A press, a cassette, and a few minutes
There is no clever part being hidden here. You say what the book is about, the machine writes it and draws it, and then it prints and binds it on the worktop while the conversation that started it is still going on.
What it is, on the worktop
A press about the size of a toaster, which sits on the side where a bread bin would go. One knob and one button, because a machine that lives in a kitchen and gets used at half past six cannot have a menu.
It charges over USB-C and lasts about a week between charges, so it is not tethered to a socket and does not need a shelf near one.
What happens when you talk to it
Press the button and say what tonight’s book is about. That is the whole interaction: the spider in the bathroom, starting school on Monday, a dragon who is afraid of flying. It does not ask a series of questions, because the point is to catch a subject in the two seconds it exists before the conversation moves on.
The display shows the cover while the book is being made, and then it goes dark. It is the only screen involved and it is never the thing anybody reads from.
How the words get chosen
You tell the press once who lives in the house and how old they are, and it writes to fit. The same idea comes out as two quite different books for a four year old and an eight year old — shorter sentences and more repetition at the young end, richer vocabulary and a real turn at the older end.
That is a setting on the press, not an account, and nothing about it is asked for by this website or stored on it.
How it becomes a book
It prints onto 300gsm card, folds it, and seals it along the spine into a board book. Bound, not printed out and stapled — which is the difference between something that gets read again on Thursday and something that goes soft and ends up in the recycling. It survives being sat on, which is the test that actually matters.
The cassette
The card and the ink come in a cassette that snaps in like a staple refill. One cassette is 10 books and costs £25, which works out at £2.50 a book. The press arrives with 10 books in the box, and you buy another cassette when you have used them, or you do not. There is no subscription and no recurring charge of any kind.
The specifications, such as they are
The product has not shipped, so every figure is design intent rather than a measurement taken off a finished unit. They are set out on the specifications page, along with the part this page has skated over: the press needs wi-fi, because the writing and the drawing happen on our servers rather than inside the machine on your worktop.
We are making a small first run
Leave an email and we will write to you once, when it opens. Once, and then not again.
Reserve one