Is this appropriate as a group gift?

It works well as one, particularly if the group also contributes the recorded conversation. That combination — a document made by colleagues plus the means to turn it into something — is unusual and lands well.

What if they don't want to write a book?

Then the recorded conversation stands on its own as the gift, and nothing has been wasted. Nothing here expires.

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.

For someone leaving after twenty or thirty years, the standard options — a watch, a decanter, a card everyone signed — are pleasant and forgotten. What that person actually has is a body of expertise and a set of stories that the organisation is about to lose entirely, and nobody has ever asked them to write it down.

A leaving gift for a senior colleague

Four things to agree before you start

A leaving gift that records someone talking about their career raises two questions a personal gift does not.

Agree who owns the recording before anyone switches anything on, in writing, including what happens if they leave on bad terms.
Check what is commercially confidential, and say at the start that anything sensitive can be cut afterwards.
Do not make it a roast. A tribute video and a life story are different objects and the second one needs a quiet room.
Let them keep it regardless of what the company does with it. That is what makes it a gift rather than an asset.

Free. No card. Private.

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.

Or see how it works first

Why this one lands

Senior people leave with the institutional memory in their heads: how the merger really went, why that policy exists, what they learned running the thing for a decade.

Some of that is a book they might genuinely want to write — a business book, a memoir of an industry, a guide for the people coming after. Some of it is simply worth recording before it walks out of the building.

Either way, being asked is itself a compliment of a kind that a decanter is not.

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

If it is a group gift, do the recording as part of it: an hour with two or three colleagues asking about the career, recorded properly. It becomes both a present and a document, and it is usually the part people remember.

Then give them the process for the book, if there is one, with no expectation that they use it.

A note on doing this well

Check the framing with them first if you can. We think you should write a book is a compliment to some people and a burden to others, and a leaving do is a bad place to find out which.

And be careful with anything that touches confidential company matters — a book about a career is fine; a book that discloses what an employment contract covers is a different conversation.

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 questions

Questions people ask

Is this appropriate as a group gift?: It works well as one, particularly if the group also contributes the recorded conversation. That combination — a document made by colleagues plus the means to turn it into something — is unusual and lands well.
What if they don't want to write a book?: Then the recorded conversation stands on its own as the gift, and nothing has been wasted. Nothing here expires.
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.