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Have you ever set out on a creative project with your kids to try to make a book from start to finish?  I don’t have personal experience with this myself, but I can imagine that the art and story writing with your kid(s) is the easy part.  The actual creating and binding of the book is more difficult and probably is going to cost you a trip to a paper store or print shop.

Lexington, MA startup Tikatok is aiming to make this process streamlined through the web.  The service lets you work with your children to do the creative aspect of the projects and them upload (or send) the art into Tikatok and they turn it into a book and send it back to you (for a fee of $15 for soft cover and $20 for hard cover).

The company started when two mom’s in the community wanted to encourage the imaginations and creativity of their children through the creation of art and stories and compiling them into books.  Their idea has turned into a bona fide startup with a user base that has nothing but go up since the service was launched.

Something I like about the web interface is that after you get your book published, Tikatok will then let others view your book online for free or let other users buy it in soft or hard cover for around $20 again.  There is also certain social networking features built into the service, which is nice because it enables groups of friends to buy each others books and share ideas between kids and parents.

These social features do need some work though, as I found it very difficult to find people who I might want to add as friends.  Implementing an address book search feature and and invitation feature would help.  Another idea I would think about for the product would be some sort of collaboration tool that would allow groups of kids to work together in a group to create art together.  There is a clubs feature where you can join and talk about certain books, as well as create them, but it wasn’t clear to me that you could collaborate on art or directly with each other within a club.

The company makes money by the sales of the books themselves, which is refreshing and a seemingly sound revenue model (i.e. not advertising based).  According to CrunchBase, they haven’t received any funding from outside sources, and no word if they’re looking for any at this point. It will be interesting to watch them as they grow, but I know I’ll be checking out some of the books with my niece and nephew when I see them.