Item: Storyworth
Rating: 2
Author: Jen E

Storyworth offers personalized storybooks as a way to preserve memories and experiences.

Storyworth is committed to the belief that everyone has a story worth sharing.

Storyworth helps people remember, write about, and publish their life memories. You can think of it like a conversation: each week, Storyworth sends the writer a question that's chosen by themselves or a loved one. The writer simply responds to that question over email. After a year, those stories are bound into a beautiful keepsake book.

Nick and Krista Baum launched StoryWorth in 2013. Nick had been trying to record his Dad’s stories for years, without much success. One day, he had the idea to email him a single question each week – certainly one email response a week wasn’t too much to ask. Now their family has hundreds of pages of his stories that they’ll be able to enjoy for years to come. Along the way, they’ve turned this personal project into a thriving business that has helped other families record millions of their own stories.

Nick Baum

Krista Baum

Activities & Outdoor

Storyworth earns largely positive reviews for helping people capture life stories through weekly prompts and producing handsome, sturdy hardcovers with clear photos, while critiques flag lapses in emails, rigid editing/layout tools, and occasional customer-service and policy frustrations. Reviews indicate the brand works when users commit to the process—memories flow, books impress—but weaknesses include clunky formatting, limited customization, and issues like expired subscriptions, draft exclusions, and misprints.

Storyworth

Storyworth Book

Crafts & Games

Hi Jude, this is Hallie from Storyworth 👋 Thank you for your honest feedback - we really appreciate it. The timing is really unfortunate because we're rolling out spelling and grammar check, literally next week! If you want to go back and edit your stories, you can at any time. We've also just updated our layout features to make picture and paragraph placement easier.  Feel free to contact us at hello@storyworth.com if there's any way we could help make your experience better. 

Hi Kathleen, I'm sorry for the delay in reply.  We can refund you for renewals that you didn't use.  Could you send us an email at hello@storyworth.com?  You can ask to be transferred over to Sarah, and then I'll be happy to get this resolved for you.  -Sarah

Hi Richard, I'm sorry to hear this!  Sometimes the question prompt emails go to your spam folder, so it would be good to check there.  But, either way, you can reach us at hello@storyworth.com.  Please do email us so that we can help you out!  -Sarah

Hi Amanda, I'm so sorry to hear about this and I'm sorry for the delay in reply.  I'm working with the team to correct the issue, so you should hear from someone within the next 1-2 days.  Also, a book is included with the subscription, but it looks like your book credit hasn't been used yet.  We can refund that to you.  -Sarah

I received this Storyworth "gift" for Christmas in 2021 or 2022. The weekly prompts stacked up and became harder to keep up with. One year later I hadn't completed them and was charged $60 to add another year. I contacted the company and received extra time to finish. Covid and other health issues hit my family and I truthfully forgot all about Storyworth. The weekly prompts had stopped since I had attempted, not completed, all 52. So I had no reminders or emails from the company until last month. I received an email notification of a $60 charge to retain my stories. This had me wondering how many $60 charges I actually received... It turns out this was the THIRD one!  Plus a $40 charge for a book I never received. When I contacted Storyworth I was told that I would be credited $60 plus the $40, but not the previous 2 $60 charges.  I find this totally unacceptable and I'm wondering if others had similar experiences dealing with this company.

Storyworth An Expensive Gift That Does NOT Keep on Giving - It Takes!

Hi Jen,

I'm so sorry for your loss and for the poor experience.  We definitely do want to work with people who experience loss to provide the best possible outcome.  Some options include having family members add stories to the book, transferring the subscription to someone else, or even just a refund if that's the best solution.  We'd love to look into this for you -- please email us at hello@storyworth.com and we'll be glad to take a look.

Best,
Sarah

Storyworth A Home For Your Stories

The Perfect Gift For Dad

Storyworth is the perfect gift for your parents or grandparents.  Our daughter gave her father and I each a Storyworth.  It’s an opportunity to leave your family a legacy book.  A place to put all those words of wisdom or lessons we carry around with us everyday of our lives.  Your Storyworth will be sweet and funny and maybe a little surprising!  It may be Your Story with pictures your family may never have seen before.  The people at Storyworth are really helpful if you are unsure or a bit afraid of  the process.  I deliberately left some blank pages in my book for notes I will add later.  I am also giving our daughter a copy with the notes I’ve added.  Storyworth is the best way to do what you’ve always wanted to do…leave generations in your family…The Story of You!

