Tell Me Forever
Tell Me Forever is a website that records somebody’s life story in their own voice, writes it out, and prints it as a book.
What it does
- Choose questions. You pick a set of questions about somebody’s life — childhood, work, love, the war years — starting from sets we wrote, and edit, reorder or replace any of them.
- Invite the person answering. They are sent a private link by email. They do not need an account, a password or an application, and are never asked to make one.
- They record their answers. One question and one large button, in the browser on whatever device they already use.
- We transcribe it. Each answer is turned into text automatically, and you can correct the transcript and trim silences or false starts from the audio.
- You get the recordings. Audio and transcripts are yours to play and download at any time, and to delete.
- You can order a book. The answers are typeset into a hardback and posted to you, with a code beside each story that plays the recording of it. You read the whole thing before paying for it.
What it costs
You buy recording time and it does not expire. An hour is $12.00, less per hour if you buy more. New accounts get thirty minutes free, with no card. Books are priced separately, when and if you order one. Nothing is a subscription and nothing renews.
Signing in with Google
You can create a Tell Me Forever account with an email address and a password, or by pressing "Continue with Google".
If you choose Google, we request three things and no others: your name, your email address and your Google profile picture. They are used for one purpose: to create your account and to sign you in. Your name and picture appear in your own account; your email address is where we send account notices such as a receipt or a password reset.
We do not request access to Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Photos or any other Google service. We never send email from your Google account, we do not read anything in it, and we do not use anything Google gives us for advertising or sell it to anybody.
Signing in with Google is optional. An email address and a password does everything a Google account does here.
Who can hear the recordings
Recordings are private. There is no public directory, no feed and nothing shared by default. They are audible to the account holder, to the person who recorded them, and to anybody the account holder deliberately shares a link or a printed code with. Audio is served through temporary signed links rather than public addresses.
Who we are
Tell Me Forever is at tellmeforever.com. What we collect, why, who it is shared with and how long it is kept is set out in full in our privacy policy, and the rules of use are in our terms of service.