Before I talk about the learnings from making this book, I wanted to put the images of the book.
Instead of telling a meandering story about what I learned, I have kept it brief.
- The initial book of content took me only about 7 hours to make. But converting it into a book was a whole other story. I had to work about 60-80 hours to make it look good.
- Finding images that are good but also open to be used was very difficult. Even the amazing photos from Microsoft are technically only allowed to be used in the Office suite. If I make the book into something people can buy, I must find new images.
- Frankly, even though ChatGPT was very helpful at the start, getting it consistent was more cumbersome. I pushed through solely because I was interested in understanding how to get ChatGPT to work.
- The parents of course appreciated the gesture. The kids liked it too. Albeit for a few days maybe. Then, unless the parents got the book out, the kids never got around to reading it again. That being said, the kids were ages between 3-6. So, one hypothesis would be to try the same for an older set of kids to understand the use case.
- I will be pinging the parents in say a year since I have given the book to understand if the kids ever opened the book on their own.
- It’s been a bit more than a year. I have given this book to 3 kids. Here is what I have found out.
- One of the kids loves books and we meet it at least once every few months. She is 4 and now every time we meet her, she has the book and always brings it out to read with us. Still, she doesn’t understand every word in it but seems to use her book more often.
- The other kids whom I haven’t met since then have used the book maybe a few times. I feel it’s more due to the push from my friend than them picking it on their own. At least this is my understanding.
- So, the result is “It depends”. I always hate such answers.
- It depends on the temperament of the kid, their learning style, and so much more.
- Maybe I need to make a few more books before I can conclude.
- I feel the book was too adult-ish where it was too “to the point”. For my next iteration, I feel I need to build the game into a story or a journey of the character like in the games.
- I will add the link to the next book and its blog post to this point.
Overall, I feel the journey was a fruitful one to start with. I’m now in the process of making a newer version for another friend of mine. Let’s see where that book takes me.