(Kate says: “I hugely admire the writing and illustration of Alex T Smith, a couple of whose books I had the pleasure of publishing when I was at Scholastic. We’ve remained Twitter friends, and, when he tweeted about how his younger nephew’s attention span had, he felt, increased through exposure to Nosy Crow’s iPad apps, I asked him to expand on the thought, and this guest blog post was the result. There isn’t solid evidence about the impact of iPad apps on children’s development, concentration and/or literacy. Lisa Guernsey has spoken about them in the epilogue to her book, Screen Time (which you can download from her website, and I hope that Joanna McPake and Lydia Plowman of the Universities of Strathclyde and Stirling will extend their research (which I mentioned in this blog post though the links to the Seven Myths doesn’t work any longer, I see) into this area. In the meantime, all we have is personal stories. This is a lovely, individual one. Thank you, Alex.”)
I love being an uncle. I’ve even invented a word for the times I am left in charge of my two nephews: “uncling”. I think it’s a useful word to describe all the things I do with them – playing games, building dens, drawing (everything and anything) on demand, wiping noses… and, of course, battling boredom.
When my niece was little (she’s now a very glamorous 14 year-old) she was really easy to amuse. Should boredom strike, you could just plonk a book into her hands, or arm her with a pile of card, some glue and a pot of glitter, and she would be entertained for hours.
Big Nephew (now seven) was pretty much the same. From a very young age he could be entertained with a pile of books. He spent ages looking at the pictures and finding all the details hidden in them. What’s more, he could, and still can, (Proud Uncle alert) spend ages writing and illustrating his own beautiful, stapled picture books or making up brilliantly complicated and imaginative games (often involving aliens and/or dragons depending on whether he is a space man or a knight at the time).
Then Little Nephew arrived.
Little Nephew is now three and, like his siblings, he is (if you’ll allow me another Proud Uncle moment) very bright, fantastically imaginative and hilariously funny. He is also, and I say this in the nicest way, completely and utterly bonkers. After spending time with him I find myself exhausted, not only from laughing so much, but also from trying to keep up with the way his brain works. There is apparently a gorilla who lives in the attic at my parents’ house who tap-dances crossly on the floorboards if Little Nephew has to brave the stairs alone. When his parents check in on him after his bedtime, he can often be found sprawled across his bed in a completely different set of clothes from the pyjamas he was put into a few hours earlier: he was once found wearing swimming goggles, with a well-packed rucksack, a coat stuffed up his pyjama top, and a toy sword down his pyjama trousers – prepared, it would seem, for all the possible night-time eventualities and adventures that he could imagine.
While all of this is as lovely as it is funny, he isn’t exactly easy to entertain. He simply did not seem to have any sort of concentration span. You’d show him a book… and he’d race through the pages and zip off to do something else. You’d give him some paper… and he’d draw a squiggle then hop down from the table and get started on something new elsewhere. Getting him to do anything for more than a few seconds was really difficult and tiring, and he sometimes seemed frustrated too.
Then we had a breakthrough: the iPad!
When my parents bought their iPad, I got them to download some of the Nosy Crow apps as I thought they would be interested in them as they had both been teachers and are both bookworms. They were very impressed not only with the stories and the artwork, but also with the ways the iPad enhanced the texts and allowed the child reader (or in this case my parents!) to explore the story at their own pace.
It wasn’t long before the iPad was spotted by two pairs of beady eyes: the Nephews leapt onto it like hungry beasties. Big Nephew typically found his way around in no time, but what really surprised us all was how interested Little Nephew became. He sat flicking through the ‘pages’ and using his little fingers to make the three little pigs hop about and talk. He loved the ballroom dancing sequence in Cinderella and Bizzy Bear on the Farm is, I think, one of his very favourite things.
He now sits for sustained periods of time reading and playing with the Nosy Crow apps and really enjoys himself. I could say that through the iPad and its various apps his concentration span has increased, but actually what seems to have happened is that his ability to concentrate has appeared. And his fine motor skills have really improved too!
From reading the book apps, he has gone on to spend time creating mini-masterpieces in a painting app and learned to play games on the iPad too.
But the most curious thing is that since learning to enjoy the Nosy Crow apps, he has become really interested in print books. He regularly snuggles up beside one of us with a pile of books and wants each book read to him s-l-o-w-l-y giving him plenty of time to enjoy looking at the illustrations. He has also developed a real interest in creating non-digital artwork. Whereas before the best you could hope for was a blob quickly scrawled on a piece of paper, he now likes drawing funny little blob people who have their arms and legs on sideways and can sit happily glueing and sticking for ages.
I started thinking about this today whilst listening to a discussion on Radio 4’s You and Yours programme about whether all the technology today is damaging children. I tuned in mainly because I love listening to the crazy people who phone radio stations. One woman today wanted to ban and/or uninvent both TV and the Internet because she felt they were a bad influence and unhelpful! But after laughing at that, I got properly interested in the discussion. There was a lot of talk about how playing games on their computers can actually equip children with lots of skills they will need in the future careers. There were also testimonials from proud parents saying that their square-eyed, computer-game-playing child had grown up and been able to put their skills to use, not only in the games industry, but in a wide range of jobs, many of which you wouldn’t immediately associate with playing on an xBox.
I know that there’s a lot of anxiety as to whether, with the arrival of eBooks and apps, we will see the traditional children’s book becoming a thing of the past. There’s a worry that children born today will grow up not knowing how to read properly or know what a ‘real book’ is. Personally I don’t think that will happen. In the case of Little Nephew, modern technology (and Nosy Crow’s beautiful apps) have really grabbed his interest and actually led him from the screen to the page. I think with careful parenting (and uncling!) there is room for both apps and paper books in the world and they can be used to help children who struggle initially to connect with literature to learn to love books both ‘real’ and electronic.
Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got a tap-dancing gorilla in the attic to deal with…
I have to admit that e-books, digital books, story apps, whatever you want to call non-paper books had never appealed to me until recently. Having self-published two books myself; I was adamant that I was all about paper books… from recycled sources, of course!
However, I also believe in changing with the times and moving forward.
Fortunately, I came across Nosy Crow on Twitter and saw that they had won awards for their work; their reviews were good, so I thought it was about time I bought my first non-paper story, and I’m glad to say that I was impressed… very impressed!
My first purchase was Nosy Crow’s Cinderella Story app. I was immediately struck by all the different options: 1. Read and Play, 2. Read to me, 3. Read by myself… and the music was excellent too!
I don’t have children but I work with children as a speech and language therapist. I was keen to somehow incorporate this app in to some of my sessions, as a sort of treat. As it was a treat, I decided to use the Read and Play option. The voice telling the story is perfect; it really suits the fresh and fun, simple, yet detailed representation of Cinderella. As the story started, and inspired by the excellent illustrations in each well-presented scene, I suddenly thought, “Hang on, we can work on some good synonyms here!”.
Talking with my student (I work on a one-to-one basis) about the various characters, I was able to teach synonyms. Here are some examples:
There was also opportunity to consider synonyms for verbs e.g. – Cinderella “cried/wept” when she could not go to the ball. – The chubby stepsister asked Cinderella to”fetch/get” her clothes/accessories for the ball. – Cinderella had to “rush/hurry” home to get back before midnight.
You may be thinking that it is possible and effective to teach new words through everyday conversation, and yes of course it is and can be, for most children. But the beauty of using this app and any other colourful medium is that children benefit from seeing words come to life, through colour, actions and detail. Strong visual representations of any word particularly if they are in the context of a meaningful, eventful story, will assist children in later recalling new words that have been introduced to them. And, most importantly, using a colourful teaching aid will engage them. When children are learning and absorbing information, it has to be fun! Naturally, if something is fun, it is more interesting and hence easier to recall.
Education aside, you too can use this app at home to enhance your child’s vocabulary. For example, if your child is beginning to write stories, this is a great, subtle way to introduce your child to more descriptive words, and the bonus is that you have a great story to refer to for reference – “Remember the Cinderella story? Do you think your character is mean like Cinderella’s stepsisters or kind like the fairy godmother?”
In moving with forward with current trends, it is all about finding a balance of using traditional methods with newer ways of learning. So next time you read a story, whether it’s a regular book or story app, make the most of it: just think of all the different things you can teach and show your child, and expand on their ever-increasing knowledge.
