Book By Anyone vs a Personalized Comic You Make Yourself: Which Gift Fits?
Book By Anyone turns a few answers about someone into a long, AI written joke book with their name on the cover. A personalized comic is shorter, and you steer it. The right choice depends on whether the gift is the laugh or the story.
Last reviewed . Written by our editorial team from our own product knowledge and from what Book By Anyone and its customers say about it publicly. We have not ordered a Book By Anyone book for this piece. We make myComics, one of the two formats compared here, so weigh our view accordingly.
By the myComics.ai Editorial Team9 min read
Gift guide · Format comparison · Editorial disclosure
Quick answer
- Book By Anyone and a personalized comic you make yourself are different gifts. One is a long, AI written joke book generated from your answers; the other is a short comic story you steer page by page.
- The dividing line is control. Book By Anyone does the writing for you, which is fast. A comic you make yourself asks for photos and a premise, and lets you rewrite what it gets wrong before anything is printed.
- Choose Book By Anyone when the gift is the laugh and speed matters. Choose a comic when there is a real story, a trip, a habit, a year, that you want told with the person recognizably in it.
- Neither is the only option. A photo book, a letter or a commissioned drawing can suit some people better, and any printed book needs lead time.
Book By Anyone is one of those gifts people remember seeing before they remember the name. A thick book on a friend’s shelf, their face on the cover, their name as the author, and a title that is obviously a joke about them. You open it, read two pages, laugh, and think it would be perfect for your dad. Then you start wondering whether there is a version that says something a bit more specific about him.
That is usually when people start searching for a comparison. We should say early that we make myComics.ai, which is the comic half of this piece, so we have tried to make a fair case for Book By Anyone too, and for a few options that are neither. We have not ordered one for this article; what follows comes from how Book By Anyone describes its own product and from what its customers say publicly.
What does Book By Anyone actually make?
As Book By Anyone presents it, you choose a format, comic book, fiction or a humorous nonfiction title, then name the person who will appear as the author and answer some questions about them: hobbies, family names, quirks. AI then writes the book around those details, you can add a photo for the cover and choose between suggested titles, and the result is printed as a paperback or hardcover.
The tone is satire. The joke is that your brother has apparently written a long, confident book about his own greatness, complete with invented praise from reviewers. For a birthday where the whole room is going to pass it around, that joke lands well, and it lands without you having to write anything.
People tend to start comparing it with other formats for three reasons. If you have already decided and just want the feature side by side, that lives on our Book By Anyone alternative page.
The content is generated, not written by you. That is the point of the product and also its limit. The book knows what you told it in the questions, and builds the rest. If your gift depends on one story being told right, a generated book will get the outline and miss the details only you know.
It is a joke first. Satire is a fine register for a gift, and some people would much rather be teased than celebrated. But if you wanted the gift to say something sincere, a gag book can feel like it changed the subject.
You see less of it before it ships. Some public customer reviews mention spelling slips, a story detail that went wrong, or a character that did not quite look like the person. With any service that generates the content for you, it is worth checking exactly what you can review and change before you pay, rather than assuming.
If none of that bothers you, Book By Anyone is a fun gift and you should order one. If one of those points is why you are here, read on.
What is the actual difference between a generated book and a comic you make?
The difference is who holds the pen, and most of the rest follows from it.
With a generated book, you answer questions and the service writes. Your input shapes the book, but you are not deciding what happens on page twelve.
With a comic you make yourself, you supply the premise and the faces, and you steer. On myComics you upload three to eight photos of each person, and it builds a reusable comic character from them, meant to keep the same face across panels while the pose and the scene change. You give the story a starting point, one sentence or a full plot, and it unfolds through choices you make as you go. Every speech bubble and caption can be rewritten, and a page can be regenerated with an instruction if it misses.
| Book By Anyone | Comic you make yourself | |
|---|---|---|
| Who writes it | AI, from your answers | You steer, the story follows your choices |
| Tone | Mostly satirical and teasing | Whatever the story calls for |
| How the person appears | Named as author, photo on the cover | Drawn as a character from their photos |
| Length | Long, a gag book for the shelf | Cover, 20 story pages, back cover |
| What you supply | Answers about the person | Photos and a premise |
Neither column is an upgrade of the other. One is a joke made for you, the other is a story made by you. They share a shelf in the gift aisle and very little else.
Which one suits your occasion?
Try the one sentence test. Say out loud what the gift is about.
If the sentence is “something to make everyone laugh at his fiftieth”, Book By Anyone is built for exactly that, and a comic would be the harder way to get there.
