Storyworth reviews and discussion

I just received my book and love it! I would recommend Storyworth, I am impressed with the nice quality of the book and the colored pictures in the book! I am so happy that I took time to write my life stories on my book, for all my family, My Kids, parents and my grandkids, It will be a lasting memories for them in the future. THis is a great way to share your stories and have a nice book to keep and to share! I love it!

Receiving the gift of Storyworth from one of my sons and his family for my 80th birthday has been one of my best gifts ever. For well over 25 years, I have been contemplating writing about my "crazy" life for my, kids, grandkids and future generations, but never got around to doing it. Thus, the suggestions and motivation received from Storyworth was what was needed to get me off my rear end and start writing. Once the 'floodgates" opened the thoughts and memories of the past provided more than I thought possible to recall but also inspired me to attempt to fill in the gaps. A variety of web sites such as Google, BeenVerified and Ancestry.com were a great help in my being able to write as much as I did. Initially, I thought the entire work would be 100 pages or less; turns out it ended up being 11 chapters, over 258 pages. If it were not for Storyworth this would never have happened. Not only were their standard online suggestions instructive, any concerns, need for clarification or questions, I had, were responded via email quickly. I cannot recommend more highly Storyworth for the service provided, and the mission and motivation behind what they have allowed folks such as myself to have accomplished. Keep up the GREAT work. JBB

The entire experience has been wonderful from beginning to end. My Daughter in law hit not just a home run but I would call it a grand slam. Telling stories is what I’m all about and to be able to use the book to start a conversation with my kids and grandkids makes it even more wonderful. I realize it’s not for everyone because I asked around and some family members said they wouldn’t be able to  express themselves in a story format or be willing to share such details. But I will tell others how much fun it was for me and I wish your company well and just want to thank you for doing such an absolutely perfect gift that not only lasted a whole year but forever to be shared.

My daughters gave it to me for Christmas. It was a wonderful journey through my past. I recalled memories that my wife of 53 years knew nothing about. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to put my memories into a book that my children, grandchildren and beyond will enjoy. The finished product exceeded my expectations. I will recommend this to all my friends.

This was an amazing gift from my daughter. I enjoyed writing my stories every week. It was definitely a trip down memory lane!

I enjoyed writing stories and adding pictures. The book turned out very nicely and was printed and shipped quickly. The site was easy to use and I was able to "settle in" and use it comfortably.

My 2 books arrived yesterday. I love them. Better than expected. I learned from reading them. I learned I need to pay more attention to my editing/grammar/punctuation etc. I learned that I had forgotten what I wrote in some instances. I learned that I will continue to write and save stories. This is a great project and hopefully will be something my family will enjoy when I am gone. I've learned to add more detail and pictures also. I've learned support help is great, punctual and friendly.

My siblings and I sent Storyworth to my father as a Christmas gift. He worked on the stories every week. He doesn’t type very well on the computer so he used his microphone to dictate the stories. It was very helpful to me and to him that I had full access to edit the stories and the punctuation. I was also able to add many wonderful pictures from throughout his life. Storyworth sent notifications about when questions would no longer be available and how long edits could be made. I had some trouble initially adding pictures, but customer service helped me resolve this problem. The printed book came last week. The book quality is excellent. When we gave my dad his book, he got teary-eyed and just kept looking at the book. He told me he read it from cover to cover as soon as he got home. He loved that his stories were captured. The book was a big success. Thank you for making it possible.

