Questions before you begin.

Four to eight weeks before the birthday is best. Two weeks is the minimum, or a few days more around bank holidays.

Tell us when the book needs to arrive and we’ll set the writing deadline about 12 days before it. That leaves time for you to read everything and order, and for us to print and post it.

Anyone who knows them: family, godparents, family friends, teachers, coaches or tutors, and their own friends and siblings, including anyone under 18. Up to 30 people can write.

Share one link in a WhatsApp group, by text or by email. Anyone who opens it gives their name and email and writes, with no account to set up. We email them their own link so they can come back to a draft.

If everyone is choosing from your topic list, you can also invite someone to a particular topic by email.

Yes. Say so in your note, which everyone sees before they write. Anyone the link is forwarded to can join, so don’t post it in a group chat they’re in.

You can turn the link off or replace it at any time, and it closes at the writing deadline.

Whatever they’d like to say: advice, a story, a memory, as much or as little as they like. Anyone stuck can tap ‘Need an idea?’ for a question to start from.

Yes. Start from our 17, take out any you’d rather not offer, add your own, and reword any question. They can be ideas for anyone stuck, or you can ask everyone to pick a topic and answer one of its questions.

You can preview what contributors will see before you share the link.

Every topic has a short, plain question for them: ‘What’s one thing you’ve learned about money? Say it the way you’d say it out loud.’ If they’d rather talk than type, sit with them and type it up on their link.

Yes, one each, with a caption if they like. It prints on the page facing their words.

You can see who’s joined and who’s written, and send a reminder to anyone yet to write. We email them their own link and the deadline.

Yes. You read the entries, ask contributors for changes or leave an entry out, and arrange the chapters. You can add a foreword and choose the cover details.

Once you pay and place the order, the book is locked. We check the print proof by hand before sending it to the printer.

A cloth-bound hardback, 156 × 234 mm, in a choice of five cloth colours, with a printed dust jacket carrying your title, and everyone’s names on its front flap. Inside, the words are typeset into chapters with space for optional colour photographs.

The cloth spine under the jacket is foil-stamped with text you choose – “For” and their name, unless you change it. On books of 100 pages or more, the jacket’s spine carries it too; on shorter books it’s too narrow to print on, so it’s left plain.

The book is £89, including UK postage, and each extra copy is £69. Nothing to pay until you order.

We deliver in the UK only for now. All copies are printed together and posted to one address.

Before you pay, we show whether the book will arrive by the date you gave us. If we say it will and it doesn’t, we’ll refund you in full, and you keep the book.

Those are the birthdays we’ve built it around, but any milestone birthday from 16 to 30 works: you choose which when you set it up. The questions are written for someone early in adult life, so the book is mostly advice, with a few stories from the people who know them.

No. People write every contribution. The questions give them a way in; we typeset their words for the book.