I was really happy to receive Story worth as a gift from my daughter. I had never heard of it at the time. It did take me two years to finish. I wanted to give it my all when I had more time. I recently received my two copies in the mail. Very fast shipping. The cover and pages are high quality. I ordered my pictures in color. It looks very nice.  One thing I would change is more control over layout and position of pictures. There is a lot of white space. I added my own introduction/ preface and epilogue, which I feel really helps. I do like that you can move the chapters around so book flows better. All in all 4 and 1/2 stars. Great idea for future generations to hopefully read some day.

Several members of my church class recommended StoryWorth to me, and as I been wanting for some time to share my life stories with my 2 college grandsons, my daughter and my wife, this concept was perfect. It forced me into writing a story every week (a very good thing), finding the right photos to fit the story, and at the end of 50 weeks I had exactly what I wanted to leave as my legacy. The book was easy to preview and order, although I would highly encourage purchasing the "in color" option as it's a once-in-a-lifetime gift and should be as high quality as possible. I can now rest easier knowing that no matter what happens, my story has been told and the important people in my life have the book to remember it. Oh, and the book is so professionally printed, I feel like a published author!

My book is so good looking and I love  it! My only regret was not answering more questions and adding pictures , it’s like someone else is doing all the work for you and I didn’t take advantage of all that was offered!  Highly recommend this service! 

I heard about Storyworth too late to help my parents write their stories. However my mother’s youngest sister was willing to write her stories and I could edit the questions to include stories about her growing up years and each sibling. It is one thing to read genealogy lists and quite more to understand the personalities. Since there were adequate pages available I felt I could include photos of all 30 of her paintings and each page of her scrapbook of get well cards received as a child during a 6 month hospitalization as a 7 year old! Looking at the timelines it was obvious why my grandfather had a nervous breakdown. 
     My aunt answered questions for a year and it took me more than another year to compile photos. The font and graphics are very limited but I could create something more artistic and include a photo of it. I would encourage including lots of readers to read the weekly stories and respond to the writer each week. If you know more stories or additional details you can add them as a reader. If more siblings are alive and willing to collaborate it provides more viewpoints.
     The pages and cover are high quality. The older photos I used were not always high enough quality and required me to print smaller photos in some cases. Once it was sent for print, the book was completed very timely and shipped promptly.
     My aunt said she just cried when she opened the package, that no one had ever done anything like this for her ever. 
     So thank you storyworth! What a beautiful legacy given to so many families!
Em

M step-daughter  gave me Story worth for my 80th birthday, and I have spent the last year joyfully responding to the prompts she  sent me each week. When I received the book. I was thrilled and surprised with the quality, and since I received it, my sisters and my children and grandchildren have requested that I buy copies for them. It was a wonderful gift. 

My Children wanted my ‘stories and tales, adventures and musings’ documented for them and for their children and grandchildren. 
And my Father, who's now 90, has always said to me that I have lived an interesting enough life and that I should write down my stories. 
I knew I had ‘stories’, but I didn’t know how I would ever be able to tell them, let alone document them.
Thanks to the genius of my Children, who found Storyworth, the Storyworth process was something I found I could buy into. 
So I wrote my Stories!
My Storyworth journey became a commitment every Sunday afternoon for 52 consecutive Sundays through-out 2023. 
I went to my Laptop and answered the week’s Question - sometimes there was more than one per story. 
Overall, 52 Stories, with a total of 90 Questions answered. 
Every question my children asked of me … some I asked of myself ... and more!
And then I spent an additional 2 months of effort into 2024 to proof read each story, do minor edits, and then find photographs, and import them – 270 of them!
In all, I spent nearly 600 hours  on my Storyworth Books, over 14 months – that’s 25 days!
And 210,000 words written – an average of just over 4000 words per story.
It's a ‘3 Volume’ Storyworth Book Collection, that went to 1,111 pages.
Stories of Me – sure, there had to be … it’s My Storyworth!
But also Stories of my Wife of 40 years, My Children, My Grandchildren.
And Stories of My Parents, their Parents and, indeed, generations of Family down multiple generations, including tracking two family streams – both names in my name – one to the 14th Century, and the other the 803AD … unbelievable. Immensely satisfying!
And, of course, Stories of My Youth, my Work Adventures, my Travels, my Experiences, my Interests, my Passions, my Philosophies … and little things as well that you can hardly believe would become such great stories.
And, today, I've just received my Storyworth Books, and they are magnificent.  
Holding them, I have a sense of emotive exhilaration, relief, and also great satisfaction. 
I’m Proud of myself!  I did it!
It’s quite an unbelievable sense of achievement – up there with my moments of ‘ultimate peak’, that happen only a few times in your life. 
Having my completed Storyworth Book Volumes is a 'Mount Everest' moment for me!
I look at what I have produced, with Storyworth, and its process as the Guide, and I am blown-away.
Storyworth enabled me to not only ‘bring to life’ my stories, but to ensure that, in the beautiful Volumes that comprise my Stories, they are there for all to see … now and for the generations to come. 
And the photo’s lift the Volumes … people like looking at pictures, so I tried to make the Photos tell stories too!
In one of my Stories – Number 52 actually … the last one – I wrote that every-ones Life is bookended by a birth-date and a death-date. 
On a tombstone, that gap, between birth and death, is often just a ‘dash’. 
Most people’s lives then, you could say are recorded as that ‘dash’!  
My ‘dash’ is more than ‘just a dash’ … it’s a 3 Volume Storyworth Book Collection that makes my life meaningful … a full life, well lived. 
And plenty of living still - maybe a 4th Volume in 10 years or so! 
Storyworth’s journey was ‘inspiration’ for me! 
Thank you Storyworth!

