Thirty is a birthday people take seriously and joke about in equal measure. Give them a novel that does both, with them at the center of it.
The 30th birthday gift aisle is mostly jokes about turning old. They get a laugh at the party and a place in a drawer by the weekend. What lasts is the thing that shows how well you know them at this point in their life: the job they finally got, the city they moved to, the hobby they will never give up.
A Novellum book puts all of that in one story. Tell us their name, their city, what they do and what they love, and a few stories from the last decade. Pick up to two genres: sci-fi and comedy for the one who still owns every games console, romance for the one who just got engaged, thriller for the one who reads them on every flight. We write a whole novel with them as the hero.
It costs from $2.99 and arrives by email on the birthday with your message. Friends can share the brief and the cost, and the Bundle covers three birthdays in the group for $13.99.
This is how one of our books begins. The brief: Kenji Watanabe-Ross, a sound engineer in Seattle, wakes on his 30th birthday to find his 1998 games console receiving messages from his 40-year-old self (sci-fi and comedy). The hero is invented.
Kenji Watanabe-Ross woke up on his thirtieth birthday to the sound of someone else’s ringtone echoing from a cardboard box under his apartment bed. He blinked at the ceiling and then at the stack of consoles he had assembled like trophies over the years. A Sega Saturn frowned at a PlayStation 2. A dusty Game Boy pocket sat like a beached pebble next to a Neo Geo. The 1998 console, a battered grey thing with a yellowing power button, had been relegated to the bottom shelf for a decade and a half because it smelled faintly of arcade smoke when he breathed too close. Today it was chattering.
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 stories from the group and one person writes them into the brief, up to 2,000 characters.
Yes. Tick "This is a gift", choose the date and add the group's message. Cards go out at 13:00 UTC, which is morning across the US.
Three Medium novels for $13.99: one written now, and two codes to use later, for yourself or for the next two birthdays in the group.
The Short novel is about 30,000 words, the Medium about 60,000 and the Full about 95,000.
From $2.99 for a Short novel, or $7.99 with its narrated audiobook.
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.