Their stories in a book. Crafted from conversations

We guide your loved one at their own pace. A year of gentle weekly questions on WhatsApp naturally unfolds into a finished hardcover.

Give as a gift

$109 one payment
30 day money back

A Sanota hardcover book and an unbroken WhatsApp conversation on a phone, on a pale oak table

How the gift begins

Three unhurriedsteps

We ask one decision of you. After that the story is free to take its own time.

The gift

You give the year

Tell us who the gift is for and add your own greeting. You get the gift straight away, ready to send on or to open together at the kitchen table.
The conversation

They tell it

Sanota asks the week’s question on WhatsApp and listens to their answer. It remembers what they have already said, so the next question follows from their life and not from a list.
The book

The book comes home

At the end of the year their stories are bound into a hardcover book. Not a folder of clips: a finished volume your family can take down from the shelf for years.

A storyteller answering Sanota’s message in their own voice

Nothing to write, nothing to install

It happens wherethey already are

Every week Sanota opens the conversation with one question in WhatsApp. They reply with a voice note whenever it suits them, in the kitchen or on the bus. Sanota listens, asks what a good listener would ask next, and carries the story forward. They decide whether the book gathers stories from their whole life or from one particular period, such as childhood or their working years.

I never thought my ordinary life would read like this.

From conversation to the page

Spoken memories,written into stories

Sanota gathers what they say into whole, carefully written chapters. Their turns of phrase and their humour stay in the writing.

Sanota Week 12

What was the house you grew up in like?

10.30

0.42 10.32 ✓✓

You mentioned the range and how warm the kitchen was. Who usually sat around that table?

10.34

0.31 10.36 ✓✓

ANNA · IN HER OWN WORDS

Chapter 4

The house at the
end of the lane

The landscape of my childhood was drawn in soot and green. Our house stood at the end of a lane where the tarmac gave up and the fields began, and behind it the moor rose in that long, patient way it has, brown in winter and purple for three short weeks in August. It was not a grand house by anyone’s reckoning. It was a whole world all the same, and its small front garden took in every hour of light the northern sky was willing to give.

The house at the end of the lane

If I had to keep one sense from those years, it would be the kitchen. On winter mornings the range was awake long before any of us children were. There was the settling of coal, the low mutter of the kettle, and my mother’s hands in flour before seven o’clock. The smell of bread and warm sugar did not simply fill the rooms. It went into the walls, and it made a harbour that no weather outside could trouble.

That kitchen table was the middle of our lives. We gathered there, family and half the lane besides, for neighbours came in without knocking and sat down as though they had always meant to. The day’s worries were put on the table with the tea and made smaller by being shared. My mother ruled it all with a gentle firmness. "You do your best and you look after each other," she used to say, and those few words have carried me further than anything I was ever taught in a classroom.

ANNA · IN HER OWN WORDS

My father taught me the language of work. He was a quiet man whose diligence spoke louder than any speech, and he smelled of sawdust and cold air. When he mended the gate or saw to the shed I was allowed to follow at his heel, and being handed a plank to carry or a brush to hold was never only a job of work. It was being counted, and it was pride passed down through the hands.

There were four of us children, a loud and lively lot. We did not always agree, but underneath the squabbling ran a loyalty that never broke. We learned early what has since proved to be arithmetic: a shared joy really does multiply, and a shared sorrow shrinks to something you can carry. That went for the whole lane too. Sugar was borrowed in both directions, a roof was mended by whoever was free that Saturday, and when a proper occasion came the everyday was dusted off and the good, thin china was brought out.

The house at the end of the lane

What I remember most brightly, though, are the summers. The garden came into its own: sweet peas along the fence, the heavy scent of stocks in the evening, new potatoes lifted for Sunday and berries rattling into the bottom of a pan.

Anna by the window of the house where she grew up — In the garden at the end of the lane

ANNA · IN HER OWN WORDS

In the evenings, when the work was done, we sat on the back step. The wind moved through the sycamore and a curlew called somewhere out on the moor. Those were the hours when time seemed to stop altogether. The sun hung above the fields a long while, gilding the rim of the world, as though it could not quite bring itself to go down.

