Photo book gift for your boyfriend or girlfriend: how to make it personal without the effort
A photo book is one of those gifts that sounds like a lot of work. Pick the photos. Upload them. Arrange them on pages. Add captions. Spend an entire Saturday hunched over a laptop. Most people abandon the project halfway through and buy a gift card instead.
My Social Book removes that problem entirely. It connects to your Facebook, Instagram, or Dropbox and automatically turns your posts into a printed photo book. Every couple photo, every trip, every random Tuesday — organized by date, with your original captions, like counts, and location tags. The whole process takes under three minutes. No uploading. No designing. Just connect, preview, and order.
That's why it works as a gift. It's deeply personal without requiring a craft project. You get the impact of a handmade gift with the effort of ordering online.
Start your free preview and see what your book looks like.
Why a photo book is the perfect gift for a boyfriend or girlfriend
It proves you pay attention. A photo book of your relationship says "I remember all of this." The first trip. The birthday dinners. The concerts. The dumb selfies. It's physical proof that you value the time you've spent together. That hits harder than a new watch or a sweater.
It gets better with age. Most gifts lose value over time. A photo book gains it. In five years, those photos from your first apartment or your early road trips will feel more meaningful than they do today. Every year that passes makes the book more interesting to flip through.
It works at any stage of the relationship. Six months in? Make a short book of your early adventures. Three years in? Make a book that covers the whole relationship. Ten years and a house and two kids later? Make a 300-page volume that documents the entire journey. The book scales to the relationship.
It's not gender-specific. A photo book works equally well as a gift for a boyfriend or a girlfriend. There's no "this is a gift for her" or "this is a gift for him" awkwardness. It's your shared story, printed. That's universal.
What to include in a photo book gift
The beauty of a social media photo book is that you don't have to pick individual photos. My Social Book pulls everything from your feed within the date range you choose. But here's how to think about what makes the best book.
Relationship milestones
The first photo you posted together. The first trip. The day you moved in. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays. These are the anchor moments. In a chronological book, they're the tent poles that hold the story together. If you posted about these on social media — and you probably did — they'll be in the book automatically.
Travel and adventures
Trips are photo-heavy by nature. A single week-long vacation can fill 10-15 pages of a book. The location tags add context — "Barcelona" or "Joshua Tree" printed alongside the photos grounds each memory in a specific place. If you and your partner travel often, a photo book might end up being half travel album.
Everyday moments
These are what make a social media photo book different from a traditional one. The couch selfie on a rainy Sunday. The photo of the meal you cooked that turned out surprisingly well. The gym photo, the grocery run, the "we adopted a cat" post. Traditional photo albums skip this stuff. A book made from your social media feed includes it, and those ordinary moments are often the pages people love most.
Date nights
Restaurant check-ins, concert photos, movie night selfies, that random Wednesday when you tried the new ramen place downtown. Date night posts capture your relationship in its most relaxed, happiest state. The captions tend to be short and honest — "Best ramen in the city, fight me" — and they're fun to read back months or years later.
The posts with the best captions
Photos are the visual backbone of the book, but captions are its soul. My Social Book prints your original captions alongside each photo. The birthday post where you wrote three paragraphs about why you love them. The vacation caption that was funnier than you expected. The short, simple ones — "My favorite person." Those words matter more in print than they ever did on a screen.
How to make your photo book gift special
Choose the right date range
This is the single most important decision. A few options:
- Your entire relationship. From the first post together to today. If you've been together 2-3 years, this might be 80-120 pages. A long relationship could produce 200-400 pages.
- One standout year. The year you traveled the most, or the year you moved in together, or your most recent 12 months. Shorter, cheaper, more focused.
- A specific trip or event. Just the two weeks in Italy. Just the month around the proposal. Narrow and precise.
Preview all of these for free before you commit. You can try different date ranges and see how many pages each one produces.
Remove posts you don't want
Your social media feed has relationship content mixed in with everything else: work posts, political shares, memes, random articles. During the preview, scroll through the book and remove anything that doesn't fit the gift. Keep only the posts that tell your story together. The editor makes this easy — just click to remove.
