Missionary Email Book: 7 Things to Look for Before You Buy
Looking for a missionary email book? Here are 7 things to compare, including email collection, photos, page limits, editing, pricing and printed book quality.
A missionary email book turns the weekly emails and photos a missionary sends home into a printed keepsake that tells the story of their mission from beginning to end. The best services collect emails automatically, keep photos with the right stories, allow you to edit and preview everything before printing, and include enough pages for a full mission. My Missionary Book does this for $149, including up to 300 pages, a hardbound book, digital PDF and standard U.S. shipping.
A missionary email book takes the weekly emails and photos a missionary sends home and preserves them in a printed book.
It sounds simple, but missionary email book services can work very differently. Some require you to upload and organize everything after the mission. Others collect emails automatically while your missionary is serving. Page limits, photo handling, editing, PDFs and pricing can also vary significantly.
If you want a book that preserves the whole mission, not just a handful of favorite photos, here are seven things worth comparing before you choose a missionary email book.
1. Does It Collect Emails During the Mission?
This may be the most important question to ask.
There are two basic ways to create a missionary email book:
Build it afterward: Save all the emails and photos, then upload, import, forward, or organize them once the mission is over.
Build it as they serve: Have the missionary's weekly emails automatically collected throughout the mission.
My Missionary Book supports both.
If your missionary is currently serving, they get a unique email address to add to the weekly email they already send home. Each new email and its photos are automatically added to their book as they go.
If you start later, that is okay too. You can forward past emails to their My Missionary Book address so earlier weeks can still be included.
That means you do not have to start on day one, and you do not have to wait until the mission is over. You can build the book as they serve, add past emails when needed, or use a combination of both.
See How My Missionary Book Works
2. What Happens to the Photos?
A missionary email book should be more than a giant block of printed email text.
The photos are part of the story too.
Think about how much of a mission is captured visually:
Companions
Baptisms
New areas
Apartments
Members
Service projects
Preparation days
Food
Holidays
Temples
Beautiful scenery
Very questionable missionary haircuts
Before choosing a service, find out exactly how photos work.
Ask:
Are photos collected automatically?
Do I have to download and re-upload them?
Are they printed in full color?
Can I move, crop or reorder them?
Are there limits on how many I can include?
With My Missionary Book, photos included with weekly emails are captured along with the email and placed into the missionary's book. You can also upload any other photos you want from Google Photos, social media accounts, or text messages so they connect to each week's story.
That means the pictures from Week 17 stay connected to the story from Week 17.
Years later, that context matters.
3. How Many Pages Are Included?
This one is easy to overlook.
A price may sound inexpensive until you realize it only includes a relatively small number of pages.
A missionary who writes every week for 18 months or two years can create a lot of content.
Before choosing a missionary email book, look at:
How many pages the base price includes
What additional pages cost
Whether there is a maximum number of pages
Whether a long mission has to be split into multiple volumes
My Missionary Book includes up to 300 pages in the standard $149 price, with the option to add pages beyond that if needed.
That gives families room to preserve the actual mission rather than deciding which emails need to be cut simply to stay within a small page allowance.
See My Missionary Book Pricing
4. Can You Edit Everything Before It Prints?
Your missionary probably isn't thinking:
"I should make sure this email is ready for hardcover publication."
They're writing home.
That means mission emails can include typos, strange formatting, inside jokes, accidental duplicate paragraphs, giant photo dumps, and sentences that seemed perfectly reasonable at 9:45 p.m.
That's part of their charm.
But you should still be able to review the book before it becomes permanent.
A good missionary email book service should let you:
Preview the finished book
Edit text
Fix mistakes
Adjust photographs
Reorder content
Review the final layout before printing
My Missionary Book also offers optional grammar and spelling cleanup.
The goal isn't to rewrite the missionary.
It's to make the final book easier to read while keeping their stories and personality intact.
5. Do You Get a Digital Copy Too?
The hardbound book may be the reason you are creating a missionary email book, but a digital version is worth having.
A PDF gives you:
A backup of the complete mission
An easy way to search old stories
A copy you can share with family
Another layer of protection if the printed book is ever lost or damaged
Some missionary book services charge separately for digital files.
With My Missionary Book, a high-resolution PDF is included with the book at no additional cost.
The printed copy can live on the bookshelf.
The digital copy can live somewhere safely backed up.
Ideally, you have both.
6. What Does the Price Actually Include?
Don't compare missionary email book services using only the number at the top of the pricing page.
Compare the finished product.