Written by Priya Desai
Speech and Language Therapist/Children’s Author/Independent Publisher
www.priyadesai.co.uk
The “Make a Face” game uses the front-facing camera in the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 (or later) so that you can copy Pip and Posy’s expressions – sad, happy, laughing, everyone’s favourite – monster – and more, and then take pictures of the results. If you have an older iPad or iPhone, you can still play the game, if a second person holds your device for you.
Once you’ve struck your best pose, you can save the picture to your “Photos” folder or take a screenshot by holding down both the Home and Power buttons – and then you can enter by posting a link to the photo in the comments below, tweeting it to us @NosyCrowApps, or emailing it to apps@nosycrow.com.
The competition closes on Sunday and Pip and Posy will be on sale on iTunes for only $0.99/ £0.69 until then! You can find the app on iTunes here.
It’s an app of many firsts for Nosy Crow: our first Axel Scheffler app, our first games app, our first app of 2012, and the first app that will be released in (at least) 5 languages – so we’re very proud of it!
The app is based (of course) on our Pip and Posy books, and is filled with fun things to do for children aged 2+. Here’s the trailer that we made last week:
There’s lots to do: a drawing tool that lets you color in Axel’s pictures from each of the Pip and Posy books, a very satisfying set of jigsaw puzzles, lots of different matching pairs and spot-the-difference games, and, maybe best of all, an activity that uses the front-facing camera on an iPad 2 or iPhone 4 (or newer) so that you can copy Pip and Posy’s faces in a mirror and then take pictures:
You can find the app on iTunes here – if you do buy it, we’d love to hear from you! Please do review it on iTunes, tweet to us NosyCrowApps or leave a comment on Facebook.
And if you’d like to be kept up to date with all of our latest apps, you can sign up for our mailing list here.
The Parents’ Choice Awards are the oldest nonprofit program created to recognise quality children’s media in the USA. There are several tiered award levels, and the criteria for the gold award are “the highest production standards, universal human values and a unique, individual quality that pushes the product a notch above others.”
Cinderella and The Three Little Pigs received the awards in the Mobile Apps category.
“Oh that Nosy Crow! They’ve gone and recreated the Three Little Pigs as you’ve not seen them before. Each piglet has more personality than ever; Mom and Dad can’t wait for their nest to be empty, the eldest boy is a nervous wreck, the girl appears worried but holds her pocketbook like the queen, and the youngest can’t wait to get started on his adventure … Charming to the core.”
“This interactive edition of the traditional fairy-godmother version of Cinderella is irresistibly cute. Most children who approach the game will already know the story, but this will in no way limit their delight at seeing the story play out with child-like protagonists and characters that respond to prodding with flips, giggles, retorts, or expressions of the characters’ own delights and sorrows … The animation is skillful and artistic, more visually appealing than many of the print versions of the story … The price of the application is higher than most children’s apps, but it is comparable to that of a paperback picture book and lower than many e-books. The humor and style will appeal to adults and children alike, making this purchase entirely worthwhile.
…And she also added the following wonderful note to her review:
“My 6-year-old daughter could hardly wait to return to this book night after night. I never tired of the app myself, and even my 12-year-old daughter and my 10-year-old son clamored for turns playing. This was by far a runaway hit!”
So, thank you, Parents’ Choice – we hope we’ll continue making apps that meet the same high standards!
Busy selling rights at the Nosy Crow stand at the Bologna Book Fair
We have some really exciting news – our apps will soon be available in another language!
We’ve signed a big apps partnership deal with Gottmer, who already publish a lot of our picture books, at the Bologna Book Fair. It means our full range of apps will be released in Dutch, starting with the highly-acclaimed The Three Little Pigs. Kate struck similar deals at last year’s fair with Gallimard and Carlsen, who publish the apps in French and German, and we’re thrilled to be able to share them even more widely and broaden their international reach.
Kate said:
“Our work with Carlsen in Germany and Gallimard in France over the last year has proven to us that there are business model advantages in a digital version of a co-production approach. It means that everyone gets a great app while managing their financial risk. Just as importantly, the partner publishers bring their publishing skills to create the best possible foreign-language version that will appeal to parents and children in their own language. And we know that they can provide the kind of publicity and connection with consumers that will the apps visible – and successful – in their own countries.
Finding a Dutch partner was an obvious next step. Not only does Gottmer have its own positive experiences of making and selling apps based on its own books, but they have been particularly enthusiastic about Nosy Crow’s print titles, having bought 86% of our 2011 picture and board book list.”
Melanie Lasance, MD of Gottmer, said:
“We are very excited to be embarking on this new adventure together with Nosy Crow. Gottmer, in its 75th year of existence, is eager to explore all the new possibilities that are out there in this rapidly evolving market. We have successfully published 14 apps in the past months, and have worked closely with Nosy Crow on a substantial number of print projects. We feel confident that this new co-operative venture with the Nosy Crow team will take our digital output to a higher level. Nosy Crow has developed wonderful picture book apps that reflect their fresh, innovative and child-centered approach to publishing, which is the same approach that we at Gottmer strive for, so it feels only natural that our two companies should engage in this partnership.”
… So, all in all, a successful fair, we think! Keep your eyes peeled for the Dutch versions of our apps – we’ll be sure to share news of their release here.
A lot of Nosy Crow are at Bologna this week (as anyone who follows Kate on Twitter will know!) – hard at work selling rights, meeting authors, illustrators and agents, and looking for exciting new talents to add to our brilliant list. I’m back in London already, after a flying visit that lasted just long enough for me to climb the Asinelli Tower (here’s the pretty spectacular view from the top), hang out at the Nosy Crow stand on Monday (here it is immediately after being constructed by Adrian and Leen) and, most important of all, attend the Tools of Change conference on Sunday.
The View from the Asinelli Tower (photograph by Leen)
Tools of Change is a great chance to meet up with, and listen to, some of the most interesting people working in digital publishing: there were brilliant keynotes by, amongst others, Dominique Raccah, President of Sourcebooks, Junko Yokota, professor of children’s literature at National-Louis University, and a particularly inspirational (and moving) closing speech by Elizabeth Wood, Director of Digital Publishing for Worldreader, a non-profit whose mission is to make digital books available to all in the developing world.
An image from Elizabeth Wood’s incredible keynote presentation
The conference also provides a fascinating snapshot of the state of digital publishing: there are break-out sessions through-out the day, and in between attending these, hearing the keynotes, and chatting to fellow publishers over lunch, a strong impression emerges of the biggest anxieties and interests of the industry.
The pre-eminent theme of the day seemed to be, by quite some margin, discoverability – that is, how to make your digital content visible (in particularly on the app store on iTunes). There were several sessions devoted entirely to this issue (a particularly interesting – and popular – talk by Hermes Piqué, CEO of Robot Media was entitled “The Discovery Problem: Getting your Book app noticed in the App Store”, and was standing-room only), but it also came up over and over in other events on seemingly unrelated subjects. It’s not a subject confined to Tools of Change, either – the crux of the problem was articulated unimprovably at an event at BAFTA I attended last week, at which Peter Sleeman, co-director of P2 Games (which makes the Peppa Pig apps), observed that app developers are putting their products in the world’s largest shop, with the world’s smallest shop window.
And there were some interesting (though not unexpected) corollaries to this subject: apps with big brands (like Peppa Pig) are particularly valuable as they’re more easily found and parents are more likely to search for them, for instance. Piqué spoke engagingly about things like keywords, poor search functionality on iTunes (“Apple does search like Google does tablets”) and the importance of elements of app design that are often overlooked or given little thought – like an app’s icon, which, as the first thing a potential customer will see, is critically important, and should – according to Piqué – “be simple but detailed, and tell a story without words”.
After discoverability and branding, the next most-recurring topic seemed to have been cross-platform functionality. In the week in which Apple launched the next iPad, thereby maintaining its position as market leader in the tablet sector for the foreseeable future, a source of interest for a lot of publishers and developers was how seriously they ought to be treating iOS-alternatives (and how feasible it is to create multi-platform content). At the moment, our apps are only available on Apple devices, which is as much to do with issues of practicality – devoting the time to convert our existing apps for Android tablets would mean less time making brand new apps – as any other reason, but other speakers raised interesting points in favour of iOS (mostly revolving around the fact that there is simply a much larger potential market).
If anyone is interested in how the rest of the day went (and it was very interesting!) there’s a storify post made up from @NosyCrowApps’ live-tweeting of the day that you can find below – and if you were at Tools of Change, or are interested in any of these ideas, please leave your comments below!
