Your dad has told the same stories for decades: the car that broke down in 1987, the job he nearly took, the dog that ate the wedding cake. For his 60th, give those stories a book of their own.
Sixtieth birthdays are hard to buy for. Most dads say they want nothing, mean it, and already own the gadget you were thinking of. What they rarely have is proof that anyone was listening all those years.
A Novellum book turns what you know about him into a novel with him as the hero. Gather a few details from the family: where he grew up, the job he did, the place he always wanted to go back to, the phrase he says too often. Pick up to two genres (adventure and comedy suit most dads; a historical mystery suits the one who reads the paper cover to cover) and we write the whole book around him.
It costs from $2.99, arrives by email on his birthday with your message, and the PDF prints well enough for everyone at the party to sign the first page. Add the narrated audiobook if he would rather listen in the car or the shed.
This is how one of our books begins. The brief: Graham Whitlock, a postman in the Yorkshire Dales for 35 years, turns 60; his van breaks down at the top of a fell road and the last letter in his bag, in his late father's handwriting, sends him on a three-day walk to deliver it (adventure and comedy). The hero is invented.
Graham Whitlock remembered two things about the morning he turned sixty. The first was the smell of porridge. He had boiled the kettle at five and, out of habit more than hunger, stirred a spoonful of marmalade into his bowl while the sky outside his kitchen window went the colour of wet sheep. The second was the sound the Royal Mail van made when it decided, definitively, that sixty was a good age at which to retire it from active service.
He had sat behind the wheel and checked his list, as he always did, fingering the pencil stub in his pocket. The van coughed like an old man clearing his throat, hiccupped, and then clung to the road with a wheeze before letting everything go. Graham turned the key again because you turned keys when things went wrong. Machines respected ritual even when they had no intention of obeying. The engine did not comply. It went quiet enough to hear Mrs Hartley two fields over calling the name of her prize ram and to count the lambs bleating in three different valleys. He got out and looked up the fell road. The sky was a clean, pearly blue. The road looked indefinite as a ribbon, and the silence from it was complete.
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. Collect memories from everyone and one person writes them into the brief, up to 2,000 characters. Only name people who would be happy to appear in the book.
Yes. Tick "This is a gift", choose the date and add your message. Cards go out at 13:00 UTC, early afternoon in the UK.
You get an EPUB and a PDF. Many families print the PDF at a local print shop and hand it over at the party, with the email arriving the same day.
Add the narrated audiobook and he can listen to it like a radio play. Most people who don't read novels still enjoy one about themselves.
The Short is about 30,000 words, an evening or two. The Full, about 95,000 words, is the length of a typical paperback.
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.