He says he doesn't want anything. He says it every year. This Christmas, give him the one thing he can't buy for himself: a story with him at the centre of it.
Dads are hard to buy for because they have spent decades telling everyone not to bother. The result is a drawer of socks, a shelf of novelty mugs and a bottle of something he saves for a visitor who never comes.
A Novellum book is different because it is about him. Write a few lines: the job he did for thirty years, the car he still talks about, his allotment, his team, the joke he tells at every family meal. Pick up to two genres (a mystery suits the dad who solves every crime drama before the first advert; a comedy suits the one with the terrible puns) and we write a whole novel with Dad as the hero.
It costs from $2.99 and arrives by email on the day you choose, with your message. Add the narrated audiobook if he would rather listen in the car or the shed, or print the PDF so there is something to unwrap under the tree.
This is how one of our books begins. The brief: Keith Wardle, 64, a retired bus driver in Norwich who spends every spare hour on his allotment and talks to his leeks, finds his shed broken into on Christmas Eve, his prize Brussels sprouts gone along with his late father's pocket watch, and sets out with a flask of tea and his grandson's old bicycle to find out who did it before the family arrives for lunch (mystery and comedy). The hero is invented.
Keith Wardle liked to think of himself as a simple man with complicated vegetables. He could tell you the precise angle at which a leek preferred to lean and the exact number of leaves a cabbage should possess before it developed an attitude. On a good morning he could walk the allotment and converse with his rows as if they were old friends. On bad ones he argued with slugs until his gloves lost their temper. Today, with frost sparkling on the cloches and a thin curl of breath fogging the path, he was practicing consolation.
"Now then," he said to a line of leeks, tapping the nearest with a gloved fingertip. "Pull yourself together. Christmas is only a day away and I will not have you sulking like a pensioner at a pantomime."
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.
Cards go out at 13:00 UTC, which is 1pm in the UK, between the presents and the dinner. If you want him to open it first thing, schedule it for Christmas Eve.
Many people who never pick up a novel will read one with their own name in it. If he would rather listen, add the narrated audiobook for $5 more and play it on a speaker or in the car.
Specifics. His job, his hobbies, where he grew up, his catchphrase, the family legend he always tells. Up to 2,000 characters. Only name people who would be happy to appear in the book.
Yes. Collect a memory from everyone and one person writes the brief. The Bundle gives you three Medium books, so you can do Mum and Grandad at the same time.
Gift books are warm and clean unless you ask for something else, and you read page one free before you pay.
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.