5 Custom Gift Book Ideas for Readers

It’s never been easier to create unique or personalized gifts online. People have always loved gifting books, but today it’s incredibly easy to make a custom, personalized book as a gift that recipients will cherish.

Because Lulu offers individual, book-of-one printing on demand, you can create a unique file, upload it, and order that exact book. There is so much demand for personalized books that an entire new industry built around using AI and print-on-demand has emerged over the last two years. 

We call it generative print commerce, and it’s built on the idea that LLMs can easily ingest a user’s inputs, lean on templates the business develops, and quickly generate a unique, completely personalized book for the buyer. Then the book is printed through Lulu’s API, which enables a distinct file for each book.

But today, we’re going to focus on five options you can easily make yourself to give as a gift. 

Create a Book for a Gift

To create a book on Lulu, you’ll need two files:

1. An interior PDF with all of the pages for your book
2. A cover PDF including the front, back, and spine

Note that you can use our Cover Creator to make your cover file while you’re uploading your interior files. 

I recommend watching this short video that shows how uploading your files works. 

When you make your own book, you’ll need to gather all the content together to create the PDF. That means creating the pages, editing images, and laying them all out. Check out some of our guides and templates to help you create your book files.

5 Customizable Book Ideas

These five book ideas all make great personalized gifts. And they’re all pretty easy to make on your own and have printed by Lulu. 

#1: Make a Personalized Calendar

Custom calendars make amazing gifts. Trust me. I give them all the time. I don’t think I’ll ever buy another generic wall calendar at Target; not when I can turn 14 images into a personalized calendar so easily. 

Watch this 3-minute video to see how easy it is to make a custom calendar:

All you need are the images! Maybe you took a vacation this year; let your friends and family relive those memories. Kids and pets make great subjects for calendars too! Or you might show off some of your original art.  

Our calendars can include a range of months—from 2 to 18. And you’ll have the option to add custom holidays. 

#2: Custom Notebooks & Journals

Another popular and common book that is great to personalize is a journals and notebooks. 

We have premade templates for all kinds of common notebook designs, like lined, dot grid, or blank. And we have some simple planner, habit tracker, or task tracker templates too. All are free to download and ready to use. 

You can always create a custom interior file too, personalized based on the recipient’s own habits or the way they like to journal. 

If you’re in need of a simple, inexpensive way to make your cover, I suggest Canva or Adobe Express.

• Using Canva For Your Cover
• Adobe Express For Authors Review

Or, of course, you can use the built-in Cover Creator. But for a notebook or journal, the cover really needs to stand out, so you may need a more sophisticated tool. 

#3: Create a Memory Book

There are some really cool businesses out there that make creating a memory book—like a memoir, biography, or similar—incredibly easy. One example is My Forever Books, a business that takes old text messages and arranges them into a personalized gift book. 

You can always build the book yourself too. It’s a longer process, but memory books aren’t novels. You don’t need to aim for a specific word count or follow a detailed plot. Simply recount the events or history that you want to share and type it up! 

Gather family stories, detail an adventure you’ve had, or trace the history of your ancestors: memoirs are the perfect book to create lasting family memories.

#4: Turn iPhone Pics Into Photo Books

With cameras in all of our pockets, we’ve never had more material for creating photo books. 

With high-quality paper and ink, as well as hardcover binding, a printed photo book is the perfect unique gift to show off your pictures and bring joy to friends and family. 

Photo books are one of my favorite kinds of books to give, but they can be tough to create. Luckily, there are lots of great ways to design a photo book without spending a penny. So while Instagram is good for sharing photos today, a photo book is the perfect gift to capture those pictures for a lifetime.

#5: Cook Up a Cookbook

Finally, we have cookbooks. If you like to cook or you’ve got a family member who loves to cook, giving a recipe book is a wonderful gift. Want to gather your mom’s apple pie recipe and your uncle’s  hand-pulled noodles and whatever else your family loves to cook? Create a unique recipe book!

Creating a cookbook means designing the pages just like a memoir or photo book. You’ll want to check out our Book Creation Guide for specs, but our templates (for InDesign or Affinity Publisher) help make it easier to lay out those pages.

You can also find templates for Microsoft Word on their site, but I find Word to be a poor choice for cookbooks—it’s difficult to keep spacing and page layout consistent.

Regardless of how you choose to design your cookbook, you know your family will cherish those recipes for years to come. The perfect (and most delicious) gift you can give, though you might want to consider making one of the recipes to go along with the book!

Making This a Memorable Holiday

Showcase your creative side to your friends and family when you create something for them this year. It’s never been easier to make unique gifts, and even though the shopping season is fast approaching, you still have time! Get started today and make this holiday season one to remember.