It’s a sort of truth universally acknowledged that, with a few exceptions (Penguin, for example), consumers (which is shorthand for bookbuyers, readers and the parents of readers when we’re talking about children’s books), don’t recognise trade publisher brands (as opposed to academic or educational publisher brands, whose consumers do have more publisher brand loyalty). Instead, consumers care about authors and illustrators and their names and visual identities are what matter.
But this way of thinking was particularly relevant to an environment where books were sold in real bricks-and-mortar shops. Today, when increasing numbers of print books are sold digitally, and when, increasingly, publishers’ products themselves are digital (ebooks and apps, for example) the question of the publisher’s brand comes under new scrutiny. It seems to me that it is increasingly important that a publisher’s brand does need to have meaning now. As the route to self-publishing becomes ever easier, part of what a publisher must be able to offer authors and illustrators is an association with clearly articulated brand values, and the ability to communicate those brand values to consumers, to build communities of readers, and to find and foster advocates for the list.
So, one year into our publishing journey, I was interested to find this tweet from @anne_jackson:
“Glad I did come home. Orla told me she’d been waiting for me. We read Pip & Posy: The Scary Monster. She recognised @NosyCrow. Sleeping now.”
Anne, who I don’t know, describes herself on Twitter as the “mum of one funny little girl“I who “loves bread, science and football”. She lives in Scotland.
Via Twitter, I asked for the story behind the tweet, and she emailed me and gave me permission to use this in a blog post:
“We recently bought Nosy Crow’s Three Little Pigs app for our daughter, Orla, aged three-and-a-half. Three Little Pigs is her favourite story and she absolutely loves the app, especially touches like the Big Bad Wolf lurking outside the Little Pigs’ living room window! Even a technologically-adept child like Orla still loves books though, and we make regular trips to the library. She’s very insistent on choosing her own books. On our last trip she chose Pip and Posy: The Scary Monster. Being a huge Gruffalo fan, she was probably first drawn to it by Axel Scheffler’s illustrations; however when she picked it up and opened it she saw the Nosy Crow logo on the first page. “Look Mum, the Three Little Pigs”, she said. With that, she handed me the book and continued her search, satisfied that Nosy Crow was guaranteeing her a good story. Thanks Nosy Crow!”
The picture at the top of this blog post is of Orla with iPad and with a book.
It’s exciting to think that after only a year of publishing we are starting to have a brand that is recognised by the people who matter – children and their parents.
At the end of our first year of publishing and second of existence, we’ve won in not one, not two, but three categories of the Independent Publishing Awards.
We won the IPG Children’s Publisher of the Year, the IPG Newcomer Award, and The Nielsen Innovation of the Year Award.
Me with Nosy Crow’s three awards
We were also shortlisted in an additional three categories (IPG Independent Publisher of the Year, Frankfurt Book Fair International Achievement Award and The London Book Fair International Achievement Award).
The awards are run by the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG), in association with The Bookseller and The London Book Fair, and the winners were announced at the Annual Conference of the IPG.
The sixth annual IPG awards featured 21 companies and four individuals, shortlisted across 14 categories.
Nosy Crow was recognized as IPG Children’s Publisher of the Year for its books and apps that “bring reading alive for children and parents”. The judges said that, “What Nosy Crow has achieved in just two years is phenomenal. Its marketing has been faultless and its publishing is full of energy.” The judges especially liked the high production values of our books and apps and our use of web and social media to build and maintain close relationships with customers and suppliers.
In the category of IPG Newcomer, Nosy Crow was celebrated for its impressive commercial success after just two years in existence. The judges admired the twin focus on books and apps, and our “sense of ambition”. They said, “Nosy Crow has produced a string of beautiful books and apps in a very short space of time. It has picked up impressive sales from a standing start.”
Nosy Crow was awarded the Nielsen Innovation of the Year Award (for which no shortlist was announced) for its creative and interactive apps including ‘The Three Little Pigs’, ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Bizzy Bear on the Farm’. The judges were impressed by its adoption of digital technology right from its launch, by its in-house development of apps, and by strong marketing, PR and sales. “Nosy Crow has adapted to change and embraced it with some terrific work. It is easy to produce apps for the sake of it, but Nosy Crow has done something very innovative and special.”
It’s just amazing to see Nosy Crow honoured in three categories at the end of its first year of publishing. It’s such a tribute to the whole Nosy Crow team who have worked so hard and with such commitment to build a list from scratch, and it’s a particular honour for our completely brilliant in-house app team. It’s also a great tribute to the authors, illustrators and other creative talents who entrusted us with their work from the beginning of our journey. We’re grateful to the shops, librarians, reviewers, international publishing partners, and, above all, mums, dads and other grown-ups who bought and appreciated our books and apps over the course of the last year. Being recognized in this way by the IPG, a community of publishers who exhibit such professionalism, focus and sense of their readers, is particularly inspiring for us. To paraphrase Adele at the Grammys, ‘the Crows done good’.
Because it’s not, you know, cheap to go to conferences like this and Nosy Crow is careful with its cash, and, more importantly, because we’ve only got a few days to go until the Bologna Book Fair, I was the only Crow at the awards ceremony, though I feel rather sad that more of us weren’t there to celebrate.
Still, there’ll be cake later today, you mark my words.
Of course, it wasn’t all about Nosy Crow. Here’s the full list of Independent Publishing Awards winners:
The Bookseller Trade Publisher of the Year: Constable and Robinson IPG Children’s Publisher of the Year: Nosy Crow IPG Academic & Professional Publisher of the Year: SAGE IPG Children’s Publisher of the Year: Nosy Crow IPG Education Publisher of the Year: Jolly Phonics IPG Specialist Consumer Publisher of the Year: Osprey IPG Newcomer Award: Nosy Crow
Neilsen Innovation of the Year Award: Nosy Crow
The London Book Fair International Achievement Award: Woodhead Publishing
Ingram Digital Publishing Award: Constable and Robinson
The Frankfurt Book Fair Digital Marketing Award: TopThat! IPG Young Independent Publisher of the Year: Andrew Furlow, Icon Books GBS Services to Independent Publishers Award: Adrian Driscoll IPG Diversity Award: Barefoot Books IPG Independent Publisher of the Year Award: Constable and Robinson
It’s World Book Day, and we hope you’re celebrating. Many of us – including me – sent our children to school disguised as fictional characters. Here are some Nosy Crow offspring, one dressed up as Princess Emily from The Rescue Princesses: The Secret Promise by Paula Harrison, and one dressed up as Winnie The Witch.
Children of designers always have an advantage. Here’s a Nosy Crow designer’s child taking a less book-specific approach to dressing up for WBD:
There’s been a nice little twitter hashtag started by @worldbookdayUK#fictionalforaday and it prompted me to ask some of the Nosy Crows who’d they’d like to be, with particular (but not absolutely exclusive – see surprising Thomas Hardy character below) reference to children’s books.
Kate B said: “When I was little I wanted to be any one of the Famous Five or Secret Seven and used to moan all the time about the lack of adventures in my Dorset childhood. But now I would like to be Lola from Charlie & Lola as she has zero responsibilities and such a cool big brother (although I have that too). I’d also quite like to be the little girl in The Tiger Who Came to Tea, because, well, how great would that be? And that retro kitchen is something else.”
Camilla said: “I’d quite like to be a Wild Thing right now – I could do with having a bit of a wild rumpus to relieve the pre-Bologna tension!”
Adrian said: “I’d like to be Badger in the Wind in the Willows, because he’s strong and kind and fearless – though I’ve also always had a sneaking wish to be Mr Toad. Alternatively Jude the Obscure.” On being questioned as to why he’d want to be someone whose child – spoiler alert – hanged himself and all his siblings, he said, “Well, he did lead an unhappy life, but he was a stonemason, and he did want to better himself.” Hmm.
Tom said, sadly, “I always wanted to be Ratty but knew that, in truth, I was far more like Mole.” But he also said, “I would like to be Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web, because it would be nice to have someone as brilliant as Charlotte looking out for me.” And who could argue with that?
Kirsty said, “I’d choose Winnie the Witch, because she has a cool house and an enviably relaxed approach to leg-shaving.”
Victoria said, “Anne of Green Gables for me because she was beautiful and kind and seemed to have the most incredible adventures. It is a dream of mine to visit her house and pretend to be Anne for a day!”
