Storyworth reviews
The easiest way to document & discover beloved life stories
•13 reviews•1 shoutout•9 followers
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This program is trash and your customer service is worse. You respond to emails for help with redundant answers. I bought two books for my parents last year and they have not been able to submit any stories. They wrote it all out… pressed save and it deletes everything they wrote. You provide a customer service is number no one answers. DO NOT waste your money.
Storyworth worked for me. I'm not saying it is for everyone, but I'm over 65 and ran a company - what's that got to do with it you ask? I see other reviews with some raving about it and most saying it is sooo hard to use. They complain about it not saving stories (did they click save at the bottom - I forgot once, but it does save a draft, maybe they don't know). They complain about saving pictures. The program doesn't explain to drag and drop on the insert picture box - could be better said there where used, than in the FAQ's. I get it - if you aren't middle management or above or a prolific computer user or gamer, you might not be computer savvy. So, know your gifted persons abilities. I can't say enough about how helpful it was to put my life thoughts and history down on subjects I cared about from the 300 questions available... and you can write your own. Mine was a gift and I selected weekly questions for 6 months... then just started writing and finished with 300 pages in 3 months (the limit for colour at the lower price). You will probably only want 20-35 questions to finish with that many pages including the pictures you put in. You can have them print the book, which I did and I ordered a dozen copies. Because you own the stories and you can print to pdf at any time, I then printed out the book in pdf, made a few adjustments and then uploaded to a free e-book maker site where my book is available as a flip book also. It even has sound effects and music on several pages as applicable... siren for injuries, a few memorable songs from my youth, etc. I'm certainly glad I was asked to write my memoirs and happy to share it with my children and grandchildren... Well worth the very low price of this program compared to the interview business models out there. I would usually think on a question for a day before answering and how I would answer, research my facts and thoughts, and find pictures if applicable. How you going to do that and make a 300 page book with an hour or even 4 hours interview on tape? Think about it...
It was a good idea and the people were very nice until the finished product came out unsatisfactory and then basically they said tough luck. I very carefully reviewed and reviewed to make certain everything looked exactly as I wanted it, but when the book came the typesetting, and the placement of the photos totally ruined The story and made it very hard to follow. For example, I put in chronological order the places I lived, I put the definition of the house. I grew up in and a photo of the house right after that when the book came out, the definition of my house was on one page, The photo was on the next page with the next address under it totally wrong, and they did that with every photograph. The definition of what the photo was was on one page the photo is on the next page, and often the typesetting was even indented so that the wrong definition was under the photo. When I contacted them to explain this, they basically said tough luck. You should’ve reviewed it . I tried to explain that I reviewed it and it looks fine in the review but the printing types that came out totally different. That’s when these wonderful helpful people just vanished. The book is hard to figure out because you look at one picture of people in big hats at a race , and it says New Orleans under it. It was very disappointing. I worked for a year.
I have just received my book. I thoroughly enjoyed putting some of my memories in print. I'm thinking about writing volume 2 as there is so much left out. The second book will be more chronologically placed. It really is a must to put down your memories for your children and grandchildren. Loved every word of volume 1.
In theory storyworth is great and I was really excited to gift subscriptions to my parents and grandparents. However, we ran into several problems. We were getting the same story prompts multiple times, even though I went through and scheduled specific questions. Many of our stories got lost and I had to retype all of them. When it came time to order books there was no way on the website for me to order all four storyteller's books in one order, which meant I had to pay for expensive shipping 4 times. And the weird thing was, on one order economy shipping was cheap, but then I would go to order the next batch 2 minutes later, with the same amount of books in it, and the economy shipping was either not an option, or for some reason the price had doubled. Their customer service is usually quick to respond, however they only have a text line, and sometimes it's just easier to work problems out over the phone. Overall I would say just type your own family stories and save your money!!
I love Storyworth. It's one of those gifts where the intangible value is priceless (like that Mastercard commercial - haha!). It brings you closer to your family members and helps you understand more about yourself and your origins. It's also creates the greatest ever sense of urgency ever - get your family history documented before it's too late!
This would be even more awesome as an Amazon Echo integration, since the senior folks we really want to use it would appreciate the simplest possible interface, and there's nothing quite like hearing it in their own voice.
I enjoyed finding it very easy to use. It finally got me over the hurdle of creating an account and inviting my family, which I had not gotten around to doing via web. Good luck - maybe this app will accelerate StoryWorth's activations!
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