“The simple statement ‘help me to do it myself’ still brings tears to my eyes.”
The founder of Selfarama Books, Tom Ryan of Melbourne, Australia chatted with The Montessori Post. Ryan created a personalized art history book for children to discover fine art, which has been embraced by the Montessori community around the world. Below Ryan recounts his introduction to Montessori, inspiration behind his first book and the technology to make it happen.
What is your professional background? I’ve mostly worked as a freelance computer nerd, designing and supporting internet infrastructure. Along the way, I took a couple of years out to open a popup hospitality venue in Amsterdam, and I flirted at one time with the idea of becoming a kindergarten teacher… partly for the fun and satisfaction of working with children, and partly because I was fascinated by languages (I still am) and I wanted to be among the world’s best language learners: kindergarten kids.
I went looking for a suitable course, which led me to the Maria Montessori Institute in Hampstead, near where I was living at the time. From the moment I discovered Dr Montessori’s teachings and philosophy I was hooked. The simple statement “help me to do it myself” still brings tears to my eyes.
I never did end up working in a children’s house, so it wasn’t until I had kids of my own that I really got to put my Montessori training into practice.
What is your role at Selfarama Books? I work on Selfarama by myself, mostly. My kids help as test audience and occasional photo models. I outsource printing and shipping to a company that usually prints photobooks. They have about 16 locations around the world – it’s very convenient for me and my customers.
And of course there’s web hosting.
But everything else is me. It’s taken about 15 months, often while having a day job in tech (most recently I worked on live scoring for the Australian Open), and with a huge amount of advice and feedback from friends, colleagues, parents in my local network, and many very helpful strangers on reddit and Twitter. I’ve learned so, so much in the process, and there’s still so much more to do and learn. I love it.
So I take care of web develepment and design, book concept, book layout and template creation, research and writing, database admin, customer care, marketing, social media and email ads, print partner relationship, social media, finances, ai pipeline development, reviews, international sales stuff esp tax management, quality control and occasional returns, UX, conversion optimisation, copy writing, monitoring the tech stack… and I’m sure I’m forgetting about 20 other things!
What was the inspiration behind the art history book? I was started out with the goal of doing fiction books, but I found it hard to get visual continuity. The very first thing my kids asked was “why does the tiger house look different now?!” on page 2. So I asked myself “what would I do without visual continuity?” and I landed on a book about art and artists. Because it really should be different on every page! Since then, I have learned how to do continuity, but I love the art history book as it is.
I had many conversations with friends and family in which they asked “why would kids like non-fiction?” and I struggled to explain why I thought “of course they love it!”
Eventually I realised that it was the Montessori influence. We [Montessorians] get it. That’s why I reached out to the Montessori groups I was already in when launching the book. I find Montessori folks uniquely appreciative of three things:
1. A child’s joy of selfhood
2. Nonfiction for kids
3. Sharing grownup stuff like fine art with kids
Is the art history book your first title? Are there plans for other titles in the future? It is the first. I’m hoping to add many more, but not before really taking this one to market. My goal is 10,000 units sold before I expand into other titles.
It’s really tempting to expand now, but I’m still learning so much about running this business. I want to get really, really good at this one thing before I try to do more.
Help readers understand the technology behind the customized renderings. For each portrait in the book, we combine an example of the artists style, a photo of someone in a particular pose, a text prompt describing the style/pose and the features of the child, and of course the image that the customer has uploaded. The most important tool is called InstantID – it’s not very user-friendly, but it’s great for automated process like mine, and there are a lot of tutorials on youtube.
What have you learned along the way during the creation of the book? So, so, so much. Thinking about how to answer this question is overwhelming.
What else would you like readers to know? I love it when people reach out and tell me about their experience of the book. I’ve made a lot of improvements by listening in this way.
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