Kristina said, “I think Pippi Longstocking, mainly because she lived in a house with a monkey and a horse, but also because nothing seemed to worry her: it was always just another adventure.”
Giselle said: “I was absolutely obsessed with Alan Aldridge’s ‘The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast’. I took every opportunity I could to copy pictures of all his wonderful characters. I would have loved to have been invited to the ball myself! Although, sadly my invitation got lost in the post!”
Dom said, “Well, it’s for a night, rather than a day, but when I was young I wanted to be Mr Bear from Jill Murphy’s Peace At Last – because walking about, looking for a place to sleep, he clearly wasn’t bothered about the dark… whereas I was very scared of it.” He sighed. “I was a delicate little flower…”
Will said, “I think I’d be Timbertwig from Marshall Cavendish’s Story Teller series. He has a pet spider, Abigail, who lives in his hat and she can perform magic very badly – the basis of all their adventures?”
Milena, who works on our apps PR in the USA, said, “Growing up, I was obsessed with A Wrinkle in Time so it would have to be Meg Murry. I loved reading about an awkward, insecure girl who takes on evil forces through time and space to rescue her family. She kicks some serious butt and finds her voice in the process. I admit it, I’m a dork!”
Leen said, “When I was a child I was obsessed with the Gnomes books by Dutch illustrator Rien Poortvliet (Leen is from Belgium). They contained incredibly intricate drawings of how the gnomes lived in the forest, how they built their houses, what was on the breakfast table in a typical gnome household, and details of the edible plants and berries that they harvested for food and to make into things to sustain their lifestyle. I was fascinated by the idea of a whole world beneath our world, and was delighted that somebody had taken the trouble to set this all down in a book with pretty, colourful illustrations and enough pseudo-scientific ethnographical detail to satisfy all of a pesky 8-year old’s incessant questions. Consequently, I felt I got a great insight in what it would be like to live as a gnome and, on balance, decided that I wouldn’t mind joining their community. Subsequent hunts through wood pile, garden shed and garage revealed no hidden entrances to gnome residences of any kind, however (and the book specified the different types of hiding them, so I did have a good look!).” I asked her who she’d choose to be specifically and she said, “Then I’ll be Lisa, the wife of David the Gnome. Gnomes weren’t very feminist and the ladies didn’t go out much, but there was a lot of good cooking around.”. I said that I felt that she shouldn’t feel she had to be a girl (though I was interested that almost everyone chose characters who were the same sex as them), particularly as it was only for a day, and she said that, in that case, she’d be David the Gnome himself, as “he gets all the good hare-riding and goose-back-flying.”
Joanne Owen, who’s doing some tip-top freelance marketing work for us, said, “I variously wished I was Little Red Riding Hood/Rose Red/Briar Rose/Rapunzel – can’t beat the scary settings, danger and drama of fairy tales. Or, as Leen fancied joining the Gnomes community, I wished I could have stepped into the Moomins’ magical world. Or Pippi Longstocking – brave, bright, eccentric and strong, and a teller of strange and funny stories. Or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz because she had such an amazing adventure, what with all that fighting of witches and flying monkeys, making and helping new friends and, of course, the sparkly red shoes! Or, finally, one of the girls from The Faraway Tree so I could visit The Roundabout Land and make friends with Moonface!”
As for me… well, it’s getting late, and it’s been a long and busy day (which is why I am only posting now), so I think I shall choose The Sleeping Beauty, at least for now.
So… who would you want to be for a day?
PS I think I might want to be Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. She takes risks. She’s not afraid to talk back. She’s never afraid or fazed even when very strange things happen to her.
Pip and Posy, by World Book Day illustrator Axel Scheffler
Tomorrow is World Book Day, and in over 100 countries the importance of reading and literacy will be celebrated in schools, libraries, bookshops and public spaces. We’ve decided to celebrate, too – with a very special sale on our apps. For one day only, every Nosy Crow app will be available on iTunes for just $0.99/ £0.69/ €0.79 on March 1st in honour of World Book Day.
In the past, Kate has blogged about what we think apps mean for children’s literacy. That’s why we’ve chosen to celebrate WBD with this promotion – we think our apps are valuable, authentic reading experiences and this way, they’ll be available to even more people. If you already have one of the and enjoyed it a lot, why not gift it (we blogged last year with instructions on how to gift an app) to someone who hasn’t tried it before?
Find Cinderella on iTunes here
Find The Three Little Pigs on iTunes here
Find Bizzy Bear on the Farm on iTunes here
Last week, The Three Little Pigs turned one, and we marked the occasion with a weekend price promotion. This week we have an even more exciting birthday to celebrate – our own! Nosy Crow turned two on Wednesday (a blogpost on the subject from Kate may be forthcoming), and as well as enjoying frankly absurd quantities of cake (Kate made an excellent clementine one, and Michelle from Imago brought in a magnificent chocolate and raspberry affair), we thought this time we’d launch a promotion for our most recent app, Bizzy Bear on the Farm. Today and all this weekend you can buy the app on iTunes for the special price of $1.99/ £1.49/ €1.59 (here’s the link).
The app has been fantastically well-received. It won the Editor’s Choice Award from Children’s Technology Review. The Guardian wrote “There’s loads of easy and satisfying interactivity in telling the story of Bizzy Bear’s farm visit … Simple interactivity creates multiple permutations of text which encourages careful listening and makes repeating the familiar activities full of surprises.” The Literary Platform said “Young children will love this app. It’s bright, fun and engaging with plenty to keep little fingers occupied.” And in the New York Times’ Gadgetwise blog, it’s described as “Full of clever talking animals and barnyard jobs that include gathering eggs, herding sheep and riding a horse. Every page has hidden surprises that support the story.”
So if you haven’t tried Bizzy Bear on the Farm yet, now’s the perfect opportunity – help us celebrate our birthday, and help Bizzy out on the farm!
It’s particularly gratifying as last year, both Cinderella and The Three Little Pigs were recipients of the award, which is given in recognition of outstanding quality and value in children’s media products.
In their review, by The New York Times’ Gadgetwise blogger Warren Buckleitner, the Review write that Bizzy Bear is “another excellent Nosy Crow app … the narration by children is professionally done, and the activities work well to support the story.”
If you haven’t tried out Bizzy Bear on the Farm yet, you can buy it here – and if you have, we’d love to know what you think, so please send us your reviews on iTunes, Facebook, or Twitter.
He argues that some things are “bought” – they’re there, and consumers find them because they meet a need without the seller soliciting the sale, and others are “sold” – no sale happens unless the seller solicits the sale.
I’ve just read the piece, and don’t have huge amounts of time to think it over in relation to books and apps (I am in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronic’s Show, the Kids @ Play summit and to pick up the KAPi award for best ebook for our Cinderella app). The examples that Seth Godin gives are at the opposite ends of a spectrum, and I don’t really think that the things that we acquire can be put into boxes of “bought” and “sold”: instead, there’s a kind of continuum of push and pull, of desire and need, of opportunity and quest.
And I think that sometimes – as in the example of the Charles Dickens biography and War Horse below – something other than, or in addition to, the seller is “soliciting” or at least prompting the sale.
There’s also, in the case of books and apps, a question of who “the seller” is. Is it the publisher? Is it the retailer? It is, perhaps, the author or creator in some cases?
But it seems to me that books are both “bought” and “sold”. If I go into Hudson News or WHS in a station or an airport before a journey, and buy a book that I have never heard of before, that book has essentially been “bought”. Yes, the fact that it’s on a table rather than a shelf, or face out on a shelf, may make me more likely to notice it. Yesterday, I did just that. I bought a copy of Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (so far, so American and good). Perhaps the “Winner of the Pullitzer Prize” badge was part of a “sell”, and, I suppose, the cover, the blurb and the review sources suggested it would be a particular kind of woman-skewed, middle-brow read that might work for me when I was a bit jet-lagged and on a plane that I knew already would be as uncomfortable and rammed as only an American Airlines (gosh, but I hate that airline) flight can be.
But when I acquired the Claire Tomalin biography of Charles Dickens (I went on to write about it here) from Amazon, I didn’t stumble upon it. That book had been “sold” to me by review coverage combined, of course, with the event of the bi-centenary of Dickens’ birth, which meant that the subject was very zeitgeisty.
I think the fact that the bricks and mortar bookshop example was an example of a book that I “bought” and the online bookshop example was an example of a book that I was “sold” is indicative of a shift that books are going through now between from “bought” to being “sold”.
