Make every book you publish come alive — without changing a word of it.
bucoo is a patient reading coach for the printed books children already own. We make your editions more valuable to the families who buy them — and we never redistribute a single copy.
We are on the same side.
Children are spending less time with books — but not because the stories got worse. They're reading less because everything around the book became interactive. YouTube, games and the phone respond, react and reward in real time. A printed page, for all its depth, simply sits still. That is the real competition for a child's attention — and it's a competition you and bucoo both want books to win.
bucoo doesn't replace the book. It gives the printed book a way to compete on interactivity while preserving everything you already do well. A child opens a book they own; a camera sees the page; bucoo highlights each word as they read it aloud, listens, and steps in gently when they stumble — sounding the word out phoneme by phoneme (English has 44 letter-sounds), then breaking longer words into syllables — and celebrating each word they win.
Built to protect your books, by design.
Most technology companies ask publishers to hand over content. bucoo is built on the opposite principle: the family buys the book first. The enhanced experience is unlocked only for the verified owner of that edition, and the work itself is never redistributed.
How ownership is proven. To unlock a book, a family enters its ISBN and photographs a specific page the app names — a "show me page 7" check that an internet cover image can't fake. A match records that this family owns this edition, and only then is the coaching layer enabled. The check is deliberately proportionate — enough to keep the experience tied to genuine ownership, without treating families like suspects.
A more valuable book — and more of them sold.
Today a title sells once and the revenue ends there. bucoo changes what a physical book is after purchase — and that changes its economics in your favour.
- A more valuable edition. A book that coaches, highlights, sounds out hard words and reports progress is simply worth more to a family than one that doesn't.
- A more attractive purchase. On the same shelf, an enhanced edition is the one a parent chooses — a reason to buy the book rather than borrow or skip it.
- Deeper engagement. Children spend more time inside your books, and parents see the reading happening — the outcome every children's publisher is ultimately selling.
- On the right side of the curriculum. bucoo coaches in the order the science of reading prescribes — individual letter-sounds (phonemes) first, then syllables as decoding matures — exactly the systematic, decoding-first grain that phonics-first curricula now emphasise.
- Insight into how your titles are read. With appropriate consent, aggregate signals about engagement and completion — never a child's personal data — can inform how you commission and position future titles.
- Full control, always. No files change hands, no rights transfer, and content reaches only verified owners.
Four ways to engage — the first two cost you nothing.
There is no single "bucoo deal." You can start wherever you're comfortable and go further only as the results earn it.
| Option | What it involves | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| Compatible by default | Your books already work with bucoo the moment a family owns one and proves it. You need do nothing at all. | Nothing |
| Endorsement | Print "Works with bucoo.ai" and a QR code inside new titles — instant activation for the buyer and a more attractive book on the shelf. No integration, no content handover. | Nothing |
| Premium "bucoo Edition" | An official enhanced edition — cast voice performance, comprehension and vocabulary extensions, teacher resources. Priced a little higher; revenue shared with you. | Shared upside |
| Catalogue partnership | Bring bucoo to a catalogue at scale — especially into schools, where "every one of these books comes alive" becomes a reason to choose your list over another's. | Partnership terms |
To be completely clear — what we are not asking of you:
- Your content, files or rights — bucoo serves intelligence only to a book's verified owner and never redistributes the work.
- Any upfront payment or engineering work to begin (Options 1–2).
- Exclusivity — we intend to work across the industry, and want you free to do the same.
The intelligence layer for printed children's books.
Picture launch day for one of your new titles. It appears in bookshops as the printed book, online as the eBook, on Audible as the audiobook — and one new place: everywhere, "bucoo Enabled." A parent buys the printed book, verifies ownership, and immediately unlocks word-by-word highlighting, a patient reading coach, and sound-it-out help for hard words — phonemes first, then syllables. You haven't given anything away; you've made the physical edition more valuable at the very moment it's bought.
We're honest about where we are: the platform is live and the core coaching technology is built, but bucoo is early and pre-revenue. So the best way to see it is to try it on your own titles — and to measure the results, openly, together.
Bring your catalogue to life.
Choose a handful of your titles. We'll enhance them, put bucoo in front of real families, and measure what matters to you — minutes read, completion, retention, and books purchased — then share the results, openly, with you.