Fathers are notoriously difficult to buy for and notoriously difficult to interview, and the two problems have the same solution: give him something to do rather than something to feel. A structure, a recorder, and questions about the work, the cars, the years before you existed.
A Father's Day gift for a dad who wants to write a book
Four things worth knowing before you ask
Plenty of men answer better side-by-side than face-to-face, which is a practical fact rather than a cliche.
- Ask in the car, on a walk, or while doing something with your hands. Sitting opposite someone with a recorder between you is the hardest version of this.
- Start with work. It is the subject most men have language ready for, and it leads everywhere else.
- Ask about his father, and about what he decided to do differently.
- Let the silences run. The useful answer usually arrives about four seconds after you would normally rescue the pause.
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
A great many men of a certain generation will not sit down for a conversation about their life and will happily talk for two hours about a job, a car, a boat or a match. That is not evasion — it is the way in.
The life arrives through the work. Ask what the trade was like when he started, who taught him, what went wrong on the worst day, and you get the man as well.
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
Ask about the first job. Not tell me about your life — the first job, the first wage, the first boss, what he did with the money.
Record it on a phone, not with a notebook out. And do it while doing something else if that helps: driving, walking, in the shed. Side by side is easier than face to face for a great many people.
A note on doing this well
If your father is someone who deflects with jokes, let him. The jokes are usually load-bearing, and the serious material arrives about forty minutes in, once he has stopped performing. Do not rush that.
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
- My dad won't talk about himself. What do I ask?
- Ask about other people and about work. What his father did, who ran the yard, what the town was like. He will describe himself while describing them, and it will not feel like an interview.
- 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.