At the moment, I still think most, but not all, of course, children’s books are “bought”. Of course, there are exceptions: the film of War Horse is currently “selling” War Horse.
I think that, as publishers, we need to get better at “selling” books.
It’s hard to generalise about apps. I think that, in our case, many of our apps have been “sold”, in that people have gone onto the app store looking for them because they’ve seen a great review, or read about us in a paper or magazine, or connect with us on Twitter or Facebook (and social media is, of course, one of the ways that publishers could get better at selling books too), or heard about the app from someone they know.
However, I also think that some of our apps have been “bought”, by people finding them on the app store. At the moment, one of the great challenges of the Apple App Store is how to find good apps, but being App of the Week, or being on the front page of the store or a section of the store, or showing up well in rankings hugely increases the chances of being found by consumers.
Unlike much bookshop positioning (whether online or bricks-and-mortar), you can’t pay for positioning in the Apple App Store. Apple chooses the apps it promotes. All we can do is make sure our apps are as good as they can possibly be. Oh, and it would probably help if you voted for them in the Best App Ever Awards!
I am still thinking about this, so this is a far from definitive piece of writing, but I’d be interested to know your views.
So, do you feel books are bought or sold? What’s your own experience? Is it different from what you think other people’s experience is?
Do you feel apps are bought or sold? What’s your own experience, if you’re an app buyer? Is it different from what you think other people’s experience is?
The apps’ success is entirely down to your support – so please, vote for your favourite at http://bestappever.com/v/kded to help us be in with a chance of winning!
2011 was Nosy Crow’s first year of publishing. We published our first book in January.
It’s been an incredibly busy and full year, and I find it hard to sort through the events and impressions of the past twelve months to write anything coherent.
But here goes…
The books and apps we published… and signed up
In 2011, we published 23 books for children aged 0 to 14. 8 were board books. 7 were picture books. 8 were fiction titles for children aged 6 to 14. Here they are in reverse publication order finishing, at the time of writing but this will update as publication dates pass, in December 2011.
We signed up a further 38 books and 8 apps for 2012, and already have projects scheduled for publication in 2013 and beyond. You can already find out about some of the forthcoming books (in publication order starting, at the time of writing but this will update as publication dates pass, in January 2012) and about some of the apps.
Selling at home and abroad
Working with Bounce, we had books sold and promoted in a huge range of UK sales outlets from independent booksellers through bookshop chains and online book retailers to supermarkets and toy shops.
We’ve travelled on Nosy Crow business and/or to speak at conferences to the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Holland, Italy, Mexico and Brazil.
We sold rights to books in the following languages: French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Hebrew, Chinese, Norwegian, Greek and Korean.
Nosy Crow authors on the road
Nosy Crow authors were at numerous literary festivals, including Hay, Edinburgh, Bath and Cheltenham, and staged countless events in schools, libraries and bookshops.
Nosy Crow on the move
We moved offices from our second office in Lambeth to our third office in Southwark (it’s always cheaper south of the river) as our staff grew from 8 to January 2012’s 19, including part-time people and “attached freelancers”. We’ve lost members of staff too (which is a real rite of passage). Two were only with us on a temporary basis and went on to roles that they had planned before they joined us, but Deb Gaffin has just left us to take on a marketing and partnership strategy role at Mindshapes. We are very grateful to her for helping us shape our first apps and the thinking behind them. Andi Silverman Meyer who has known Deb since they were at school together, and who has been fantastic at getting us US coverage for our apps, is joining Mindshapes too.
Spreading the word
We have reached a lot of people with Nosy Crow news of various kinds.
Nosy Crow as a company or Nosy Crow books or apps have been in the Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, The Gadgetwise Blog of The New York Times, Wired Magazine, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent, The Scotsman, Prima, Junior, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus, School Library Journal, The Melbourne Age, The Australian, The Huffington Post and many great children’s book, parenting, technology and app blogs. We’ve had terrific coverage in trade press and websites including Publisher’s Weekly, The Bookseller, FutureBook, BookBrunch and The Literary Platform. The quickest look at the first few pages of a Google search result for Nosy Crow gives a sense of the range of coverage – and, where it’s third-party coverage, how positive it’s been. We’ve had more than our fair share of TV and radio coverage too, and coverage, through our Gallimard and Carlsen links in Figaro, Marie Claire and Buchreport.
From around 1,300 Twitter followers for @nosycrow (bit of a guess, this, but based on the numbers we had in September 2010) this time last year, we’ve built our @nosycrow following to over 5,700 and our @nosycrowapps Twitter following grew from 0 to over 1,800. I wrote about Twitter here. We’ve 1,250 Facebook fans.
Recognition
Our apps were included in so many “best apps” listings in the US, UK, France and Germany that it’s difficult to list them here. They won several awards, including, most recently a KAPi award for best ebook and a FutureBook Award for best children’s app which were both won by our Cinderella app. Our ratings in the iTunes app stores are excellent.
It would be ridiculous to pretend it was a year without disappointments or irritations. The much-investigated drainy smell in the bathrooms at 10a Lant Street continues to baffle. The many cakes we make and eat continue to contain a lot of calories. Camilla had her bag stolen and we had to have all the office locks changed. There are one or two important UK retailers who still haven’t stocked our books. There are several countries to which we’d hoped to sell rights but haven’t yet managed to do so – Japan for example, but there are good reasons for that. We didn’t always (though we did generally) agree what books we wanted to publish and how much we wanted to publish them. We offered for some books that we didn’t manage to buy, a couple of which I still feel sad about. One or two books (and I mean “one or two”: our strike rate has been good) didn’t sell quite as well as we thought they would. We had to cancel a couple of projects because they just weren’t working out the way that we’d planned.
Thank you
But it’s been a very good year.
Whatever we achieved in this first year, we did it in partnership with our many authors and illustrators, new and established, and with other artistic collaborators, such as composers, audio experts and paper engineers. Without them, we have nothing to publish. We threw a party to say thank you. You can see the pictures at the top of our Facebook page.
Our author party in The Crow’s Nest in Lant Street a few weeks ago
And whatever we’ve achieved in this first year, we did it thanks to the support of publishers abroad; booksellers of many kinds; librarians; reviewers; bloggers; literacy organisations; literary and illustrators agents; printers and print managers; talented freelancers; and, of course, the parents and grandparents, uncles, aunts, friends, teachers and librarians who have bought and read our books and apps to, with and for children.
Yesterday and the previous evening I read, pretty much in one indulgent sitting, Claire Tomalin’s Charles Dickens: A Life.
My older daughter, who was aware I’d given the book to her father for Christmas, and also that I’d recommended that he read Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs after I read it in November, asked which of the biographies I’d liked best.
I hadn’t thought to compare the books, but rather than think about their relative merits as biographies (they’re both very good, both highly-readable, both thorough, both long, both sympathetic), her question made me think about the similarities between the men – Dickens and Jobs.
Of course, I don’t want to push this too far: Dickens was an English novelist, born 200 years ago; Jobs was an American technology and design entrepreneur born in the second half of the 20th century. Their world views, their circumstances, their focuses, their attitudes towards food and drink, their family lives and what they did all day was utterly different.
And of course, there are may be traits that are common to many, many of the kind of successful men who are described as geniuses, rather than just to Dickens and Jobs, but, still, here are a few similarities that jumped out at me.
They both worked very hard:
Dickens was bound by a punishing schedule of deadlines driven by the publication of much of his fiction in serial form, whether as novels published by themselves in chunks, or serialised in publications. He often wrote through the night: “Day and night the alarum is in my ears, warning me that I must not run down.”
I loved this image:
“After he’d been writing for long hours in Wellington Street, he would sometimes ask his office boy to bring him a bucket of cold water and put his head into it, and his hands. Then he would dry his head with a towel, and go on writing.”
For Steve Jobs it was famously important that he control every detail of design or marketing of an Apple product or experience… and at one point in his life, not only was he managing Apple, he was managing Pixar too. He blamed his brutal work schedule for his subsequent health problems.
They were both extraordinary successful – successful young and successful at the end of their lives – despite huge setbacks:
Dickens’ titles sold in their tens of thousands, and he read to sell-out audiences of thousands. When he visited America, and when he travelled in England, he was greeted and feted by adoring fans. His celebrity and talent were recognised at his death: he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. The grave, left open for two days, overflowed with flowers and messages and Longfellow wrote, “I never knew an author’s death to cause such general mourning. It is no exaggeration to say that this whole country is stricken with grief”. Dickens died relatively wealthy, supporting several households, many family members and families of friends.
