Stocking fillers are meant to be small, cheap and fun. Most end up in a drawer by Boxing Day. Here is one that takes up no space and gets read on the sofa after lunch.
The best stocking fillers are little jokes between people who know each other well. A short Novellum novel is one of those, at book length. Tell us the family legends (the year the turkey went missing, the dog that opens presents, the uncle who cheats at charades) and we write a festive story with the person you choose as the hero.
Pick up to two genres: comedy and mystery make a good Christmas Eve whodunnit, fairy tale and adventure suit a younger reader, romance suits a partner. A Short novel is about 30,000 words, enough for the quiet afternoon between lunch and the film.
It costs $2.99, or $7.99 with the narrated audiobook. There is nothing to wrap and no last posting date: choose 25 December, add your message, and the card arrives by email that day. Slip a printed note with the first line into the actual stocking if you like a reveal.
This is how one of our books begins. The brief: Niamh Brennan, 29, works the cheese counter of a Galway market and is in charge of her family's Christmas Eve for the first time; when the turkey disappears from the shed she investigates five siblings, two dogs and one suspicious neighbour (comedy and mystery). The hero is invented.
The bell over O'Connors Market chimed like a small, apologetic church bell the moment Niamh Brennan stepped over the threshold carrying a crate of runny Brie. She put the crate down carefully, wiped her hands on her apron, and sighted the counter like a captain checking the rigging. The cheese looked back at her with pale, bloomy faces and glossy tangles of blue. There was comfort in this. There was order. Each wedge had a label. Each label had a price. Outside, Galway squinted through a sleet that smelled faintly of seaweed and mischief. Inside, the scent was warm and dairy and imminently manageable.
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, early afternoon in the UK and Ireland. If you want it for the morning, schedule it for Christmas Eve or send the link yourself.
Yes. Order one per person, or take the Bundle: three Medium books, one now and two codes to give later.
You read page one free before paying, with no account and no card.
For older children, yes. Keep the brief family-friendly and choose fairy tale, adventure or comedy.
Your card by email with links to their book as an EPUB and a PDF, and the audiobook if you add it.
Yes. It is written by AI for one reader, and the book says so at the end.
Questions? Write to us. Novellum books are written by AI, for one reader only.