted unedited. 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 later | $13.99 |
Prices in US dollars, the same everywhere. You pay only after you have read page one.
Yes. Choose December 25 at checkout. Cards go out at 13:00 UTC, 8 a.m. on the East Coast and 5 a.m. in the West, so it is waiting when he checks his phone.
No. Pick any two genres. Many people choose a thriller or an adventure and let the love story run in the background, so it feels like his book, not a card.
As personal as your brief, up to 2,000 characters. Inside jokes and the place you had your first date all work. Keep out anything you would not want his mom to read over his shoulder.
It does not have to be a love story at all. Make him the hero of a heist or a sci-fi mission, put his friends and his hometown in, and keep yourself as a cameo.
Most books are written in about two hours, so you can order on December 24 and still schedule it for the 25th.
Yes. It 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.