How much does a life story book cost?
Between about $70 and several thousand dollars, and the price tells you almost exactly what you are getting: who does the asking, who does the writing, and what language it all happens in. This page lays the tiers out with the figures as they appeared on each company's own pages in September 2026. Prices change; check before you buy. We sell one of the products on this page and say which.
The tiers
Around $70 to $100: your parent writes, a company prints. Storyworth is the best-known. As advertised in September 2026: $69 for a black-and-white hardcover, $99 for colour with phone recording, $199 for two colour books, renewing at $99 a year. Extra copies $39 to $99. A question arrives each week for a year and your parent writes or records the answer. The quality of the book is the quality of your parent's own writing, which is the point of it and also its limit.
Around $100 a year: your parent talks, an AI writes. Remento, $99 a year, renewing at $99 or $12 a month, colour hardcover up to 380 pages, extra copies $69, free shipping in the US; weekly prompts, browser recording, a QR code on each page. Moonray, which is us, $99 one time: a year of conversation with Sara on Telegram in Persian or English, the digital book and one printed copy, shipping included worldwide; extra copies $59; a second edition in the other language $59. Storii sits nearby as a subscription built around automated phone calls, delivered as an audiobook and e-book rather than a printed book; its price loads on its own pricing page.
Several hundred to a few thousand dollars: a human does everything. A biographer interviews your parent, transcribes, writes, edits, places the photographs, and prints a coffee-table book. This is the best result money can buy and it costs what a person's weeks of work cost. Extra copies alone run $50 to $100 each at the company we checked.
Free: you do it yourself. A phone, a list of questions, an afternoon a month, and the discipline to keep going. How to record your parent's life story is our guide to doing it without us, and it is not a trick; done badly it still beats not doing it.
What changes the price inside a tier
Colour or black and white is the biggest lever in the write-it-yourself tier: the same book is $69 or $99 at Storyworth depending on the interior.
Page count. Storyworth's black-and-white book runs to 480 pages, the colour one to 300; Remento's to 380.
Extra copies are where the real money goes for a large family. Five siblings and a grandmother is six books, and at $39 to $99 a copy the copies can cost more than the subscription. Ours are $59.
Renewals. Storyworth's top plan and Remento both renew at $99 a year. Ours does not renew; the year of conversations is what $99 buys, and the book, the digital edition and the voice archive stay yours after it.
Shipping. Free within the United States is common. Outside it, ask. Ours is included wherever you are; import duty, where a country charges it, is paid by whoever receives the parcel.
What the price does not tell you
Whether your parent will actually do it. A $69 book that goes unanswered after week three costs more than a $99 one that gets finished, and which one gets finished depends on the parent, not the product. Writers finish Storyworth. Talkers finish the voice products. A parent who speaks Persian finishes the one that asks in Persian; neither Storyworth's nor Remento's pricing page mentions any language other than English.
Whether it is one book or two. If the person whose life it is reads Persian and their grandchildren read English, you are buying two books or nobody gets the whole thing. We are the only product on this page that sells the second language as a $59 edition of the same memoir.
Refunds
Remento advertises a 30-day money-back guarantee. Ours is a full refund within thirty days, self-serve from the dashboard, and approving the book does not close the window; sending it to the printer does. Storyworth's terms are on their site.
If you are choosing on price alone
Buy Storyworth's $69 plan. It is the cheapest printed book on this page and their track record is thirteen years long. If your parent will not write, or will not write in English, the cheapest plan is the one they finish, and that is a different calculation.