Storyworth popularized a lovely idea: send a loved one a question every week for a year, collect their written answers, and print them into a hardcover memoir. For many families it works exactly as promised. But if you’re searching for alternatives, it’s usually for one of three reasons: the storyteller won’t actually sit down and type every week, a year feels too long to wait, or you’ve realized the story you want isn’t one person’s memoir at all — it’s everyone’s memories of them. Different problem, different tool. Here are the alternatives, grouped by which problem you’re solving.
First, What Storyworth Actually Is
With Storyworth, one storyteller receives an emailed question each week for 52 weeks and types their answers; at the end, the answers become a hardcover book. Plans run from $59 (text-only, black-and-white book) to $199 (multiple storytellers), with the popular color tier at $109. The most common failure mode, by their users’ own accounts, isn’t the product — it’s participation. Answering three questions and quietly stopping is easy when every answer requires sitting down to write.
If the Problem Is Typing: Voice-First Services
Remento ($99/year) sends the same style of weekly prompts, but the storyteller answers by recording voice or video on their phone; the recordings are transcribed and polished into a printed hardcover (up to 200 pages), with QR codes in the book that play the original recordings. It got a Shark Tank boost in 2025 and is the best-known voice-first option. Storii (from about $10/month) goes further for less tech-comfortable storytellers — it interviews them over regular phone calls, no smartphone or internet needed.
If a Year Feels Too Long: Self-Paced and Conversational Tools
Several newer services swap the 52-week cadence for a conversation at the storyteller’s own pace — including AI-guided phone or chat interviews that assemble answers into a memoir document. These are quicker and cheaper (some free to start), though the output is often digital-first, with printing as an extra step rather than the centerpiece.
If the Storyteller Won’t Do It at All: Flip the Direction
Here’s the reframe that solves the most stubborn version of the problem. Every option above still depends on one person telling their own story — and some parents and grandparents simply never will, whether from modesty, energy, or health. In that case, flip it: instead of one person writing their story, everyone writes about them.
With Newlywords, you invite family, friends, and old colleagues to each contribute memories, photos, and letters about the person, and the contributions are printed into a collaborative hardcover book. Nobody carries the whole project; every contribution is a page someone was glad to write; and the result captures something a memoir structurally can’t — how they were seen and loved. It works as a surprise gift for a milestone birthday or anniversary, and it works when time or health means the traditional memoir window has closed. You can even set custom questions for every contributor to answer, so the book interviews the whole family instead of one storyteller.
Free to start — invite contributors and see the pages come in before you order anything.
If You Want to Do It Yourself: DIY Routes
A shared document plus a design-it-yourself photo book tool is the fully manual path: free-form, total control, and all the interviewing, typing, and layout on you. It suits families with one dedicated archivist and an existing trove of written material. Budget real hours; this is the route most likely to stall.
How to Choose
- Storyteller is willing and likes to write: Storyworth remains the straightforward pick.
- Willing but won’t type: Remento (smartphone) or Storii (phone calls).
- Wants it done at their own pace: a self-paced or conversational tool.
- Won’t tell their own story — or you want the family’s voices too: a collaborative book about them, from everyone.
These combine well, too: some families run a memoir service for the storyteller’s own words and a collaborative book from everyone else, and gift them together. The goal is the same either way — getting the stories out of memory and onto pages while there’s time to enjoy them together.