My step-daughter gave a StoryWorth to me for Christmas. I had heard about StoryWorth before from Facebook ads and was very excited to write my own. If the question she picked didn't quite fit for me, then I changed it to work. I love photos, so I added many which helped me to tell the story.  I received my first book and it is terrific; the bindings and photos came out great! I hope to start a new book soon!

Storyworth began as a means to tell my stories to my grandchildren.
Weekly questions, including some prompts from my daughter, guided the process. I would draft up a story then spend a quiet hour each week to develop the book.
I also received technical support from Storyworth when I needed often in the early predawn hours.The result was a beautiful finished product that I’m happy to share with my family.

I would have liked to be better prepared up front as nearing the end I felt out of order and took awhile to organize and edit & find photos.Perhaps quarterly tips to organize & edit would help.

Kudos to all Storyworth staff for their friendly professional and timely assistance.

Along the way I have spoken to many people about the experience which was self reflective , knowing that I’d be able to pass along my stories. Highly recommended for those reasons!

Sharing your life’s experiences can be enriching. It was for me., My purpose was to give my grandkids an account of my eighty plus years of experience which for the most part was a legacy of love and good fortune.

Writing on a weekly routine was a good practice to keep me thinking.  I enjoyed a variety of prompts and the freedom to explore a pop up idea.  The experience brought to mind some treasured memories.

I just received my book from Storyworth and I love it!  It is professionally made, very sturdy, and it even feels good to the touch! I especially love the book design and color options, and also the ability to choose the size and shape of the cover photo. 

In December of 2022, our youngest daughter gave me a gift subscription to Storyworth as a Christmas gift. So, for the previous 15 months, I’ve been busy writing and editing, primarily using my blog for the bulk of my content. Storyworth gives you a year and three months to finish writing the book, so I took advantage of the whole allotted time and submitted mine just a couple days before it was due!

My book is based on my life story, my family, and my journey of faith. It has 65 chapters and 480 pages, which is the maximum amount of pages allowed. After I finish proofreading my first copy of the book, I’m planning on ordering several copies to give to my kids and grandkids. 

If you’ve ever considered writing a book, I recommend Storyworth. They send you interesting questions each week to help spark memories which, combined with a little inspiration, help you put your memories into words. While I primarily used my blog to write my book, I used one of their questions to inspire me to write a story about all of the great cooks in my family.  It’s titled, “What’s Cooking?!”  It’s one of the longest stories in my book, and includes recipes and treasured photos of my grandma, my mom, my sister, my daughters, grandkids, and my mother-in-law. While I love all of my stories in my book, this chapter is very special to me. 

The program was very easy to use, and the structure, answering one question a week for a year, allowed me to complete my life stories that I otherwise would have never started.  I am delighted with the final product, the coloured photos, hard cover and design look better than I expected. 


