A Founder’s Note: How Kids Custom Stories Came to Life

The idea of creating a book for every child began at Christmas 2022, when AI image generators could hardly output a usable picture. I dropped out of A-levels and went all-in on the dream.

Early experiments were rough. Test Book 1 was bad; Test Book 2 was somehow worse. Test 3—made for my sister—looked amateur compared with what we can print today. By any sensible measure I should have paused and tried again in a few years. Friends and family—quietly wondering what on earth I was doing—gave me my first handful of orders, all of them built manually with ChatGPT prompts in early 2023.

Marketing misfires & late-night lessons. I spent my savings on ideas that flopped: a voice-over radio spot on Radio Jackie (huge thanks to the station head who played it more times than I paid for), influencer “campaigns” that turned out to be follow-bot scams, and a TV ad scheduled for Christmas that accidentally aired on the wrong channels in January—£7 k up in smoke.

There were technical hurdles too. We relaunched v2 with slicker books and the UK’s first AI-generated TV advert, only for our print partner to shut down mid-fulfilment. Orders stalled; deadlines slipped. If you were caught in that mess, message me directly—I owe you a thank-you and an apology.

Turning points.

• A £20 k challenge announced by Simon Squibb pushed us to rebuild the entire back-end in days (Simon never chose a winner, but the rebuild was worth it).

• OpenAI then released a revolutionary image model. I had a choice: stick with our existing stack—or rip it up and start again.
  

I started again. Twelve caffeine-fuelled weeks later—countless Red Bulls and sleepless nights—we launched v3: a fully automated, prompt-to-book platform. Today you can type a child’s name and receive a hard-cover story where they are the hero, shipped worldwide.

The dream survived every dead-end because it matters. I believe children grow when they see themselves as protagonists. That idea—more than AI hype or fancy adverts—kept this project alive when common sense said quit.

Thank you to everyone who has demoed a book, forgiven a typo, or waited patiently for a delayed delivery. Your feedback shaped what Kids Custom Stories is today, and your enthusiasm fuels what it will become tomorrow.

The journey’s been messy, expensive, and utterly worth it—and we’re only getting started.

— Jacques Yorath, Founder