But, starting with his scarring childhood experiences of family poverty, Dickens had several brushes with financial disaster as publications folded and books sold less well than predicted particularly in the economic squeeze of the 1840s. And, though it’s hard to imagine now, his work, often finished hastily, was frequently panned by the critics.
Jobs built Apple into the most valuable business in the world. In 2010, Apple had 7% of the revenue in the personal computer market, but 35% of the operating profit. He was a home computing pioneer. He facilitated Toy Story and other Pixar blockbusters. He was behind the iPod and the iTunes store which changed the way we consume music. He was behind the iPhone, which turned mobile phones into music, photography, video, email and web devices. He was behind the iPad, which launched tablet computing, and the App Store, which is leading to the formation of a new content-creation industry. His death made headlines throughout the world and people who’d never met him left flowers near his house.
But he was fired from the company he founded and the launch of his NeXT computer was disastrous.
They both had absolute conviction that they were right:
Dickens was convinced of his own abilities, and nothing in the biography suggests that he wavered from his belief in his own intrinsic talents, though sometimes he lamented that his heath or other commitments got in their way. As he wrote to an aspiring author, George Henry Lewis, “I suppose like most authors I look over what I write with exceeding pleasure”.
He said in 1843, “That I have feel my power now, more than I ever did. That I have greater confidence in myself than I ever had. That I know, if I have my health, I could sustain my place in the minds of thinking men, though fifty writers started up tomorrow”. He dismissed negative critics as “knaves and idiots”.
What Jobs said about Android tablets could stand as a summary of his convictions that the Apple approach was always right: “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough… We think that we have the right architecture not just in silicon, but in our organisation to make these [right kind of] products.” And he was brutally dismissive of critics and, generally, alternative viewpoints.
They were both focused on their consumers, and believed they knew what their consumers wanted:
Dickens’ blend of comedy, high drama (sometimes melodrama) and sentiment was what his audience wanted, and sales of his books were generally high even when critics panned them.
Jobs said to Isaacson, “Some people say, ‘Give customers what they want’, but that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
They were both interested in creating integrated experiences… experiences that disrupted the industries they worked in:
Dickens fought with his various publishers and, at different points in his career cut a deal with a printer, pushing the printer towards a publishing role and cutting out his publisher altogether; self-published his work by paying for copies of his books to be printed; and self-published his work by setting up and part-owning periodicals whose main attraction was that they carried his work. He even, towards the end of his life, read his books aloud to paying audiences – an entirely new business model.
Steve Jobs’ commitment to providing an end-to-end user experience, integrating hardware, software and, with iTunes and apps, content acquisition and consumption, was legendary… and runs counter to the direction of the rest of the consumer technology industries. He even created iconic stores that made shopping for technology a different kind of experience.
They were both brilliant performers:
Always interested in the theatre (he staged and acted in a number of amateur and semi-professional plays), Dickens reworked his novels into sequences of set pieces and honed his performances in front of a mirror to maximise his impact when he read to audiences of thousands on extensive tours in the UK and in the US and Canada. Annie Thackerey describes a London appearance (in a way that sounds to me a lot like a later Jobs product launch): “The slight figure (as he appeared to me) stood alone quietly facing the long rows of people. He seemed holding the audience in some mysterious way from the empty stage.”
Jobs’ precision-managed Apple product launches were focused on him as much as the product he was launching, with “…and one more thing…” becoming a catchphrase. He could hold an audience captive, as his famous Stanford Commencement Address demonstrates.
They were both difficult men – ruthless, demanding and sometimes unpleasant and unprincipled in their personal relationships – who nevertheless compelled extraordinary love and loyalty:
Dickens quarreled with even his most supportive and unwavering friends; waged a campaign against his long-suffering wife to justify leaving her, taking his side of the story to the press; cut himself off from spendthrift siblings; and wished one of his disappointing sons “honestly dead”.
His daughter, Katey, speaking to a biographer after his death, said of her father (and his separation from Katey’s mother), “He did not care a damn what happened to any of us. Nothing could surpass the misery and unhappiness of our home. I know things about my father’s character than no-one else ever knew. He was not a good man, but he was not a fast man… but he was wonderful!”
Isaacson says of Jobs, whose view of people was either that they were great or that they were terrible, and who was willing to manipulate, retaliate and eliminate the people who opposed him or who he just didn’t think were good enough, “Even his family members wondered whether he simply lacked the filter that restrains people from venting their wounding thoughts or willfully bypassed it… When he hurt people, it was not because he was lacking in emotional awareness. Quite the contrary: he could size people up, understand their inner thoughts, and know how to relate to them, cajole them, or hurt them at will.” Anne Bowers, looking back at her time working as Apple’s HR director, told Steve Jobs, “You were very impetuous and very difficult but your vision was compelling. You told us, ‘The journey is the reward’. That turned out to be true.”
I could go on: I could mention many other things that both men share: complicated childhoods with themes of abandonment and self-sufficiency; distant and fractured relationships with biological parents and the quest for alternative father figures; challenging relationships with offspring; the ability that each man seems to have had to persuade himself of things that were strongly believed, but quite untrue; their defiance in the face of declining health and the prospect of death. I could even mention the beards…
Dickens died at 58.
Jobs died at 56.
“Now, at last, the core of his being, the creative machine that had persisted in throwing up ideas [and] visions… for thirty-six years, was stilled.”
This is how Tomalin describes the death of Dickens. But it could just as well have been written of Jobs.
We’ve decided to lower the price of our first app, The Three Little Pigs, over the holiday period, as a way of introducing people to our work. We’re taking the price down to $1.99 US/£1.49 GBP/1.59 Euros from now until the end of the day on 2 January 2012.
We think that many people will get iPads and iPhones and iPod touch devices this Christmas (and we know from multiple reported surveys that many people want one). We also know from what we’ve seen of sales of eBooks post-Christmas that many people who get a new device at Christmas seem to spend the days immediately afterwards loading it up with content.
One of the challenges of making apps is getting people to find your app, and, once they’ve found it found it, getting people to buy something that (lite versions notwithstanding) they can’t try before they buy. We think that new iPad, iPhone and iPod touch owners may be particularly cautious about buying apps if they haven’t bought them before. We hope that, by lowering the price of our first app, people will be encouraged to find out about Nosy Crow and maybe even try out the other two apps we’ve published this year.
We’ve just released Bizzy Bear On The Farm. FutureBook described it as “unmistakeably Nosy Crow in design and quality … The app will further Nosy Crow’s reputation in this field, which can only bring relief to ‘bizzy’ parents looking for quality and safe content for their children.”
Meanwhile our second app, Cinderella – has won, in the last month, a KAPi award, a Futurebook award, a Digital Storytime 5-Star Award, and been named one of 2011’s 10 Best Apps by the School Library Journal.
And, by the way, The Three Little Pigs was no slouch on the awards and critical acclaim front, and is – because it’s been on the market longest – our bestselling app.
We’re confident – based on the five star reviews that we’ve received from people on the app store apart from anything else – that once you’ve shelled out for a Nosy Crow app, you won’t be disappointed. Lowering the price of The Three Little Pigs for a limited time is a bit of an experiment. The app market is still in its infancy, and developers like us are still working out what the best way of selling our products might be.
So wish us luck!
If you have an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch and have managed to withstand the temptation to buy a Nosy Crow app, we hope that this offer will just nudge you over the edge.
It’s been a busy day for our Cinderella app – as well as landing on the front page of Apple’s Apps for Kids store, we’re thrilled to announce that Cinderella has won a KAPi award for Best Children’s eBook.
The KAPi awards – created by Children’s Technology Review and Living in Digital Times – recognize the most innovative games, software, devices and apps for educating, entertaining and communicating with today’s connected children. The 13 judges for this year’s KAPi Awards are respected journalists and children’s interactive media publishers who reviewed 635 children’s technology products released in the past 12 months.
“This year’s jurors had a big job as they sorted through some impressive products,” said Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children’s Technology Review. “The winners accurately reflect the maturation of movement and touch-based platforms.”
“We are raising a generation of always-on digital kids. From e-books to Facebook, the KAPi Awards recognize the best products for a new generation,” said Robin Raskin, founder of Living in Digital Times.
