For families who keep things
One chapter at a time, until it is a book.
You add the people. We ask the questions — from family updates to memories of a vacation twenty years ago. Every chapter you close gathers into a single volume, your family’s volume of the year.
Your first chapter is free$129 a year with a printed magazineNothing for your family to sign up for
How a volume builds
Chapters gather. One book at the end of the year.
Open as many chapters as your family has stories for. Close each one whenever it feels finished — there is no deadline and no monthly rush.
Spring
The lake house
5 contributors
24 pages
Summer
Ruth's recipes
7 contributors
16 pages
Fall
Fall family updates
6 contributors
26 pages
Winter
Memories of Great Grandma Jones
9 contributors
30 pages
Volume One
The Hartleys
Four chapters, 96 pages
Magazine included with membership
One family’s year. Yours might run to three chapters, or nine.
For the one who starts it
Nobody has to be chased.
- 01
You add the people
Email addresses, once. Nobody makes an account, downloads anything, or has to remember a password.
- 02
We do the reminding
Questions and reminders go out on their own. When someone needs a personal push, a nudge from you is one tap — no awkward text message, no wondering if you are pestering.
- 03
It is already beautiful
Every chapter lays itself out as it arrives. Touch none of it and you will get a book you are proud of — or open the editor and edit every photograph, change page layouts, and reorder contributions.
An example chapter
Look inside The Lake House.
Five people, one August, twenty-four pages. This is what came back.
The Lake House · Chapter Three
What do you remember about the summers at the lake house?
The house slept six if you counted generously, and we were twelve most of August. Your grandfather drew up a rota for the beds that nobody followed past the first night — the little ones ended up on the porch in sleeping bags, and they defended those spots like territory. I did the sums once: fourteen summers, and it rained hard on exactly one of them. That can't be true, but it's what I remember, and I've decided memory outranks the weather service.
Ellen Hartley · Grandmother
The Lake House · Chapter Three
Best thing we ever did at the lake?
The eclipse summer. We put every mattress on the lawn and stayed out until three. Nobody remembers the eclipse. Everybody remembers the lawn.
Marcus Hartley · Grandfather
The Lake House · Chapter Three
What do you remember about the summers at the lake house?
Last day. Nobody talked for the first hour of the drive. Mom says we'll be back next year but next year is a thousand years away. I can still feel the dock moving when I close my eyes. I'm going to feel it at school and nobody will know.
Dana Hartley-Ruiz · Daughter · Written on the drive home, 1996
The Lake House · Chapter Three
Best thing we ever did at the lake?
The year we hauled the piano out to the porch for Ruth's birthday and it started to rain, and we just kept singing louder than the rain.
Ellen Hartley · Grandmother
The Lake House · Chapter Three
What do you remember about the summers at the lake house?
Everyone remembers the lake. I remember the kitchen. Four burners, eleven opinions, and a window over the sink that framed the water like a postcard I never had time to look at. I fed that crowd twice a day for a month every year and I would do it again tomorrow.
Ruth Hartley · Great-aunt
The Lake House · Chapter Three
Best thing we ever did at the lake?
The night swim nobody was supposed to know about, with every cousin sworn to a secrecy that lasted, by my count, nine hours.
Dana Hartley-Ruiz · Daughter · Written on the drive home, 1996
The Lake House · Chapter Three
What do you remember about the summers at the lake house?
I taught nine children to fish off that dock. Two of them caught anything. The fishing was never the point — you can't get a ten-year-old to sit still and talk to you, but you can get them to sit still and hold a rod, and the talking happens on its own.
Marcus Hartley · Grandfather
The Lake House · Chapter Three
Somebody has to settle it: what actually happened with the roof?
Since this is apparently going in print: the roof did not leak because of my patch. The roof leaked, and then I patched it, and the patch held for eleven years, which is longer than the original roof managed. Dad inspected it every summer hoping to be proven right and never was. I want the record to show the flashing was reused from the old canoe shed, the ladder was held by Dana, and the total cost was four dollars. Some of us are handy. History will judge.
Pete Hartley · Son
The Lake House · Chapter Three
What's the recipe everyone always asks you for?
The blueberry buckle, and I'll say here what I always refused to say at the lake: the secret is nothing. Flour, butter, sugar, a scandalous amount of blueberries, and a streusel you don't skimp on. 350 degrees until the top cracks like dried mud. The berries came from the bushes behind the boathouse, picked by whichever children owed me a favor, which was always all of them.
Ruth Hartley · Great-aunt
Card 3 of 9 · swipe or use the arrows
The part you keep
Choose how the year is bound.
Magazine
Included
with your membership
From $39 a copy for anyone else in the family
Perfect-bound, A4, on 70# coated white stock. Up to 150 pages.
Hardcover
From $96
for anyone in the family, no account needed
Case-bound and built to survive a bookshelf for fifty years.
Linen hardcover
From $116
for anyone in the family, no account needed
Bound in linen with a foil-stamped spine. The one you hand down.
Extra copies, and copies bought by anyone else in the family, start at $39 and depend on how long the year ran. Every binding is orderable when the volume goes to press.
One plan. One book a year.
Everything is included. The only choice is how it is bound, and you make that when you order.
A year of chapters
$129a year
Your first chapter is free. The membership adds as many as you like, and one printed magazine when the year is done — hardcover and linen are an upgrade you choose when you order.
- As many chapters as you like, all year
- No weekly deadline, close one when it is ready
- Questions suggested from what people write
- Full colour throughout
- Private web edition all year
The first year
$149once
Sent by email, ready to give. They open the link and start a volume for the family.
What arrives
- An email with a link to claim their year
- A few lines on how it works
- Your message, if you write one
- Everything in a year of chapters
- Their year starts when they redeem it, not when you buy
- They choose the binding when they order the book
- Nothing renews, and they never see a bill
Everyone you invite contributes free, with no account and nothing to download.