For some time, I had contemplated writing a history of my life. I wanted to leave a record of my existence for my kids and grandchildren. I wanted this and I was motivated to do it, but I really didn’t know where to begin…until my daughter gave me the gift of Storyworth!  Storyworth presented me with an opportunity to tell my story in a unique and impactful way. Instead of a chronological recitation of events, the weekly Storybook “questions” caused me to focus on topics that allowed me to truly reveal those experiences in my life that shaped me as a person. These were things my kids wanted to know but also things that I wanted them to know…things like my religious beliefs, things like my successes and failures, things like my philosophy of life, things about my work experiences, things about my relationships and the people I love, etc.  It was more about the ingredients that made me who I am and not about dates and places.  

Each week, the stories took me about an hour or two to write. Honestly, I couldn’t wait to get the weekly question on Monday!  The questions caused me to be very introspective and I feel that , by writing on these questions, I have grown as an individual. 

I received my books last week. I ordered the color version ( which I highly recommend!).  I purchased four copies for the important people in my life!  The book is professionally printed and bound.  I am proud of the book of my “Reflections “ that I wrote and that Storybook helped me produced. I feel comforted knowing that I had an opportunity to explain, in my own words, my life’s story. 

Storyworth has been incredible for my family and each of my grandparents now have their own book. Not only do we have multiple hard copy books that share stories meant to be passed down generations but in the process of creating the book, you get weekly emails of your writers stories and can comment or add photos to their story that also get printed in the book. This is a very special gift for anyone close to you that likes to share about their life and lessons.

My Honest Review of the Storyworth Platform

I have recently completed my book on Storyworth, and while there are several positives, there are also a few drawbacks that I feel are worth sharing.

The Positives:
The prompts that Storyworth sends each week are a great starting point to get you writing. I also appreciate the flexibility of being able to write from scratch rather than relying solely on their suggested questions. The ability to rearrange your stories in the order you want is another excellent feature — once you understand how it works, it’s quite easy to do.

Another big advantage is that the membership allows you to work entirely at your own pace. I took nearly two years to complete my book, and that freedom made the process much more enjoyable and less stressful. You can also share access with loved ones, which makes it easy to get help with editing or feedback along the way.

The Negatives:
That said, there are a number of areas where Storyworth could significantly improve. To start with, I wish the platform offered fixed templates for a Preface and Foreword. Currently, it doesn’t — the only way to include them is by creating separate chapters and manually placing them at the top of your book.

The editing function is also quite poor. There’s no spell check or grammar check, so you’re completely on your own. For a product being used in 2025, I find that rather outdated and disappointing.

While the online editor supports Unicode and allows you to type in other languages, the printing process does not handle non-Latin alphabets. I spent hours — even days — writing certain sections in my mother tongue, only to discover that they were not printed in the final book. The platform does not clearly state which alphabets it supports, and I believe this lack of transparency is unacceptable. When I contacted their support team, the response was polite but non-committal, offering little real help.

Considering how much they charge for printing and shipping, I expected a far better and more modern experience. The overall technology behind the platform feels dated and in need of a major upgrade.

Another issue is with formatting and layout control. The portal does not allow you to align or space paragraphs the way you want. Even the draft version that you review before printing doesn’t allow proper paragraph spacing or page adjustment. As a result, some pages in my printed book looked uneven, especially where paragraphs ended awkwardly.

Final Thoughts:
Overall, Storyworth is a wonderful concept with great potential — it helps preserve memories and stories in a meaningful way. But the platform itself feels stuck in the past. With better editing tools, clearer communication about language support, and more flexibility in formatting, it could truly live up to its promise. Until then, I’d say it’s a good experience — but not a great one.

Their customer service is absolutely horrible. They misprinted not one but four books for me and will do nothing to fix it.. It is a scam you used to get the books as part of the package now it's all separate.

I received this product as a gift. Signed up, got my security information and wrote answers to several questions. 
Never received any follow emails with "new" questions to answer. Didn't even receive anything other than promotional emails asking me to sign up or give a gift to a friend.
No way to contact what they call "customer service".
Very frustrating - DO NOT buy or give this product as a gift !!!!!

I wish they gave you more info on how or when it renews? I don't know what subscriptions I got for my parents and if I'm going to be paying again soon and how to get the answers in book form. I also wish my dad didn't write one sentence answers but that is not the brands fault! 

I've gotten this gift for both of my parents! They have shared some fun answers and I think it's a great idea. I think some of the questions are fun but could be jazzed up. 

There should be better options for when people pass away. Unfortunately this happened to my grandfather a few months after gifting it to him, and in that case all you get is a book with a few answers but mostly blank pages for $99. I would assume this is not an infrequent occurrence based on who these are gifted to.