The key, the bottle of something fizzy, the photo frame. Twenty-one gets the same gifts every year. Give them a novel instead, with them as the hero and their friends in the cast.
A 21st birthday is a strange one to buy for. They are an adult, but often a student or in a first job, with little space and less money, and no need for another thing to pack when they move house.
A Novellum book takes up no room at all. Tell us about them: what they study or do, the sport or hobby that eats their weekends, their friends, the place they are happiest. Choose up to two genres (adventure and comedy suit most 21sts; fantasy suits the one who has read every series twice) and we write a whole novel with them as the hero.
It costs from $2.99, which makes it easy for a group of friends to chip in for the Full novel or add the audiobook. It arrives by email on the day with your message, and the PDF prints well enough to pass round at the party.
This is how one of our books begins. The brief: Liam Price, turning 21, a marine biology student at Plymouth who spends every spare hour surfing in Cornwall, finds a message in a bottle with a set of coordinates on Fistral Beach on the morning of his birthday, and he and two housemates borrow a very old camper van to follow them (adventure and comedy). The hero is invented.
Liam Price stood with his toes dug into the surf and the Atlantic wind knotting his hair into a halo of sea-salt chaos. He had the posture of a man who had solved a problem by standing on top of it. The sunrise painted Fistral Beach in a reckless gold that made the wet sand look like spilled coins. He counted down under his breath for no reason other than habit. Twenty one, twenty two, twenty three. He was twenty one years old by the calendar and felt as if the ocean had been waiting to give him a present when he finally turned up to collect it.
Today the present arrived as a green glass bottle, half buried and frosted with sand, that he found when his elbow brushed something round and stubborn. He plucked it free like a diver bringing up a curious shell and paused to admire the cap which was sealed with a faded cork and a smear of something dark that could have been tar or the handwriting of history. He turned the bottle in the sunlight and saw paper inside, folded with the economy of someone who had learned to save space during storms. It sloshed when he moved, a small sea inside a small sea.
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. One person orders and writes the brief with everyone's stories in it, and the card can be signed from all of you.
Yes, by first name. Only include people who would be happy to appear in the book.
Choose the date at checkout. Cards go out at 13:00 UTC, early afternoon in the UK.
Novellum writes for adult readers. Gift books are kept warm and fun unless your brief asks for something darker, like a horror or a thriller.
The Short is about 30,000 words. The Full, about 95,000 words, is a proper paperback length if a group is chipping in.
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.