When I close my eyes now and think of that house, it is not the walls or the furniture I see. It is the people, and the hours we had together. Life has taken me a long way from that lane, but I go back in my mind and sit on the step again, and the air smells of cut grass and coal smoke.

The house at the end of the lane

When the dusk finally came up the lane the house changed its shape. The yellow light in the kitchen window shone out against the darkening fields like a small lighthouse, and indoors the noises of the day settled one by one until there was only the slow tick of the clock.

Those were the hours when words were no longer needed; the plain fact of one another was enough. Lying between sheets that had dried on the line, I knew as certainly as I have ever known anything that whatever the world beyond the moor turned out to be, inside these walls we were safe.

That house did not only prepare me for the world. It gave me a compass, and the needle still points to the same things: love, honest work, and a deep gratitude for the smallest of days.

Spread 1 / 3

A safe place for memories

They decide what they tell, and who reads it

Telling a life story takes quiet, trust and clear boundaries. Sanota holds to all three.

30 day promise

There is time to see how it feels

If the year does not feel like theirs, we refund the payment in full within the first 30 days.

The storyteller’s choice

The storyteller decides what to share

We ask the storyteller whether the giver may read the stories and help put the book together. The choice is always theirs.

Privacy

The stories belong to the storyteller

Without the storyteller’s permission the giver reads nothing: the voice notes and the stories stay with them alone.

The gift now. The stories week by week.

A year to tell it. A book that stays

One decision gives your loved one 52 unhurried moments of being heard, and gives your family a book to come back to.

A mother and daughter with a closed Sanota book in the light of a window

One decision, one price

Everything you need is included

01
52 weeks of conversationsSanota opens the conversation with a new question once a week. They answer with a voice note, in their own time.
02
Conversations written into storiesEvery conversation becomes a whole chapter, written so that their voice and their humour survive the writing.
03
The finished book, deliveredOne hardcover book to read and approve before it is printed. Delivery about three weeks after approval.

One payment

$109

No monthly fees and nothing to add later.

Give as a gift

Take your time. 30 day money back.

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Payments handled by Stripe

Worth knowing

Questions people ask

We’ve made giving the gift and telling the stories as effortless as possible.

Do they need to install anything?

No. Everything happens in WhatsApp, which they already use. There is nothing to download, no password to remember and nothing to type: they answer by talking, the way they would to anyone else.

How do they begin?

After you buy, you come back here to finish the gift and you get a personal gift page and a card to print. They open WhatsApp from it and send the first message themselves, whenever the moment suits them.

Can the book cover just one period of their life?

Yes. In the first conversation Sanota asks whether they would like to tell stories from their whole life or from one particular period, such as growing up, their working life or their first years as a parent. If they choose a period, Sanota prepares a year of questions about that time. The choice is theirs, so there is nothing for you to decide when you give the gift.

Is it the same question for everyone?

No. Sanota remembers what they have already told, so the next question follows from their life: the mill they mentioned, the sister they have not spoken about yet. A good listener asks the second question, and that is the one that matters.

What if a week goes by unanswered?

No harm done. The question comes round again, and they carry on at their own pace. The year is a rhythm, not a deadline.

Does the person who gave the gift read the answers?

Not without their permission. The voice notes and the stories stay with them, and the giver sees only that the year is under way. If they choose, they can give the giver access to the stories, for instance to help put the finished book together. The choice is always theirs.

Who owns my stories?

You do. You keep every right to your content, both the voice notes and the stories written from them. Sanota only handles them to make your book, and never sells them. Your material is kept in Finland, within the EU, and you can have it back whenever you like or ask us to delete it. How we handle it is set out in the privacy notice.

When does the book arrive?

When the year of conversations is done, Sanota gathers the stories into a finished book. They see it and approve it before anything is printed, and delivery takes about three weeks after that.

What does the 30 day money back promise mean?

There is time to see how it feels. If the service is not right for them within the first 30 days, tell us and we refund the payment in full.

Their stories in a book. Crafted from conversations

Three unhurriedsteps

You give the year

They tell it

The book comes home

It happens wherethey already are

The house at theend of the lane

They decide what they tell, and who reads it

There is time to see how it feels

The storyteller decides what to share

The stories belong to the storyteller

A year to tell it. A book that stays

Everything you need is included

The house at the
end of the lane