How-to guide
How to Download Your Storyworth Book as a PDF
Where the PDF download lives in Storyworth, what the file includes, what happens to your stories when the subscription ends, and what to do with the file next.
A Storyworth subscription ends with a printed book, but the stories also exist as a file you can keep on your own computer. Storyworth lets you download the interior of your book as a PDF from the book preview page. This guide shows where that download is, what the file includes, and what happens to your stories once the subscription ends.
The Storyworth details below were checked against Storyworth's help center and FAQ in September 2026. The pages are listed under Sources at the end.
Customize the cover first
The download lives on the book preview page, and Storyworth only builds that page after you have customized and saved your cover. Once the cover is saved, Storyworth takes you to the interior preview automatically. The preview can take a few minutes to generate.
If you have never touched the cover, do that before anything else. Choose a design, save it, and wait for the preview to appear. If you set a cover months ago, skip straight to the steps below.
Download the PDF in three steps
First, open your memoir. The Preview Book option is on your memoir homepage, and you can get back to it at any time.
Next, click Preview Book. Storyworth shows the full page spread, left and right pages together. Scroll to read every page, or use the dropdown menu above the preview to jump to a specific chapter.
Then click Download PDF. The file you get is the book interior, the pages between the covers. The cover you designed is not part of the download.
What to expect in the file
Expect the occasional blank page. Storyworth inserts one at the end of a chapter so the next chapter opens on a right-hand page, the way a printed book does.
The preview is a PDF, so you cannot edit it directly. If you spot a mistake, use the Edit Story link to the right of the preview to change the story itself; the preview updates when you return to it. Read carefully before you download. Storyworth runs automated checks along the right-hand side of the preview, but it says those checks cannot find everything and do not look for spelling or grammar mistakes.
A Storyworth book is a first telling of a life. The PDF is the part you can take with you.
What happens to your stories when the subscription ends
When a Storyworth subscription ends, the weekly questions stop. Storyworth then gives you another three months to keep writing and editing before it asks you to print your book, and it says to get in touch if you need more time than that.
After those three months you still have access to your stories, and you can order more books later. Storyworth does not print the book automatically. The account owner has to order it, and ordering a printed book is a separate step from downloading the PDF.
Download the PDF whether or not you print. It puts a copy of the stories on your own computer, in a format that opens on any computer.
The PDF is the first telling
A finished Storyworth book is a first telling of a life. Questions were answered in the order they arrived, some in a paragraph and some across three pages. A story mentions a brother, or a neighbor who mattered, and then moves on. The book holds what one person remembered, on the weeks they had time to write.
The PDF is worth more than a backup, because Loristry is built to read it. Upload the file and Lori, Loristry's biographer, reads every story and remembers all of it. She finds the people who appear in it, draws the shape of the life it describes into chapters and a timeline, and works out which questions the book left unanswered. Then she interviews you, and the people you invite, to write the chapters that are still missing.
The Storyworth answers stay what they are: the storyteller's own words, in their own order. Invite the brother, and Lori asks him about the same summer. The neighbor can tell her side. The chapters that are missing get written with the people who were there.