Chatbooks are pretty much my most favorite thing ever, so I decided it was I time I wrote a Chatbooks review!

I discovered Chatbooks through the families I babysat for this past summer. The moms used this simple way of scrapbooking as a way to record their kids’ lives.

Well, I don’t have kids, but I am a busy college student who wants to physically record my adventures without breaking the bank. And Chatbooks is a great way to do so. It’s so fun!

If you’ve been around Joy Because Grace for a while, you know I hardly never do product reviews. In fact, this is my first one. However, I LOVE this service so much I knew I needed to do a Chatbooks review at some point. {Plus, I can get you a free book :) More on that in a bit.}

{Disclaimer: I am not being paid for this Chatbooks review, but if you sign up using my referral link I get $5 of credit and you get a free Chatbook. My referral link will be marked with an *.}

My Chatbooks review-

Once I discovered Chatbooks, I fell in love immediately.

Chatbooks turn what you’re already doing on Instagram or Facebook into cute, 6in x 6in photo books.

It is an app (and website) to which you connect your Facebook or Instagram account (or your camera roll favorites on your phone). Then automatically as you post photos to your social media account the pictures go into your Chatbook series. The caption you posted stays the same, and the date you posted it is there, as well as a location if you included that.

It literally does everything for you without you even having to think about it.

Each Chatbook in a series contains 60 photos, so once you’ve posted 60 pics, they’ll email you to tell you that another Chatbook is full. (Best email ever!)

Then you have 3 days to go in and delete or add any photos you want. You can also rearrange the book or change the cover (the first picture in the book is automatically the cover) or edit captions, locations, and dates.

Once your three days are up, the book will automatically be sent to print, and then it will be shipped for you.

All for a grand total of $10 per book. 

You read that right. Ten dollars.

And did I mention there’s free shipping?

Have you heard of Chatbooks before? Chatbooks are an amazing way to record your memories without taking up a lot of time. Here's a full Chatbooks review.

Four reasons why you need Chatbooks in your life.

Chatbooks aren’t just for moms of littles. It’s for every photo lover who wants to have an affordable way to record their memories.

Here is why you should consider Chatbooks…

1. You take a bunch of pictures.

2. You don’t have time to scrapbook.

3. You want a cheap and automated way to make photo books.

4. Chatbooks are just plain adorable.

But seriously, how cute are they?!?

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Photo Credit: chatbooks.com

Two Ways to Chatbook…

Now that you know what Chatbooks are and how they can benefit you, let’s look at two ways you can use Chatbooks.

Prices are listed as they currently are in March 2018 :)

1. Series.

This option is the one that automatically adds each picture you post to Instagram or Facebook to your books.

attachment (5)It’s an ongoing subscription. Every 60 photos equals a new book in that book series. On the spine of these books, it will have the title of your series, which volume number it is, and the date range of the pictures of that book.

These books come in two options: hardcover or softcover, and both are 6in by 6in. The hardcover books have a grey spine and are $15. The softcover books have a white spine and are $10 (that’s what I do).

You pay for the books once they get shipped to you. Meaning, if it takes you 6 months to post 60 pictures, you’ll only pay $10 every 6 months.

 

Chatbooks Review

 

2. Custom Books.

IMG_5973Custom books are what you think of when you hear the word “scrapbook”– books that tend to revolve around one occasion or person.

A custom book can have between 30 and 366 photos in it. You can either upload the pictures you want to include or connect it to an Instagram or Facebook account.

I like to give custom books as presents. I’ve made each of my best friends a custom book, as well as the family I nannied for this summer.

March 2018 Update: You can now get custom books in either 6in by 6in OR 8in by 8in!! The 6in custom books cost $15 for 60 pages and the 8in custom books cost $25 for 60 pages.

March 2018 Update: Additionally, Chatbooks now offers a variety of cute covers for their custom books for an assortment of occasions! They are constantly changing out the available covers, and it’s so fun to scroll through to see all the options! You can find these options by clicking on the “edit cover” button. You can get one of these pre-designed covers for just $2 more.

 

A walk through of my Chatbooks App…

This walk-through was updated in March 2018, so you can see the present layout of Chatbooks :)

When I open my Chatbooks app on my phone this is what I see…

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1. The top one is a book series one of my best friends and I are making together. (You can have more than one contributor for a book!!) We have a special hashtag on Instagram for pictures of us, and so whenever one of us uses that hashtag that picture goes into our book! All of our other Instagram pictures are automatically excluded. Hashtag books are such a great feature that Chatbooks has.
This series also has the special series-covers that Chatbooks offers. :)

2. Then there’s my personal series that’s connected to my Instagram as well as my camera roll (that way I can include pictures that I wouldn’t necessarily post on Instagram). More on this series below.

3. Then there’s a custom book I made for another one of my friends from her Instagram account before she deactivated her Instagram. :)

4. Lastly, you see a custom book I’m making for a vacation my family went on a while back.

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Above is the first volume in my personal series. 

