storystarling

Joined 9 months ago

Karma
111
Submissions
194
Member since
Jan 22
Building StoryStarling - turn your story idea into a printed children's book. Custom narratives, not templates.

Based in Germany.

[email protected]

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Recent submissions

Comment · 29 days ago
Comment · 1 month ago
I'm working on StoryStarling (https://www.storystarling.com). It creates custom hardcover children's books from scratch around any idea, instead of swapping names into pre-set templates.

We mostly focus on things you cannot find in bookstores: bilingual stories with parallel text for multilingual homes, and non-fiction for kids who have hyper-specific obsessions (like tunnel boring machines or wastewater systems).

Comment · 4 months ago
Yes, the illustrations are AI-generated. We generate the book, lay it out for print, and print/ship the physical copy.

Fair point though - "we illustrate" could be clearer.

Comment · 4 months ago
https://www.storystarling.com - create a non-fiction children's book explaining your super-niche-geek topic to your kid. Pick any topic, your kid becomes the little explorer, we illustrate and print it. Requires registration, but then lets you read the whole book before paying.
Comment · 6 months ago
I'm working on StoryStarling (https://www.storystarling.com). You describe an idea for a children's book, optionally upload photos of your kid or pet to put inside, pick a style, preview the result, and order a printed hardcover. Bilingual if you want.
Comment · 8 months ago
Comment · 8 months ago
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.
Comment · 8 months ago
This matches our experience. For a 28-page children's book there's no context collapse - the entire story fits comfortably in context. The format actually plays to LLMs' strengths: short, structured, clear emotional arc. It's a very different problem than generating 500 pages.
Comment · 8 months ago
Fair perspective. But the parent isn't passive here — they're the creative director. They decide what the story is about, who the hero is, what happens. The AI does a lot of the writing, yes, but the parent is the editor: they review every page, rewrite lines, regenerate illustrations they don't like. It's closer to working with a ghostwriter than pushing a button.

Most AI content feels empty because it's made for nobody in particular. A StoryStarling book is the opposite - a parent shaping a story around their specific child's world. That's a real story. They just had help telling it.

Comment · 8 months ago
Honestly, for children's books specifically - yes. A children's book is 28 pages, simple language, short sentences, clear emotional arc. That's a very different challenge than writing a novel. We've put a lot of work into the prompting and story structure, and the results are genuinely good for this format. Parents can also edit every page of text before approving for print if they want to tweak anything.

The soul comes less from the prose and more from the fact that this story exists for this child. A book about their specific fear, their favorite thing, their family situation — that's what makes a kid ask to read it again at bedtime.

Comment · 8 months ago
That's a fair point about friction, but we're intentionally focused on physical books - the whole idea is to get away from screens. Most parents we talk to have the opposite problem: too much digital content, not enough tangible things. A printed book that lives on the shelf, gets read at bedtime, gets dog-eared and carried around - that's the product. You're ordering it for a birthday, a holiday, a first day of school. It's not impulse content, it's a keepsake.
Comment · 8 months ago
yes - we do combine those both and you can upload photos to get your kids into the book.

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