I received Storyworth as a Christmas gift, and have enjoyed writing 13 stories so far. Getting started was easy. The interface is intuitive and uncluttered. However I have discovered a major flaw in Storyworth that you should be fully aware of before purchasing the product. Storyworth gives authors the option of sharing saved stories with family and friends, and makes sharing very easy in the Manage Account> Settings> Sharing Permissions interface. To share, we simply add the name and email address of someone, and are told “The people you invite below will be able to suggest questions for you. They'll also have access to all your stories, not just the ones you post after today.” This is the only disclosure about sharing that is provided, and is woefully inadequate. Much to my surprise, my daughter who is a software engineer/web designer at a major university discovered that whenever you share stories, you give the recipient complete editorial freedom to modify any of your work as author. Guests can edit a story, edit a title, change the order of stories, add and delete photos, delete sentences, delete paragraphs, and even delete the entire story by clicking on the Red Remove Trash Can Button at the top of the screen. Can you imagine a reader clicking on the Trash Can Button by accident? When I reached out to Customer Support, their response was that some authors wanted to allow others to edit their stories. Fair enough. For me to prevent editing by others, I needed to stop sharing altogether. However, turning off sharing also turns off the opportunity to get feedback on your stories as well. The obvious solution is to give the guests you share stories with different levels of permission. Currently the default and only option at Storyworth is complete editorial freedom for guests. There should be a default option to allow guests to read your stories, and add comments at the bottom that are separate from the story. There could be a second option to allow collaborators to edit your writing, but only if you choose this option. There is a wonderful implementation of a tiered-shared permission system for family trees at Ancestry.com, where owners can allow guests to (1) view trees, (2) view trees and see living people, (3) contribute to a family tree, (4) become Editor of the tree. Storyworth already employs one shared permission in that guests cannot share your stories with anyone else. Only the owner can. It should not be difficult to further refine the sharing permissions. Finally, it is worth noting an error in the Privacy Policy at the Storyworth web site, which promises "You have control of your Content you provide to us. By default, Storyworth will never delete your Content unless you instruct us to do so or you terminate your account with us. You therefore control which of your Content is retained in your account.” Clearly not true if invited guests can delete your content.

I had an absolutely wonderful experience with Storyworth. I set this up for my Mum and Dad and they loved answering the questions on a weekly basis. Sadly, my Dad passed away during the subscription period but the Storyworth team were sensitive and accommodating. My Mum, Sister and I received our books last week (after finally feeling ready to put it together) and they are beautiful. Gift Storyworth to your loved ones, you won't regret it.

HORRIBLE! You get a homework assignment throughout the year, being badgered in your emails that you're overdue. This is for you to write your own memories of your life... meaning the prompts direct you to your family, childhood, best friends years ago, all things that could result in someone finding answers to your security questions if hacked. They seem sure they won't. How reassuring. No refunds. If you express this very obvious concern you're directed to "gift" this to someone else. Say what? So, they DO nothing and GET the money. Okay. Terrible company. Update: I did receive a refund after reviewing. It was in no way offered initially, despite my clear concerns for safety. I think the company would do better to listen to their customers the first time.

My husband and both received Storyworth subscriptions. Sometimes it was hard to keep up but we put in our best effort and finished all our responses. We had an option to change the questions if we didn’t like the one sent, but our daughters had chosen the questions so we tried our best to answer all of them. The finished product is absolutely gorgeous! Very nicely printed and bound. I’m really glad we did this! By the way, whenever we had a question about how to add a picture or a pagebreak, Storyworth was quick to answer and extremely helpful. I’m so sorry that so many of these reviews are bad. We can recommend this company with no reservation.

To bad I can't give no stars. Purchased for my mother December 2022. By Feb 2023 she still had no communication from Storyworth. Requested a refund. Was told they only refund within 30 days of purchase date. The first month I thought maybe it hasn't started yet on her end because I was getting emails saying what questions they were planning on sending her. Very disappointed. I was excited about this project. Angry they won't be honorable and refund my money.

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.

Waste of money. Storyworth is supposed to send an email once a month with a question. I gifted this to both my mom and dad and they both stopped getting monthly emails 4 months into the subscription and forgot about it. Their subscription ran out and the man storyworth wanted $80 more to extend their time to answer questions. Not worth the money.

Horrible experience and waste of money. I purchased a subscription and a book. Subscription expired but I don’t get the book. I guess you have to place the order before your subscription ends or renew for another $60 to order your book. What a rip off.