Before you choose

8 reasons families choose an interview over a question a week

Same weekly rhythm. A very different question.

Most of them work the same way. A question lands in your dad's inbox each week, he types the answer, and a year later you print what he wrote.

By the Ethos team·3 min read

1. Pace

   Two to three months, not a year of prompts

   One question a week means one memory a week, and a year of that is maybe fifty short answers. We ask weekly too, but he answers out loud. He can stop at five minutes; a good question usually means he does not. Most families have the finished hardcover in two to three months.

   
2. The questions

   The questions actually get interesting

   A prompt list is written before anyone has met him, so the answers stay on the surface and he quietly stops around week five. Ours are written from what he already told us, by people who write memoirs for a living. A prompt list asks what he did in 1962. An interview asks why he never went back.

3. See how Ethos makes the book
4. No typing

   He talks. That is the whole job

   One question a week arrives as a text. He taps the link and talks, on any phone, with no typing, no app to download and no account to log into. Nobody in the family has to assemble anything either. We write it, and the hardcover arrives finished.

   
5. The book

   A 7 by 10 hardcover, full color inside, up to 400 pages

   Thick coated paper, ten or more cover styles. Most books run 100 to 200 pages and the count grows with the story up to 400, so a long life story costs the same as a short one. $69 once, and nothing renews.

   
6. The family

   Up to 50 people can add what he would never say himself

   Invite his sister, his oldest friend, the daughter who remembers the move differently. Each one gets their own interview, and what they remember enriches his book: the parts he would skip, the things he is too modest to say.

   
7. His voice

   You keep the recordings, not just the book

   Every answer is recorded, and every recording is yours to download and keep. The book is the thing on the shelf. The recording is the thing your grandchildren play in thirty years, because a page cannot do the way he says the name of the town he grew up in.

8. Copies

   Every second copy is free, so nobody has to share

   One book and three children is a problem you will have to solve later. Order three together and you pay for two, which is $138. At five it works out around $41.40 a copy, and anything from two copies up ships free.

9. Thirty days

   Thirty days to be sure, and nothing renews

   This is one payment. There is no subscription to remember, no plan that renews next year and no upgrade gate between him and the finished book. If it is not what you hoped for, you have thirty days to get your money back, no questions asked.

“Got this for my dad who never talks about himself. What's in this book floored our whole family.”

“So easy for my grandpa who hates typing. He just talks, and the book came out beautifully.”

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