The dates you see on top of the book are the date range of the photos that are in the book. Once the book has shipped, it is locked and you can’t edit it anymore.

For the first 24 volumes of my series, the name of my series (which appeared on the spines of the books) was “Kara Beth: The College Years.” Now that I graduated college, I changed the name to “Kara Beth: The Next Chapter.”

I really like how you can change the name of your series!

The above screenshot was taken in 2016, but I kept it so you can see what I meant by changing the name of my series :) If I were to take that screenshot again, it would look similar in layout to the one below. 

Chatbooks Tutorial

Here you see the volume I’m currently working on. 

(The following section was updated March 2018)

Above the volume, you see that I’ve added 57 of 60 photos, so I’m so close to a new Chatbook!! *Confetti!*

I usually average about one volume a month since I’ve started adding pictures from my camera roll in addition to my Instagram account, but you can see that it’s taken me a little more than two months to complete this one.

The first date you see is the date of the first picture in the book. The second date is the date of the last picture in the book, so far. Eventually, the last date will continue to change until there are 60 pictures in the book.

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I can edit my current volume on the screen above by dragging and dropping photos to rearrange them as well as excluding photos. Once I exclude a photo it goes to the “view excluded” button you see, that way if I change my mind I don’t have to re-upload that picture, I can just re-include it.

I also can preview my volume on this screen. I can see which photos will lay next to each other, as well as see the date, caption, and location set for the photos.

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You can now make your images full page or to where they perfectly fit the page (pictured above). With these options, the caption would automatically go on the next page, if you choose to have a caption. You must go through and manually make this change.

If I were to rotate my phone, I can have a page-by-page preview of my book and flip through it.


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I use my Chatbooks like a journal, recording my day-to-day life.

I try to capture my mundane moments so someday I can look back and remember what my life was like back in my early 20s.

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As you may have picked up by now, I like writing :) Sometimes I write long captions on Instagram; when the caption is longer than 300 characters Chatbooks will make a separate text page for the description. You can also add text pages if you want.

Also- When you post a “carousel” type post to Instagram, Chatbooks includes each picture from the carousel with the caption either on the first picture or as a separate text page alongside the images.


2020 Updates:

Some cool things have come to Chatbooks since I last updated this post!

  1. You can now get books that are 6×6 or 8×8. I still prefer the 6×6 size and go with Shutterfly when I want a larger size… but that’s just me :)
  2. You can change the color of the binding. In the past, soft cover books were white and hardcover were grey. But now you can choose between white, grey and navy! Yay for options!

Will I still use Chatbooks in 2020?

Yes I plan to!

In 2019, I challenged myself to take a picture a day and I documented it in a giant Chatbook. You can have up to 366 pages in a custom Chatbook, and I used every single one!

I’m not doing a photo-a-day challenge this year, but I still plan on using my Chatbook series to record my memories. :)


This is an amazing service that I’m kinda sorta obsessed with… Thus this full Chatbooks review + tutorial ;)

You can learn more about Chatbooks by visiting their FAQ here and their blog here. You can also learn more and get inspiration by visiting their Instagram @chatbooks.

Get your first book free when you start a series!

Reason why I love Chatbooks #1054: They give each of their users their own customized referral link to give to their friends so their friends can get their first book free when they start a series! Once their friend signs up for the series, they get $5 of Chatbooks credit.

So once you sign up for Chatbooks, you can share your link with your friends and gain Chatbooks credit! How awesome is that?

Anywho, here’s my link so you can get your first book free.*  :)


Did you find this Chatbooks review helpful? Share this post with your friends to help spread the word about this awesome service. :)

Also, Let’s be Instagram friends! @kara_beth17

13 thoughts on “Chatbooks Review + Tutorial (Updated January 2020)

  1. Mich

    I have photos from another person’s Facebook, with their permission. I have downloaded them. However, when I put them into CB it says Low Resolution. Is there a way to circumvent this problem? Thanks

    1. Kara Beth Post author

      Hi Helen! They have a new collage feature that I haven’t used much. Usually I use an app called pic-stitch to make collages which I then upload to chatbooks. Hope that helps!

  2. Jillian

    Hi! Thank you so much for your post! Question…when you click on an album, go to settings and select “show date”, does it show the date each picture was taken? I expected the answer to be yes, but when I preview my album there are no dates above my pics unless I select to edit the date of a pic and only then does it show up. Any suggestions on the quick way to get each pictures date to show up on every pic?

  3. Carol

    I created a chatbook that will go to print in three days, on the bind I have a title and it also has the dates of the pics (ex: nov-Jan). How do I remove the dates??

    1. debbie

      There are 3 little dots on the upper right hand corner.
      click on them. it give you a list of things you can change or remove.
      you can also go into your settings and remove them

  4. Wren

    Wonderful post. You answered many questions that were not covered on the Chatbook website and including photos with in-depth explanations is extremely helpful. Now that I know what to expect when making a Chatbook, I feel more confident and am excited to make my first.

    Thanks ever so much.

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