Here’s a clever idea. Personal Ebooks will take an ebook copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and substitute you child’s name for that of Alice. They charge $9.99 and offer a 100% money back guarantee. An email I received from Matthew Grover of the site says that more books will be added and that it works best with female names, but that should change soon. It could be fun!
From the site, where I substituted the name Erin for Alice:
See how their name would look in the story:
‘Idiot!’ said the Queen, tossing her head impatiently; and, turning toErin, she went on, ‘What’s your name, child?’
‘My name isErin, so please your Majesty,’ said
Erinvery politely; but she added, to herself, ‘Why, they’re only a pack of cards, after all. I needn’t be afraid of them’
They charge $10 to do a single search-and-replace on a document? Their entire business model involves two minutes of scripting and a visit to Project Gutenberg, yet they only have one book.
They used to do this with print books, too– not Alice in Wonderland but picture books specifically written for demand-on-demand distribution.
I’d rather the books be written specifically for this purpose rather than using classics like Alice in Wonderland. For some reason, this just offends me.
oops! PRINT-on-demand!
“it works best with female names, but that should change soon.” So the next step is to change Alice from a girl to a boy, along with all personal pronouns? The entire idea is worse than offensive — it’s a distortion of reality. In a world where children are already growing up into adults who can’t tell the difference between fake and real, this is just one more way of divorcing their minds from reality. But as long as someone’s making money from it, it must be okay.
Hello, I think that this is a great Idea. I cant think of a better way to get children more interested in reading.
Catana: Don’t worry, I can’t imagine they’ll make much money from this. It’s a terrible idea and poorly executed. Anybody remotely competent could replicate, improve and undercut their business model in a matter of hours.
A very successful chain of shops operates in my city printing all kinds of children’s books with the child’s name in them. Kids love this kind of thing and I am sure they will be successful if the manage it right. With the growth of iPads it’s a good idea to bring it to eBooks.
There’s nothing wrong with creating books specifically for this purpose. There’s everything wrong with tampering with classics. There are plenty of ways to get kids interested in reading. The best, as has been proven many times, is for them to grow up a household full of books, where the adults actually read for pleasure, and read to and with the children.
When I was a kid, my grandparents got me and my sister each one of those customized story books with our names in them – but it wasn’t a bowdlerized classic novel and it didn’t just change the names – the book also included references by name to our dog, our street, our town, our favorite foods, etc. The producers were able to do that because they had specifically written the story with customization in mind. And this was at least 35 years ago. The gimmick in this case is that it happens to be an ebook, not a hard-copy book, but there’s really nothing clever in that.
Oh, and I thought at the time it was cool getting a book about me, but I was already into reading. I don’t think kids get enthusiastic about reading just so they can read a story about themselves – humans are not THAT egocentric.