Storyphile | Your life. Your story. For the people you love.

2. Helping You Explore the Options

Storyphile can help you preserve your life story as a collection of audio recordings or as a printed book. You can choose from one of our life story packages. Or we can customize a package to suit your needs.

If you prefer to do your own writing, we can provide editing services to polish your prose.

If you want to be sure you have the last word, we can help you craft a living obituary—so you’re still in charge of what’s said about you even when you’re gone.

We can help you or your family write eulogies and memorial cards for loved ones who have passed on. We can even help you prepare full-scale tribute books to memorialize people whose lives touched yours.

Choosing your story format

There are lots of ways to preserve your life story.

You can choose a basic package that gets the job done, or a fancy package with lots of extras, or something in between.

It’s sort of like planning a vacation. (You can rough it in the bush or stay at a five-star hotel.) Or like buying a car. (A wee hatchback will get you around town, but you may prefer a sporty convertible.)

The package you choose and the price you’ll pay depend on what you want to do.

Do you want to preserve your whole life story? Or just a memorable slice of life—perhaps your school days, your military service, or a special day in your life?

Would you like a book you can hold in your hand? Or is a recording all you need?

If you tell us your budget and your goals, we can customize a package to suit you.

Whatever you choose, you’ll have a product that captures your voice and your personality for the generations that follow you. You’ll create your own legacy—preserved for posterity—in a format that you can afford. This could be an audio recording, an interview transcript, an electronic file, a set of photos, a manuscript, a book or some combination.

Choosing your investment

Preserving a complete life story is a labour-intensive process. And it can be a significant investment.

Pricing depends on the number of hours we spend interviewing you and on the choices you make.

Storyphile will custom-design your life story package to suit your budget, and we’ll give you a firm price before any work begins.

Our life story packages start as low as $495 for a living obituary.

A set of personal interview recordings that covers a complete life story starts at $2,700.

A full-scale custom-designed memoir can take more than 600 hours to produce and cost upwards of $40,000. That’s about the cost of remodelling your kitchen, or buying a fancy car, or taking a dream vacation.

No matter what life story package you choose, it’s definitely an investment. But unlike some investments, it will never depreciate.

In 10 years, your kitchen will be out of date again. Your car will need to be replaced. And your vacation will be a distant memory. Your life story, on the other hand, will become more precious with each passing year.

Telling your life story is an investment in your past—for your future.

For the people who love you, it’s priceless.

So don’t put it off until it’s too late.

Make an investment for the ages. Contact Storyphile today, and let us help you tell your story.

“Writers are the custodians of memory, and memories have a way of dying with their owner. One of the saddest sentences I know is “I wish I had asked my mother about that.”

—William Zinsser

Granddad shares his life story book with his beaming granddaughter.