Questions and answers

We reply within 24 hours to arrange a free first conversation, by phone or video. Then you receive a recommended edition and a written proposal with the scope, the timeline and the price. Once you approve it, we email Before We Sit Down and set a date for the first interview.

It’s a chance to talk about the person and what your family hopes to have at the end. Sometimes the person joins too. Nothing is decided on that call.

Most books take three to six months from the first interview to delivery. The Legacy usually sits at the longer end. If you’re working toward a birthday or anniversary, tell us in the first conversation.

A book can be about a parent, grandparent, spouse, couple, other relative or the person commissioning it. A child, spouse, sibling, friend or the storyteller themselves can commission it.

Yes. The process is the same, and you’re the one in the chair. See Your Own Story.

Each conversation runs about two hours, held by video from wherever the person is most comfortable. We send step-by-step instructions for setting up the call, so a laptop or tablet and a quiet room are all it takes. A professional interviewer leads the conversation, and every conversation is recorded.

A relative can sit with them for the first call, and the setup instructions go step by step. The first conversation starts with easy things: names, places they’ve lived, a few photographs.

No. We email Before We Sit Down, a short worksheet that gets memories moving. It’s optional and doesn’t have to be finished.

Nobody remembers their life in order, and the interviews aren’t a test. If they’re unsure of a date, we write around it or check it against a photograph, a document or a relative’s memory. If memory is a larger concern, tell us at the start and we’ll suggest how to shape the book around it.

The interviewer follows their lead, and the hard years come up when they’re ready to talk about them. Your family reads every chapter before it’s printed and can take out any story.

The interviews stay focused on the person whose book it is. Children, siblings and grandchildren can send in stories, photographs, letters, recipes, documents, names and dates, and help check a detail.

Yes. Your family can receive the interview recordings.

A writer on our team turns the recorded conversations into the manuscript, and a proofreader checks every chapter before your family reads it.

You choose before the writing starts. In their own voice, the book reads as if they’re telling it to you, with their phrases and humor. As a biography, a narrator tells their story, with more room to explain the times they lived through. Most families decide after the first conversation, and we’ll say which we’d recommend and why.

Yes. Your family reads each chapter as it’s finished and can correct a name, add something missed, soften a passage or take out a story. The book goes to design only when you’ve approved the manuscript, and to print only when you’ve approved the final proof.

Letters, documents and any writing you already have can be sent in, and whatever belongs to the story finds its place in the book.

They never have to leave the house. Send scans or phone photos, and we repair tears, creases, scratches, spots, fading and color that has drifted orange or green, then place each photograph beside the part of the story it belongs to. The restored files come back to you.

The pages are sewn in sections, so the book opens flatter and holds together through years of use. The hard cover is wrapped in textured cloth and stamped in foil, with a matte dust jacket over it, and every page is printed in full color. Books are 6 × 9, 8 × 10 or 10 × 10 inches depending on the edition, printed and bound by a specialist bindery in England.

On request, we send your family a digital copy of the finished book. The restored photographs also come to you as digital files.

Yes. We quote additional copies once your book is complete.

No. Your family’s book is never published or sold, and we never use a family’s recordings, photographs, stories or pages publicly without that family’s explicit permission.

BrightSide, and the service providers who help conduct and transcribe interviews, prepare manuscripts, store files securely, and print and bind books. Each receives only what it needs for its part of the work. Our privacy policy has the details.

This website doesn’t use advertising trackers.

The Portrait is $5,000, The Heritage is $9,500 and The Legacy starts at $18,000. Your written proposal sets the exact scope and price before anything is paid. See Editions & Pricing.

We recommend The Heritage for most families. If the story is more focused, The Portrait may be exactly right, and we’ll say so. The Legacy is for a life set inside generations of family history and many contributors.

After the first conversation you receive a written proposal with the edition, the number of conversations, the timeline and the price. Work begins only when you’ve approved it.

Because every book is written and made for one family, payments are non-refundable.

Yes, you can cancel. Because every book is made for one family, payments already made are not refunded.

If life gets in the way, interviews move to new dates that work for everyone.

We’re a small team, and each family has our full attention while their book is underway.

A book about one person can include one or two joint conversations for the story the couple share. If you’d like both full life stories told, that’s a larger project, or two books, and we’ll set it out in your proposal.

Partly. They’ll know someone is recording their life, since they’re the one talking. What they don’t have to know is that a book is coming. Tell us how you’d like it handled and we’ll follow your lead.

About six months before the date. If your date is sooner than a book can be finished, the first interview can be the gift, and the book follows. The planning table on the Gifts page lists dates.

We suggest they speak with us before you approve the proposal, so they know what’s planned. Nobody is interviewed who doesn’t want to be.

Yes. A tribute book is written from conversations with the people who knew them, with the photographs, letters and papers the family keeps. See Tribute Books.

Whenever your family is ready. Some families begin within months and others wait a year or longer.

Each is priced in a written proposal after the first conversation, once we know how many people will contribute, how much material there is, and how large the book should be.