If the sentence is “the fishing trips where we never caught anything”, or “how she survived her first year as a nurse”, or “our road trip, properly told”, then you have a premise, and a premise suits a story. That is where a comic earns its place, because the details are yours and you can make sure they are right.
A rough sorting, with the usual caveat that you know the person better than we do:
- Milestone birthdays with a crowd. Often led by the laugh. A gag book works well, and a birthday comic works when there is a running family story to retell.
- Retirements and graduations. Usually about a chapter closing. A story fits naturally, and graduation comics are one version of that.
- Parents and grandparents. Depends on the person. Some love being teased in print, others will quietly keep a comic of a real memory for years.
- Couples and anniversaries. Usually led by a story or by sentiment, which a satirical book is not really built for. Our LoveBook comparison covers that side in more detail.
What do you have to bring to each?
This is where the two differ most, and it is a real argument for Book By Anyone.
Book By Anyone asks for answers. A few minutes of filling in questions about the person and picking a title and cover, and the book is done. If you are short on time or do not enjoy writing, that is a genuine advantage.
A comic asks for two things. First, photos: three to eight per person, faces clearly visible, varied angles, even light, no heavy beauty filters. That step decides most of the result, so it is worth a few careful minutes; there is a full walkthrough in how to turn your photos into a comic. Second, a premise and some attention while the story unfolds, because you are making choices rather than waiting for a finished book.
If you have good photos and one evening, the comic is very doable. If you have neither, the book that writes itself is the honest choice.
What does a comic you make yourself do that a generated book cannot?
It tells the true version.
A generated book can mention that your dad likes fishing. It cannot know that he once fell out of the boat reaching for a hat, that your mother still brings it up every summer, and that the hat was never found. Those are the details that make someone stop on a page, and only you have them. In a comic you steer, they go in, and if a speech bubble comes out wrong you rewrite it.
The other thing it can do is carry the faces. When the characters are built from photographs and reused panel to panel, the person is recognizably in the story rather than named on the cover. With up to six characters per story, the whole cast can be there: both parents, the siblings, the dog’s owner if not the dog. The likeness is a stylized one, closer to what a caricature artist captures than to a portrait photo, and it depends on the photos you give it.
You also get a choice of visual register. The studio has 16 styles. Superhero reads as celebration, so it suits milestones. Cartoon is warm and safe for all ages. Detective Noir is funny when the subject is deadpan. Sitcom suits family stories. Manga carries both comedy and sincerity. The style is part of what the gift says, so pick the one that fits the person rather than your own taste.
Where is Book By Anyone still the better choice?
Worth saying plainly, because a comparison that finds no case for the other side is not much of a comparison.
Choose Book By Anyone when the gift is the laugh and the moment of unwrapping is the point. Choose it when you have little time and no appetite for writing or steering a story. Choose it when the recipient would enjoy being the fake author of a ridiculous book more than being the hero of a real one; some people love seeing themselves drawn, others would rather be roasted, and you probably already know which one you are buying for. And choose it when you want a long object for the shelf, because a 20 page comic is a different kind of thing.
What if neither format feels right?
That happens more than you might expect. A few other options, each better in some situations:
A photo book. If the gift is really about memories, real photos in order are simple and lasting. For grandparents, it is often the safer choice.
A handwritten letter. It costs almost nothing and can mean more than anything printed. If the reason a gag book felt wrong is that you wanted to say something sincere, a letter may be what you were actually looking for.
A commissioned illustration. A human artist drawing one scene that matters brings a kind of judgment no template or tool does. It takes more lead time and budget, and for a big retirement or anniversary it can be worth both.
A personalized children’s book. If the recipient is a child, services built for kids, such as the ones in our Wonderbly comparison, are designed for read aloud pacing in a way neither a satire book nor a comic for adults is.
How do you decide in five minutes?
Skip the tables, including ours, and do this instead.
Write your one sentence. If it is about a laugh, you probably want the gag book. If it is about something that happened, keep going.
Then open your photos and look for three to eight good pictures of each person. If you cannot find them, the decision has more or less been made for you. If you can, build one character and look at it before you start the story. That tells you more about whether the gift will work than any comparison, and it uses your real photos rather than marketing samples.
And keep one thing in mind that both share: if you want a physical copy, printing and delivery are the constraint, not the making. Work backwards from the date and leave room. If the date is too close for a printed comic, give the digital version or the PDF on the day and the book when it arrives.
If you want to see the full range of what a personalized comic book can be first, start there. And if you are leaning toward the comic and want the feature by feature view, the full Book By Anyone comparison has it.
The short version: Book By Anyone writes a joke about someone. A comic you make yourself tells their story. Pick the one that matches the sentence you wrote, or neither, if a photo book or a letter is closer to what you meant.