Kate said: “Children and parents have told us how much they love our Cinderella children’s story book app, and it’s immensely gratifying that such a distinguished, knowledgeable and child-focused panel of judges has recognized Cinderella as well.”
Just in time for the release of our brand new Bizzy Bear on the Farm app, Cinderella, our second 3D fairytale app, is now on the front page of the “Apps for Kids” section of the iTunes App Store in the US. We’re really happy with the recognition it’s received all over the world, and it’s in excellent company here, alongside Sesame Street and Bartleby’s Book of Buttons.
So, thank you once again to everyone who’s bought the app and enjoyed it so much!
‘Tis the season to be jolly… and to join in the fun (or stress, if that’s your take) of holiday gift-giving.
A number of our Cinderella and Three Little Pigs app fans have emailed us asking how to send an app for iPad or iPhone as a Christmas gift. We’re happy to help.
So we interrupt this blog post for a quick tutorial on How To Gift An App.
Step 1: Find the page in iTunes of the app you’d like to give
On each app page there is a small arrow beside the Buy/Download button beneath the app icon.
Step 2: Click the arrow
Clicking or tapping the arrow, displays a drop-down list. Select “Gift This App.”
Step 3: Enter details for Recipient and Sender
Use the radio button at the top of the Gift Form to email the gift directly to the recipient or print it to send it yourself. Then enter the contact details and your gift message. Click Continue to proceed.
Step 4: Pay and proceed
If you aren’t signed in to iTunes you’ll be prompted to do so. If you are, you’ll confirm your purchase and receive an email confirmation. If you’ve chosen to print the gift, you’ll have the option to Save and Print from your computer. If you’re emailing your Gift App, the email will be sent.
Please note, on iTunes, you can only give users in your country gifts — so keep that in mind, especially if you have more than one iTunes account.
So that’s it. Giving an app is a solid alternative to using iTunes Gift Cards if you just want to buy someone a certain application.
Over the past year, we’ve been talking to teachers, educators and speech specialists about how they use apps in their work with young students. Recently, we spoke to Angela Desideri, a speech language pathologist in the United States who specializes in working with children with autism spectrum disorders. Here’s what she had to say:
What is your background and what type of work do you do now?
I’m a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) who specializes in working with children with autism spectrum disorders and others who experience communication challenges.
My company, GACI, Global Augmentative Communication Innovators, develops educational apps and provides American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) certified trainings. In March 2012 we will be launching an app called SpeechTree which is an evidence based Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) learning app.
How are you using apps with children?
I use apps every day as part of my therapy sessions. I’ve found that apps add a critical dimension to my sessions and are an effective and successful way to keep my students engaged, motivated, learning, and most importantly, communicating!
What effect can apps have on children who may have learning challenges or are experiencing communication difficulties?
Apps have an enormous positive effect on children’s learning and communication development process. The best apps allow therapists to better focus on children’s strengths and interests. These well constructed apps have been particularly beneficial to my special needs students by sustaining their attention and motivation as compared to traditional therapy activities.
Do book apps offer special benefits for speech skills?
Yes, I use books all the time in speech and language therapy. Book apps provide a dynamic layer to my therapy sessions. Many of my students have language comprehension, sequencing, story retell and expressive language goals; so books are an essential component in speech and language therapy. With the advancement of book apps this really brings stories to life. Many of my students are visual learners, so the book apps are ideal for them. I find my students really become active participants in the learning process.
What do you like about the Nosy Crow apps?
I love Nosy Crow apps! They are highly interactive and allow me to work on a wide variety of speech and language skills. The Cinderella app is one of my favorite apps and I use it in the following ways:
Comprehension and Vocabulary Development – The invitation page is a fantastic place to work on vocabulary and comprehension skills. An excellent extension activity is to have students create their own invitations and plan a party. The children can create specific details and work on developing answers to questions such as “who”, “what”, “where”, “when” and “how” when creating their invitations.
Answering “who” questions and peer identification – The pages on which the reader appears in the mirror are so exciting! The children absolutely love this feature. They feel so special to be “in” the story. We focus in on identifying and answering “Who is in the story?”, then take turns appearing in the story. The personalized aspect on these pages is truly exciting for the students.
Following Multi-Step Directions – The garden scene – talk about language concepts galore; this is a Speech Therapist’s dream! This is where my students work on following directions by finding all the items. We work together as a team to locate items and expand on their utterances.
Choice Making / Stating Preferences / Requesting – Choosing the color of Cinderella’s gown is a wonderful creative language activity. My students really enjoy picking the colors and watching them appear. This is another effective tool to expand language skills and generate complex sentences.
Social Skills – One of my favorite aspects of the Nosy Crow apps is how truly interactive the characters are by the comments they make. I use these features with my students who are developing conversation skills like commenting, asking questions and using compliments. These are all vital skills which need to be developed in order to engage in effective conversations.
Narrative Development – My students retell the story using the story grammar elements such as characters, setting, sequencing of events, and eventually stating the problem and describing the resolution at the end.
Emotions – The characters express a wide range of emotions throughout the story. I use these to help my students learn to identify and effectively express feelings.
What are some of your favorite apps and why?
I have so many favorite apps, but here are my top four:
1) Cinderella by Nosy Crow – a wide variety of speech and language goals can be addressed in this app.
2) Go Away Big Green Monster! by Day and Night Studios – I like this app because it is exactly the same as the book and there are endless fun extension activities.
3) My PlayHome by Shimon Young – This is a virtual interactive play house. Great app for cause and effect, expanding language and play skills and various linguistic concepts.
4) The Social Express by The Language Express- This is a comprehensive app that works on all areas of social skills development. I appreciate that it contains teacher tips throughout the app.
If you could design your ideal app, what features would it include?
I truly believe the iPad has opened up an entire new world of learning possibilities and we need to embrace and utilize this technology for the benefit of our students. This is particularly true for those children with learning challenges. That said, here are some of the features I believe are particularly important to have in an effective app:
Advertisement and in app purchase free.
Interactive and colorful
Motivating animations
Avoid using the word “no”. Instead, use language that helps students arrive at the correct answer.
The ability to personalize with photos and names.
What advice would you give to developers making children’s story apps? What should we know about how SLPs might incorporate story apps in therapy?
The ability to interact more with the storyline and allowing the users to personalize the story would help to maximize the learning process. Allowing them to choose or create the characters, settings, and events helps them learn these concepts and be truly interactive. I’m extremely excited to see all the latest and greatest story apps that are released in the future!
I had a bit of a dust-up in Brazil with a well-known Argentinian writer, Alberto Manguel, who is the strongest possible advocate of print over digital reading.
My views have also been contrasted with those of Julia Donaldson, another strong defender of the primacy of print.
These are just two of many, many instances when I, or others of us at Nosy Crow, have defended digital, as opposed to print, reading for children.
So we were interested to see this article in the New York Times last weekend which suggests that adults who have discarded print in favour of their Kindles or Nooks still prefer traditional print books for their children.
We don’t see the choice between digital and print reading as an either/or scenario. Instead, we think that some reading experiences suit the page, while others are right for digital devices.
We aren’t very interested in creating digital reading experiences that are simply squashing an existing illustrated book onto a phone or a tablet.
Like some of the parents in the article, we agree that there is something special about paper – the touch and feel of it, the heft and three-dimensionality of it, and the size of the page – that means that reading a picture book, or a pop-up book, a lift-the-flap or a touch-and-feel book is a great experience. And there are many print picture books, pop-up books, lift-the-flap and touch-and-feel books in our existing and forthcoming book publishing plans
But we are also very aware that children spend increasing amounts of time using screens. We would like some of the time that they spend using those screens to be reading time. But that means, I think, that the reading experience we offer on screen needs to be as multimedia and interactive as the gaming experiences they will encounter in the same space.
What we want to avoid is creating disappointing screen-based reading experiences for children whose expectations of the interactivity of a screen-based device are formed very early, as the maker of this video showing a French baby who seems to think that a magazine is a broken iPad suggests. (The guy who posted the video was a Skype guest at Dust or Magic and he said that his child does not mistake children’s books for broken iPads.)
I take our responsibility as people with decades – in my case 25 years – of experience of telling stories on paper very seriously. I think that we should be bringing that experience – and adapting it and building on it too, of course, as we learn new skills and bring new skills, such as games devising and programming skills into publishing – to screen-based story-telling. If we don’t create really engaging reading experiences for children who will spend increasing amounts of their leisure time on screen, I think we are failing them.
