Good Luck Book

Someone you care about is about to do something big and a little terrifying. Moving across the country to a city where they know nobody. Leaving a job they held for fifteen years. Quitting to start a business everyone but them thought was crazy. Shipping out, or flying off on a trip with a one-way ticket. You want to send them off with more than a hug at the airport.

A good luck book is how you do that. You reach out to the people in their life and ask each one to write a letter: a memory, a piece of advice, a stupid inside joke, a reminder of who they are when they forget. Some write a paragraph. Some write three pages. Somebody will tell the story this person has been trying to live down for a decade.

We collect all of those letters and print them into a hardcover book they can take with them. We've been making these since 2009, and we hear the same thing again and again: the book gets opened on the worst night of the first month, when the new apartment is full of boxes and the new city feels like a mistake. They read a few letters. Then they remember they are not actually alone out there.

Starting something new is mostly lonely. The excitement everyone feels at the going-away party is real, but it's also the easy part. The hard part comes later, alone, when the person is in a new place with no history and no friends yet, doubting the whole decision at two in the morning.

That's exactly the moment a good luck book is built for. Unlike a card that gets read once and tossed in a drawer, this is something they pack and carry. It travels to the new city, the new job, the deployment, the dorm. And it waits there for the day they need it, which is rarely the day they leave. It's usually a few weeks in, when the novelty has worn off and they're wondering what they were thinking.

Open the book on that day and there it is: thirty people who knew them before, telling them they've got this, reminding them where home is and that it isn't going anywhere. That's a hard thing to give someone in person. It's a much easier thing to hand them in a book they can open whenever they want.

A good luck book fits almost any big leap, but a few situations are especially well suited to it:

• A friend moving to a new city where they don't know a soul. Gather the people they're leaving behind so they have a whole crowd in their suitcase before they've made a single new friend.
• Someone leaving a job or a town they held for years. They're closing a long chapter, and the people from it want to say things they never got around to saying while there was still time.
• A big solo adventure: the gap year, the move abroad, the trip with no return date. Letters they can open in a hostel, on a train, or on a night when the adventure stops feeling like one.
• A career change that scared everyone except the person making it. This is the book that says we were nervous and we're proud of you anyway, now go prove us wrong.
• A deployment or a long stretch away from home. Something to keep in a bag and reach for when the distance gets heavy and the people back home feel very far off.
• Heading off to college, or back to school later in life. A reminder, from everyone rooting for them, of exactly why they decided to do this.

A lot of people freeze when they're asked to write one of these. They reach for "Good luck, you'll do great!" which is kind but goes in one ear and out the other. The letters that actually help on the hard days are the ones that get specific.

Remind them of a time they were scared before and pulled it off anyway. Tell them the thing about themselves they tend to forget when they're stressed. If you've made a leap like this yourself, say what you wish someone had told you. Put in the running joke that will make them laugh out loud in a quiet new apartment. Add a photo of home, or of all of you together, so they have something to look at when they're homesick.

It doesn't need to be long or wise. Some of the best letters in these books are five sentences and one bad joke. What matters is that it's true and that it sounds like you, because the person reading it on a rough night will know the difference between something you meant and something you dashed off before the deadline.

You set up a book on our site and pick a deadline for submissions, ideally before the person actually leaves. Then you invite people to contribute by sending them a link where they can write their letter and upload photos. You get a dashboard to see who's been invited and who's submitted, which is useful, because you will be sending reminders (everyone wants to write a letter, almost nobody does it on time, this is normal).

Once the letters are in, you can personalize the book: choose a cover photo, write the title, arrange the letters in whatever order you like. When you're happy with it, we design, print, and ship a hardcover book to you or straight to the recipient.

Plan for about 20 days from order to delivery, so don't leave it to the last minute. Start collecting letters early, well before the going-away date. People mean well, but a deadline somehow always sneaks up on them. Give them room.

Hand it over before they go, and tell them not to open it until they need it. They'll know the day.