Come up with a crazy business idea.
Here’s my crazy business idea: a micro-publishing house that turns ordinary lives into beautiful short books.
Not celebrities. Not people with Wikipedia pages. Just the people who are quietly carrying whole worlds around inside them — the nurse, the migrant, the widow, the tradie, the teacher, the neighbour who has seen more than they ever boasted about.
The business would work like this: I interview someone over a few sessions, then craft their story into a slim, readable book — the kind you can finish in an evening and keep on a shelf for the rest of your life. We print copies for family and friends, and we also record an audio version in their own voice, so future generations can hear the laugh, the pauses, the particular way they tell a story.
That’s the core.
At the end of each book there’s an appendix — a kind of gentle coda — where we gather the things that mattered most to that person: favourite songs, prayers, poems, sayings, recipes, places, photographs, a few pivotal moments, a list of people they’re grateful for, and maybe a short “legacy letter” addressed to the ones they love.
Not sentimental fluff. More like a map of meaning.
It probably shouldn’t work as a business. Who pays for books about ordinary lives?
But I suspect more people would than we think — because many families have plenty of photos and very few stories. We have digital archives and thin memory.
And the truth is: a well-told life doesn’t need to be famous to be luminous.
I’d start small. One story at a time. A local pilot. A promise of dignity. A commitment to craft.
Because the best part wouldn’t be the books.
It would be the moment someone realises their life is worth telling — and worth keeping.
Tagline: Every life deserves an afterword.
The Afterword 
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