Kidmondo, a service we featured back in May, took a bet on offering a journal for parents interested in blogging about their babies’ growth and development, from their earliest moments to well into their K-12 years. Yet it did not address the post production element at the time. What to do with all that material once your kid went round the bend, as it were.
Well, here we are creeping on September and the startup has sent us word that it has struck a partnership with SharedBook to offer to users an option of a "Kidbook." Members can now transmit into a softcover time capsule anything they wish. (Update: Hardcover option is available.)
As you will see, the sample draft which they demonstrate is somewhat lacking in substance when browsing page to page. But Kidmondo’s point that users may include only items from their online collections that they wish to publish allows for what I think could be ample customization. You’re not given complete freedom on formatting, of course. Frankly, few sources other than a well-equipped local print shop will grant such leeway. But options at SharedBook are perhaps enough to make the $28.00-plus purchase worthwhile.
Will Kidmondo users snap up Kidbooks in large numbers? It’s hard to say. Some definitely will, yes, just as Flickr or Photobucket members order photo albums through third-party sources and so forth. And when it comes to something as personal child journals, it is safe to assume an estimate of sales of such mementos would be higher rather than lower. The cost to value ratio is indisputably advantageous.