A lower starting price may not include:
Enough pages for the full mission
A digital PDF
Photos
Extra formatting
Shipping
Editing tools
Additional volumes if the book gets too long
A better question is:
What will it actually cost to preserve my missionary's entire mission the way I want it?
My Missionary Book currently costs $149 as a one-time purchase and includes:
Email collection throughout the mission
Automatic photo capture
Optional grammar and spelling cleanup
Online preview and editing
Up to 300 pages
A full-color hardbound book
A downloadable PDF
Standard U.S. shipping
There is no monthly subscription.
See My Missionary Book Pricing
7. How Much Work Will This Require From Your Missionary?
This is the one I would care about most as a missionary parent.
Your missionary already has enough to do.
The best system is one they don't really have to think about.
Before choosing a missionary email book, ask whether your missionary needs to:
Download an app
Create another account
Upload photos somewhere new
Copy their journal entries
Log into a website every week
Remember another weekly task
Or can they simply keep emailing home?
My Missionary Book was designed around that last option.
Your missionary adds their unique book email address to their normal weekly email list.
That's it.
They write the same email they were already going to write.
Meanwhile, that email becomes another chapter in the story of their mission.
What Should a Good Missionary Email Book Include?
At minimum, I would look for a service that gives you:
Feature | What to Look For |
|---|---|
Email collection | Automatic throughout the mission |
Photos | Captured with emails and printed in color |
Organization | Emails kept chronologically |
Editing | Full preview before printing |
Page allowance | Enough for an 18–24 month mission |
Digital backup | Downloadable PDF |
Printed book | Durable hardbound format |
Missionary effort | As little additional work as possible |
Pricing | Clear total price, not just a low starting price |
The point isn't simply to print some emails.
It's to create something your missionary will actually want to keep.
When Should You Buy a Missionary Email Book?
If the service collects emails automatically, the best time to start is before the missionary leaves or as early in the mission as possible.
That doesn't mean you're out of luck if your missionary has already been gone for six months.
You can still start.
And if your missionary is already home, you can still use saved emails to create a book.
But there is one major advantage to starting early:
You don't have to make "create mission book" a giant project later.
Every week simply gets added as it happens.
By the time the mission ends, most of the story is already there.
Is a Missionary Email Book Worth It?
If your missionary writes home regularly, those emails may be the most detailed record that will ever exist of their mission.
They capture things a missionary may not remember well enough to write down five or ten years later:
The first week they felt completely overwhelmed.
The companion who became a lifelong friend.
The family they couldn't stop thinking about.
The street they walked every day.
The first time they realized they could actually speak the language.
The week nothing went right.
The week everything did.
A missionary email book preserves those experiences in the words your missionary used while they were living them.
That's very different from trying to reconstruct the story years later.
Frequently Asked Questions About Missionary Email Books
What is a missionary email book?
A missionary email book is a printed keepsake created from the weekly emails and photos a missionary sends home. The emails are typically organized chronologically so the finished book tells the story of the mission from beginning to end.
How does a missionary email book work?
It depends on the service. Some require families to import emails after the mission. My Missionary Book gives the missionary a unique email address to add to their normal weekly email list so emails and photos are collected automatically throughout the mission.
Does the missionary need to keep a separate journal?
No. A missionary's weekly emails can become the journal. With My Missionary Book, those existing emails are collected and organized into chapters without requiring the missionary to write anything additional.
Can photos be included in a missionary email book?
Yes. My Missionary Book automatically captures photos included with missionary emails and places them alongside the corresponding stories in the finished full-color book.
How much does a missionary email book cost?
Pricing varies by provider and can depend on page count and included features. My Missionary Book currently costs $149 as a one-time purchase and includes up to 300 pages, a hardbound book, digital PDF, and standard U.S. shipping.
Can I start a missionary email book halfway through a mission?
Yes. You can begin collecting new emails at any point and add earlier emails you've already saved.
Can I make a missionary email book after the mission?
Yes. If you have copies of the missionary's emails and photographs, they can still be used to create a missionary email book after the missionary returns. Simply forward them to My Missionary Book, and the book builds itself.
Choose a Missionary Email Book You'll Actually Finish
The biggest risk isn't choosing the "wrong" book.
It's telling yourself you'll organize all of those emails someday.
A mission produces hundreds of stories, photos, and little details that become more meaningful with time.
The easiest way to preserve them is to make the process part of something your missionary is already doing.
Every week they send an email.
Every email becomes another chapter.
And when the mission ends, you aren't starting a scrapbook.
You're finishing their book.