Hi Product Hunt,
I'm Ali, the one running Fableself day to day, based in Istanbul.
The inspiration was simple. I kept noticing how many photos and memories just sit on people's phones, never turned into anything anyone picks up again. A card gets read once. A book gets picked up years later. I wanted to give people that second thing.
The problem I was actually solving turned out to be narrower than "personalized gifts." That category already exists and it is crowded with mugs and phone cases that put a name on a template. What I wanted was something built entirely around one real story: a specific memory, a specific person's face, a specific place, not a name slotted into a script.
My approach changed more than I expected while building this. Early on I leaned on the word "personalized" itself to do the selling. It did not work, because every seller says the same thing. So I stopped describing the process and started showing it instead: before and after photo to illustration comparisons, real page spreads, the transformation happening in front of the customer rather than a claim about it. That shift changed how I build every listing now.
Right now Fableself makes three kinds of books. Little Chapters puts a child at the center of their own adventure. Forever Stories turns a couple's real memories into an illustrated story. Legacy Book takes a parent's or grandparent's life and gives it back to them as something they can hold.
You send a few photos and the memories that matter most. I handle the writing and illustration, and you approve a preview before anything is printed.
Happy to answer anything about the process, the illustration pipeline, or building this from Istanbul.