Why I Built a Children's Book Platform From My Kitchen Table at 1am

I did not set out to build a children's book platform. I set out to find one that actually worked.

My son Roman was two at the time. Like every parent, I wanted him to love reading. I wanted stories that made his eyes light up, that made bedtime something he ran towards instead of away from. And like every parent who has typed "personalised children's books" into a search engine, I found the options disappointing.

The Name Swap Problem

The first personalised book I ordered arrived beautifully packaged. I opened it expecting something special. What I got was a generic story with my son's name dropped in. The illustrations were the same for every child. The character looked nothing like him. The story had nothing to do with who he was.

It was a template with a label.

I tried another company. This time they let me upload a photo. The result was my son's face pasted onto a cartoon body. It looked strange. He did not recognise himself. It sat on the shelf and never came off it.

I tried a third. Same problem, different wrapping. The industry's idea of personalisation was skin deep. A name here, a face there, but the same story underneath. No thought given to the child's age, their interests, their personality, or what would actually make them care about the words on the page.

I kept thinking: someone must be doing this properly. Someone must be building stories that are genuinely about the child, not just decorated with their name.

Nobody was.

The Kitchen Table Hours

I work in tech. I know how to build things. But knowing how to build something and finding the time to build it are two very different problems when you have a toddler, a full-time job, and a finite number of hours in the day.

So I found the hours nobody else wanted.

My routine became this: wake up early, do the school run, work my day job, come home, do bath time, dinner time, story time. Put Roman to bed. Then sit down at the kitchen table and start building.

On weeknights I would work until one in the morning. On weekends, sometimes until five. Sleep from five until ten, then do the whole thing again.

It was exhausting. There were weeks where I questioned whether it was worth the cost to my sleep, my energy, and the time I was not spending doing anything else. But every time I doubted it, I would come back to the same thought: the product I wanted for my son did not exist. If I did not build it, nobody would.

There was another layer to it too. This was not something I could talk about openly. Building a product on the side while holding down a day job is not something every employer celebrates. But the pull was too strong. I had seen a gap that nobody was filling, and I knew I could fill it. Some things are too important not to build, even if you have to build them quietly.

What I Wanted It to Be

The brief I set myself was simple. I wanted a story that my son would believe was about him. Not a story with his name in it. A story about him.

That meant a character who looked like Roman, not a generic avatar. It meant a story written for a three-year-old's vocabulary, not a one-size-fits-all script. It meant adventures shaped by the things he loved: monster trucks, drums, exploring. It meant illustrations that felt like they belonged in a real book, not clip art with a filter.

And it meant doing all of this in minutes, not weeks. Because parents do not have weeks. They have a window between bath time and lights out, and if the story is not ready by then, the moment is gone.

The First Time It Worked

The first time Roman saw himself in a story I had built, he froze. He stared at the character on the screen. Then he looked up at me and asked, "Is that me?"

I told him it was.

"WOAH, THAT'S ME!" The volume was extraordinary. "That's awesome."

He had never seen himself in a book before. Not really. Not a character who liked the same things he liked, who looked the way he looked, who lived an adventure that felt like it belonged to him. Every personalised book I had bought him before was a costume. This was a mirror.

He wanted to read it again immediately. And again after that. And the next night, he asked for another one.

That was the moment I knew the sleepless nights were worth it. Not because I had built a product. Because I had built something my son genuinely loved.

What It Became

Once Upon a Me is what I wished existed when I started searching. Every story is written from scratch for a specific child. The vocabulary matches their age. The themes reflect their interests. The character is built from their photo, not pasted on top of a template.

There are seven illustration styles. There is narration so the book can read itself aloud. There is a bedtime mode. And if a parent wants to hold the story in their hands, there is a premium hardcover printed and shipped to their door.

None of this would exist if the industry had done it properly in the first place. But it did not. So a tired parent at a kitchen table did.

Why This Matters

This is not a story about entrepreneurship. It is a story about a parent who wanted something better for their child and could not find it.

Every parent knows the feeling of searching for the right thing, the thing that will make their child's face light up, and settling for something close enough. Once Upon a Me exists because close enough was not good enough.

If you are a parent reading this, your child deserves a story that is genuinely about them. Not their name on someone else's adventure. Their adventure. Their personality. Their world.

That is what I am building. One story at a time, still mostly from that kitchen table, still mostly after bedtime.