Customize the cover
Pick the cover photo carefully. It's the first thing they'll see when they unwrap the gift. Choose your all-time best couple photo, or the photo from a moment that means the most to both of you. The cover sets the emotional tone for the entire book.
Pick the right format
Three options, all 21cm x 25cm:
- Hardcover glossy — the most popular choice for gifts. Looks polished and feels substantial. From $53 for 25 pages.
- Hardcover matte — premium feel, softer finish, more modern aesthetic. From $56 for 25 pages.
- Softcover glossy — best price, good for shorter books or if you're ordering multiple copies. From $33 for 25 pages.
For a gift, hardcover is the move. It feels like a real book, not a booklet. Most customers get 40%+ off with available discounts, so the final price is usually well below the listed starting price.
Gift presentation ideas
The book itself is the gift, but how you present it matters too.
- Wrap it like a book. Simple. Kraft paper and a ribbon. Let the shape give it away — or not.
- Pair it with a handwritten note. Stick a note inside the front cover. A few lines about why you made the book. Keep it short. The book speaks for itself.
- Leave it on the coffee table. No wrapping, no fanfare. Just leave it out with a sticky note that says "open me." Casual and confident.
- Give it on a trip. If you're going somewhere together — a weekend getaway, a dinner out — bring the book as a surprise. Flip through it together over drinks. It's a shared experience, not just an exchange.
- Make it a birthday-morning surprise. Leave it on the nightstand or the kitchen counter so it's the first thing they find. The full-page photos and printed captions are more engaging before the day gets busy.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to create?
Under three minutes. Connect your Facebook, Instagram, or Dropbox, set a date range, and the book generates automatically. Preview every page, remove posts you don't want, customize the cover, and order. The hands-on time is genuinely minimal.
Can I include photos from both our accounts?
You can build the book from one account at a time. But there's a workaround: both of you save your best couple photos into a shared Dropbox folder, then create the book from that Dropbox. Alternatively, one partner's Facebook account usually captures most tagged couple photos already.
What if my partner sees the preview on my screen?
The preview is only visible when you're logged into the My Social Book editor. It's not posted anywhere. Just don't leave your laptop open on the preview page. If you want to be extra careful, do it at work or when they're out.
How much does it cost?
Softcover starts at $33 for 25 pages. Hardcover glossy starts at $53. Hardcover matte starts at $56. Price scales with page count — a 100-page hardcover glossy is $122. Most customers get 40%+ off with regularly available discounts, so the actual price is often significantly lower.
When should I order to get it in time?
Allow 7-14 business days for production and shipping. If you need the book for a birthday, Valentine's Day, or anniversary, order at least two weeks in advance. Three weeks gives you a comfortable buffer.
Can I see every page before I buy?
Yes. The preview shows every single page of the book, for free, before you pay anything. You can scroll through the entire book, check that the right photos are included, and remove anything you don't want. What you see in the preview is what gets printed.
What gets preserved from my social media posts?
Photos, captions, dates, like counts, and location tags. If you posted a photo at a restaurant in Paris with the caption "She said yes," the book will show the photo, that caption, the date, the location, and how many likes it got. All printed on the page in a clean, automatic layout.
What if I don't post much on social media?
Use the Dropbox option. Upload your favorite couple photos from your phone's camera roll to a Dropbox folder, then create the book from there. You still get the automatic layout and chronological organization. You'll just need to manually select which photos to include. Even 50-60 photos make a solid 25-40 page book.
Your relationship is already documented
You've been posting photos of your relationship for months or years. The trip to the coast. The birthday surprise. The random Wednesday night cooking experiment. All of it is sitting in your social media feed, waiting to be turned into something tangible.
My Social Book has printed over 700,000 books in 12 years. It holds a 4.7 Trustpilot rating. The creation process takes under three minutes. And the book itself? It's the kind of gift that makes someone look at you and say, "How did you make this?"
You don't have to explain that the answer is "three minutes and a Facebook login."
Create your free preview now. For more ideas on printing your Instagram feed, visit our Instagram photo book page.
