Comment by storystarling
7 days ago
Thanks for the blunt feedback - genuinely appreciate it.
You're right that children's books can be excellent, and for generic topics a well-reviewed book from a skilled author and illustrator will beat what we generate. No argument there.
Where we see real value is in the gaps the publishing industry doesn't serve. Bilingual families who can't find books in Maltese/English or Estonian/German. A child with an insulin pump who wants to see a superhero like them. A kid processing their parents' divorce. A child with two dads, or being adopted, or starting at a new school in a country where they don't speak the language yet. No publisher will print a run of one for these families - but these are exactly the stories that matter most to them.
On the UX points - you're right on both. We should localize the showcase to your language, and the signup wall before trying is too much friction. Working on both.
I have to be honest with you: I am the biggest AI booster alive, and even I would never buy a book fully written by AI. Maybe ask me again in 5 years, but I just don't think the quality is there.
That being said, I think you might be on to something with the bilingual book idea - it might be worth exploring there. But if you want to keep the AI angle, you'd have to come up with a pretty clever twist.
Appreciate the honesty. On bilingual - that's actually our strongest use case already. A surprising number of our orders are from multilingual families who simply can't find children's books in their language combination. That's a gap no publisher will fill because the print runs are too small.
As a father of two boys, i can give you some feedback. The AI stories you will generate will probably be crap and not worth paying for. What my kids love is when i put them (like i take a picture of them, and then generate them in jungle or whatever setup it is with gemini banana) They want that i print them those out, i know it's temporary but its fun for us all. So you could combine those two things.
yes - we do combine those both and you can upload photos to get your kids into the book.