Retirement & farewells

A retirement gift the whole team signs

Thirty years of work is a lot of people. Send one link, collect a page from each of them, and hand over a hardcover book instead of a card that ran out of white space.

Start a retirement book See how it works
Free to set up · no payment until you print

The card gets passed around. The book gets kept.

The standard retirement send-off is a card circulated at the office for two weeks, signed by whoever happened to be at their desk, and read once. The people who moved on years ago, the client who worked with them for a decade, the person they trained in 2004 who is now in another state — none of them get a chance to write anything.

A retirement memory book removes the geography problem. Anyone with the link can add a photo and a message, so the invitation reaches the whole career instead of the current floor plan. The result is a printed hardcover that says what a career actually meant to the people in it.

It works the same way for a farewell, a transfer, a last season with the team, or a colleague leaving for something new — anywhere a group wants to say something together and a card is not big enough.

A retiring colleague laughing while being hugged at a farewell gathering
Everyone signs a card once and forgets it. A book is what they read again in ten years.
How it works

Set it up in a lunch break

One person sets up the project. Everyone else adds their own page, which is the part that usually falls to an organizer.

STEP 1

Create the project

Name it, add a cover photo, and set a deadline a week before the party so you have time to print.

STEP 2

Send the link everywhere

Team email, group chat, the alumni list, LinkedIn. There is nothing for contributors to install and no login to explain.

STEP 3

Pages fill in

Photos from offsites, first-day pictures, inside jokes, and the thank-yous people never said out loud. Each becomes a finished page automatically.

STEP 4

Print and present

Order the hardcover for the party and a second copy for their family. A free PDF is available too, in case the timing is tight.

Why a book beats a gift card

Group gifts usually solve the money problem and skip the meaning problem. This one does both.

Reaches the whole career

Former colleagues, remote teams, clients, and the people who retired before them can all contribute from wherever they are.

Everyone chips in

Instead of collecting cash in an envelope, contributors can gift toward the printing — $1.25 covers one page.

No organizer burnout

Nobody has to chase people for photos, resize anything, or paste messages into a document at 11pm.

Quiet people participate

Writing a paragraph privately is easier than speaking at a party, so you hear from people who would otherwise just sign the card.

It looks like a real book

A 10-inch square matte hardcover with a printable spine — the kind of thing that goes on a shelf, not in a box in the garage.

No design skills needed

Every contribution is arranged by the layout engine, so the finished book is consistent no matter who submitted what.

Prompts that get better messages than "we’ll miss you"

Put two or three of these in the invitation and the quality of what comes back changes completely.

“What you learned from them that you still use.”
“The project you survived together.”
“A photo from the early years nobody else has.”
“Something they said in a meeting that stuck.”
“What their desk looked like, in detail.”
“The advice you would pass on to whoever fills their role.”
Pricing

Split the cost across the team

Setting up the project and collecting messages is free. If the team gifts pages, the printing is often covered before you order.

$0

To start and collect

Create the project, invite everyone, and gather photos and stories for free. You only pay if you print.

$34.95

Printed hardcover, 20 pages

A 10-inch square matte hardcover with matte interior pages, plus shipping. Extra pages are $1.25 each.

$1.25

Per gifted page

Friends and family can chip in toward printing — each $1.25 covers one page of the finished book.

Questions

Retirement memory book questions

How long before the party should we start?

Two to three weeks is comfortable: about ten days for contributions, then roughly 96 hours of production plus shipping. If you are tighter than that, download the free PDF for the party and order the printed copy afterward.

Do coworkers need to create accounts?

No. They open the link, upload up to three photos, write their message, and leave an email address. That matters for reaching retired colleagues and clients who will not sign up for anything.

Can we keep it a surprise?

Yes. Set the project to private so it is not listed publicly, and share the link only with the people you are inviting to contribute.

Can the company pay for it?

Yes — one person can order and expense it, or the team can gift pages individually at $1.25 each and cover it collectively.

How many pages will we end up with?

Roughly one page per contributor, plus a cover. A 40-person team produces about a 40-page book, which is $59.95 at $34.95 for the first 20 pages plus $1.25 each after.

Can we order copies for other people?

Yes. Additional copies of the same finished book can be ordered for the department, the family, or anyone who asks after seeing it.

Related pages

Other group occasions people use Memory Booked for.

A retired couple sitting together on the deck of a sailboat
Colleagues, former staff and old classmates can all add a page from wherever they are now.

Give them the whole career, bound

Start the project, send one link to everyone who worked with them, and hand over something they will still have in twenty years.

Start a retirement book