If someone you love is writing about a person who has died, the most useful thing you can give them is time and no deadline. This is not a gift that should arrive with encouragement to get on with it. It is a gift that says: when you are ready, there is somewhere to put this, and nothing here expires.
For someone writing about a person they have lost
Four things worth knowing before you ask
This one is different, and the honest advice is mostly about slowing down.
- It may be too soon. Ask whether they want to, accept the first answer, and offer again in a few months rather than pressing now.
- Let them stop, mid-sentence, without explaining. Say so beforehand so stopping is already allowed.
- If there are recordings of the person's voice, back them up in two places today, whatever happens to the book. Families are almost never sorry to have those.
- Nothing here expires, so there is no clock on any of it.
The questions, and how to record the answers
Forty interview questions grouped by who you are asking and which part of their life, plus the one-page recording guide — which room, where to put the phone, what to say at the start, and what to do if they become upset. It arrives in about thirty seconds.
Why this one lands
Grief and writing sit together in complicated ways. For some people, writing is the thing that holds — a way of keeping someone in the room a while longer, and of making something that lasts. For others it is unbearable, and being asked about it is one more weight.
You will not know which from outside, and it may be both in the same week. So the gift that works is the one with no expectation attached to it.
Why not a notebook
The beautiful notebook is the standard gift here and it nearly always ends in a drawer — not because it is a bad object, but because what stands between someone and their book is not a lack of paper. It is not knowing where to start, not believing anyone would want to read it, and having no structure to follow.
A gift that supplies those three things gets used. One that supplies stationery adds a small, gentle weight of obligation to a pile that already exists.
What to do first
Offer, once, and leave it.
If they want it: the practical thing is somewhere the fragments can go — the half-written pieces, the recordings if any exist, the letters, the things people said at the funeral. Not a book yet. A place.
If they do not want it, or not yet, nothing is lost. The credits never expire and there is no subscription running down.
Please read this bit
Two things worth knowing. Nothing here expires, so there is no pressure of a clock. And if there are recordings of the person's voice, keep them safe and backed up in two places, whatever happens to the book. Families are almost never sorry to have those.
What you're actually giving
Your Book Pro is a British book-writing platform. You bring a book — an idea, a folder of notes, half a draft, or a finished manuscript written somewhere else — and it gives you the editorial process a publisher would run: a plan, structured feedback, a simulated beta read, a line edit, a proofread, a cover, a blurb and a print-ready file. You can type it, upload it or speak it. The tools sit in one place and work on the same manuscript, so the feedback compounds instead of arriving as twelve disconnected opinions.
What you are actually giving. They can talk it rather than type it, which matters for anyone who finds a blank screen intimidating — and most people who have never written a book do. Recordings become clean transcripts; transcripts become chapters; the editorial tools work on the result.
Every account starts with 1,000 welcome credits that never expire. No subscription, no deadline, nothing to cancel. That matters for a gift: there is no clock running, and nobody feels they have wasted your money by not starting until March.
And the Book Coach is free at yourbook.pro/book-coach with no account, so they can try it before you give them anything at all — and so can you.
At the end there is a printed book. A single proof copy is around £4.25 plus roughly £4.15 UK shipping. For a great many people, holding it is the whole point — and it is worth ordering one early, at the messy-draft stage, because paper makes a book feel possible in a way a file never does.
Try the Book Coach — free, no account
See the question sets
Email me the questionsQuestions people ask
- Is it too soon?
- There is no right time, and it differs enormously between people. Offer once, make clear that nothing expires, and let them decide. Do not raise it again unless they do.
- What if they start and can't continue?
- That is extremely common and it is not a failure. The credits do not expire and the work stays where it is. A great many books like this are written in bursts over years.
- Does the gift expire?
- No. The welcome credits never expire and there is no subscription to cancel — which is deliberate, because a gift with a clock on it becomes a source of guilt rather than a present.
- Do they need to be good with computers?
- No. They can talk rather than type, on a phone, and someone else can do the uploading. Plenty of family books are made by one person recording and another assembling.
- Can I help them with it?
- Yes, and for family stories that is usually how it works — one person interviews, another types or uploads, and the book belongs to everyone.
- What if they never use it?
- Start with the free question sets and one recorded afternoon. Even if no book follows, the recording is the thing families are most glad to have.