Bo Bennett Launches BookBudKids Platform

HOST: Bo, great to have you back — thirty-five episodes in. Last time we wrapped the vibe-coding conversation on Vibesies, but I keep thinking about something you said way back in the StarringMyKid episode: that the commercial version of the picture-book idea, where the kids in the books are generic, not real children, would come "under a different website name." I'm looking at BookBudKids.com right now, and I think that's the site. Is that right, is this the one you were describing? GUEST: Yes, it's exactly what I was describing. When we created starringmykid.com, it was for a very specific market. It was for the parents, the grandparents, people who want to create a book or two and just have a like a really personalized, customized book that they can upload their own grandkids or children, uh pictures of them, turn them into cartoons, and then recreate a story from their childhood. So, it's it's a wonderful idea, but it's it's not book bud kids. It's something very different. We had people coming to us from from the book bud space saying, "Oh, this is great. Now I can make children's books and sell them on Amazon." And I said, "Well, not so fast. Uh that's not really what this is for." But people kept on coming saying, "This is what we want." So, that's what we built. And book but bookbudkids.com is what they got. HOST: Okay, so you built what the market was asking for, moving from that personal gift market to the actual sellers. Now, you mentioned the technology wasn't there six months ago to handle character consistency. What exactly is that "portrait approval gate" doing to prevent the AI from drifting on page twelve compared to when you start from a photo? GUEST: Well, it's the way that our system works in that it will start with the original characters that are in the story and it will send those characters to each page that's created throughout the story. So, every time a page gets created, it has all the original source material. So, it doesn't forget what the characters look like. And that's the key to character consistency. That's the piece that was missing prior to like six months ago that that people just couldn't do. HOST: Got it, so it's actively referencing that baseline character sheet throughout the process. Now, with that commercial focus in mind, I see you have a Studio tier for twenty-five books a month. That's a lot of content. Who are these publishers building these high-volume catalogs — is there a particular discoverability strategy you're seeing work for picture books? GUEST: Well, this is a brand new venture. I mean, we're literally launching the site. Today. As I give this interview. So, right now we have exactly zero subscribers. But, I anticipate that'll change quickly because again, this will be introduced to our BookBub base for which we have thousands of users. And many of whom been asking for a product like this. So, we'll see what the market bears out. But, I'm assuming that the studio package you're referring to is going to be used by the same people who produce 50 of the regular non-fiction books at BookBub per month. And just they're just out there to be a publisher. HOST: Right, launched today, so in that first twenty-four hours. Now, one of the things the workflow requires is selecting a moral or life lesson that the AI then weaves through the story. That seems like a real editorial constraint. When you read the output, does that lesson come through organically, or does it feel like it sits on top of the story like a label? GUEST: Now, it's it's very organic the way that it's built in. AI does a fantastic job in creating a story that takes that life lesson, the moral. And incorporates it into something that reads like a really well written children's book. HOST: And how are you planning to quality-check that at volume when a Studio user is generating twenty-five books a month? GUEST: It's not really my job to quality check every book. I think that we have to quality check the algorithm that produces the books, which we do. But once the uh once the users start creating their books, they're the ones really in charge of the quality since it's their book. They're the ones going to be publishing it. They need to make sure that it's something that they want to publish. And I assume that if there are any inconsistencies in the quality or if there's a problem, then the users will let us know about it. HOST: Right, relying on the users to be the primary quality control. Now, the distribution path here routes straight through SelfPublishing.pro, just like everything else in the stack. But children's picture books have different categories, age-band metadata, and very different cover conventions than adult books. Did plugging BookBudKids into that existing distribution infrastructure require rebuilding anything on the SelfPublishing.pro side, or did it slot in cleanly? GUEST: I wouldn't call it cleanly at first. There was a lot of uh back end work that had to be done to make it work smoothly because as you mentioned, children's books do fit in uh different categories and they have age requirements where you have to list a certain metadata with the different retailers. But one thing that I do want to mention that's very different from BookBub is BookBub has a different process where at the end you could export the files and then you could you could just basically press a button and distribute it the ebook with us. But if you want to create a uh a print book, you have to go through a couple different of our companies in order to get the PDF done and then the cover done. And then ultimately the distribution. So that's a a multi-step process. With this, we're building the entire book for print within BookBub Kids. So when you distribute the book, you're distributing both the print book and the ebook in one click. And that's something very different. HOST: That is a big difference, combining both print and ebook distribution in one step there. Now, you just live-launched the studio yesterday. When you come back on in a few months, what's the one metric you'll be watching that tells you BookBudKids is working — and what would tell you it needs a pivot? GUEST: Working would be that I mean it's already working. And it's already working beautifully and I was able to create books within minutes. I read the books. The books are fantastic. And then I was able to publish them with one click through self publishing pro. Now they're now they're there on uh on Ingram digital in full distribution. So that works. Now, are they profitable? Well, it cost a few bucks per book depending on which package which package you get. It'll cost like a few bucks per book to create the books. These books unlike the books with BookBub, there's a higher cost associated with them because they're very high quality images and the whole book is images. So there's a API cost involved. So we can't give the same uh quantity as we usually do with with BookBub.ai. Um but having said that, there's a cost associated with it and I guess the next uh criteria, the metric would be are the books making money or more specifically, after how long on average does a book earn its keep? Like does it um does it make back what you actually put into it in an investment? So that's going to be the big question. Um my my guess is that it's going to it's going to earn back the investment much quicker than the ebooks because uh this is a much higher barrier. Uh um there's there's a higher bar, uh stronger barrier to entry, so not as many people are doing this. And book uh creating ebooks with AI has been around for over two years now, whereas what we're doing has just been available for um maybe, you could argue six months, uh but that's even pushing it. HOST: Right, that higher barrier to entry with the image quality. Well, let's get you back on in a few months when there's real catalog data — I want to know who's actually hitting that Studio tier and what their books look like. Thanks, Bo — and until next time, that's a wrap.