And it’s that wish to create really engaging, multimedia, interactive iPad experiences that are also, crucially, reading experiences, that is behind apps such as The Three Little Pigs and Cinderella.
Since we released our first app, The Three Little Pigs, we’ve been hearing from educators that apps are playing a role in their teaching. Apps aren’t replacing existing teaching materials, but in some cases are complementing them. Nancy Barth, a former teacher and now a tutor in California, reviewed our Cinderella app and wrote about how she used it with her students. We were intrigued and contacted her to find out more. Here’s what she had to say.
1. What is your background and what work do you do now?
I started out teaching hearing impaired children in 1974. The visual appeal of apps would have been an asset for them. After that, I taught in a variety of general education and special education positions. I retired two years ago and started tutoring kids and adults with dyslexia, autism, and other learning/language disabilities.
2. When did you first start using apps with students and why?
I have four grown daughters and two grandsons, and I received an iPad1 from my daughters for Christmas. I immediately saw the potential uses to help me with my tutoring. I started looking for apps that would enhance the teaching of foundational reading skills, such as phonemic awareness, phonics and comprehension. Then I discovered the world of interactive books!
3. What impact have you seen from apps?
The learning opportunities for kids with autism and other learning disabilities are wide open with apps. They promote social interaction, language development, motor skills and more.
Kids are willing to work on all kinds of routine skills when they are embedded in apps. For example, apps like Wood Puzzle-Maze reinforce visual-figure ground, fine motor and motor-planning skills.
An app like Sound Literacy gives the teacher/tutor/parent great flexibility in working on phonemic awareness and phonics. I love having letter tiles that won’t fall off the table or get lost when the student is making words. It can also be projected on a screen to use with a whole class.
My nephew, who has autism, has wonderful story ideas, but putting pencil to paper is a huge struggle. I found an app called Sound Note, which allowed me to record his ideas while I typed along. When I couldn’t keep up, all I had to do was tap a word in the transcript, and everything he had said would play back. Then, My Writing Spot and Storyist helped me organize his work, and Book Creator made it possible to put his story into book form. After almost four months of talking and typing, his book is over 100 pages long!
4. What are some of the ways kids of different ages can benefit from reading book apps?
My grandson was 2½ when I got my iPad. He enjoyed reading stories with me, and then listening to them on his own. Now that he’s three, he likes recounting the stories and especially likes tapping on characters to hear the dialogue in apps like those from Nosy Crow.
Older kids benefit from book apps that highlight the words as the story is read to them. They are able to record themselves reading and this allows them to practice fluency in a non-threatening setting. Book apps like My Word Reader: Are Whales Smart, or What? highlight several of the more difficult vocabulary words. When the student taps on the word, a graphic depiction of it pops up.
While not strictly a book app, The Civil War Today takes learning American history to new heights by making primary source material available. There’s nothing like reading a diary entry or a letter in its original form. (And just in case that handwriting is a bit too spidery, it has text versions available, too).
5. You recently reviewed our new Cinderella app? How would you use this app as a teaching/learning tool with different aged children? What skills could the app help them develop?
I love Cinderella just as much as I love The Three Little Pigs. While I was writing my review, I happened to have the Common Core Standards (U.S.) out for a lesson I was planning. I decided to apply the standards at various grade levels to Cinderella. As I noted in my blog, Cinderella addresses standards for every grade K-5. I have no doubt that standards for middle and high school could be applied, too.
As you can see from the excerpt from my blog (above), using Cinderella as a teaching/learning tool helps younger children develop retelling skills, understanding of story components such as plot, setting, character, point of view, and determining a central message of a story. I especially liked how the app addresses the goal of having older children compare text and audio-visual presentations of a story.
6. What do you look for in an app?
I look for apps that are intuitive, multi-level, and enticing. I am a stickler for accuracy when it comes to the pronunciation of sounds, especially vowels, in phonics apps. I like apps that can be used in a variety of ways. For example, Milo’s Storybook was designed by a speech therapist. There is a record function to encourage the child to describe what is happening on the page. I’ve used it to pose questions for the child to think about before they go to the next page.
I look for apps such as Preposition Builder, when I want to work on specific language skills, because it keeps records by students and generates email reports. This is really helpful for keeping in touch with parents and showing growth.
7. What advice do you have for app developers?
If you’re going to make apps for children to use in school, take some time to review the educational standards of the country/countries you are focusing on. Better yet, observe at your neighborhood school and talk with teachers about what would enhance learning in the classroom.
While game-like apps are fun, apps that truly enhance and support the teaching-learning experience are more likely to be incorporated into classrooms.
I’m personally always on the lookout for an app that would allow me to record a student reading a short passage so I could analyze it for miscues. I would also like a built-in timer for checking fluency and something that would calculate words per minute and accuracy.
I would also like a book app for older kids that would allow kids to tap on an icon and see a question that relates to the content of the page, or that models making predictions of what’s to come. And of course, I would like a way for the child to record their answers!
8. Do you see any difference in the way parents vs. teachers can use book apps?
As a grandparent, I use book apps to let my grandson entertain himself while I’m working. I also read them with him, just as I would any book. As a tutor, I use book apps to specifically address the individual child’s needs, such as fluency or comprehension.
9. What advice do you have for teachers who might want to use apps in the classroom?
Make sure that students can benefit from using the apps independently. Get apps that address a specific need, such as phonics, or that are multi-functional, such as book apps. It’s better to have a few high quality apps than a multitude of so-so ones. Get apps that contribute to the learning experience.
Thank you Nancy!
This conversation sparked our interest in how teachers are using apps in the classroom. Are you an educator using apps? If so, we’d love to hear from you on Facebook or in the comment field below.
Today’s news about the growing popularity of video games for kids confirmed what we suspected has been happening.
The number of 2-17 year olds using video games has grown nearly 13% since 2009, according to “Kids and Gaming 2011”, the latest report from leading market research company, The NPD Group.
“Today, 91 percent of kids (approximately 64 million) ages 2-17 are gaming in the U.S., an increase of 9 points when compared to 2009. While the percentage of kids gaming has grown significantly across all age groups, the fastest growth has been among kids ages 2-5, with an increase of 17 points in gaming incidence when compared to 2009.”
Indeed, it’s clear that smartphones and tablets are competing with books for children’s attention. So as children spend more time in front of screens, we want them to find great stories there too. At Nosy Crow, we are using technology as a tool to engage children with reading and to spark their imagination. As children’s publishers, we have to take this opportunity; otherwise others will fill the gap with either inferior book apps or simply with games.
In the past nine months we have published two storybook apps for the iPad and iPhone, The Three Little Pigs and Cinderella. These apps are carefully thought-through stories. But they are neither e-books nor games. Instead, they use the features of the device – the touchscreen, the microphone, the accelerometer, and the camera – to give children an active role in advancing the story.
Readers’ responses to our apps have been enthusiastic. We know from blogs, emails and customer reviews that parents and teachers are excited about what we’re creating and see our apps as positive screen experiences. Primary school teachers say they use our apps to support reading comprehension, and to teach sequencing events in a story and parts of speech. Teachers of children with special needs tell us of new possibilities for learning and communication through our apps.
When children respond to a storybook app in these creative ways, we sense we’re doing something right. Children are not using these apps to tune out and turn off as they might with a repetitive game. Rather, apps can help them to switch on to the imaginative possibilities of timeless stories.
So should we be worried about kids and gaming? We don’t think so. Games are here to stay. But it’s up to those of us who are devoted to education and reading, to take what is so engaging about games and integrate it into digital storytelling and educational activities.
We were saddened to hear that Steve Jobs died yesterday. Although we didn’t know him personally, like so many others we feel a sense of loss. And we’re thinking of our friends at Apple at this time.
It’s been touching to see all the tributes this morning and to watch the video of his Stanford commencement speech.
His message that “The only way to do great work is to love what you do” resonates with us. We’re inspired by the meticulous design of Apple products; by the belief that quality counts; that aesthetics and user interface are just as important as functionality; and that technology can be used to delight and inspire. In our own small way we try to integrate this philosophy into our work.
Apple’s products make it easy for people to harness their own creative energy and share ideas. iMovie, iPhoto, the iOS SDK, iTunes, etc. all let you make personally meaningful content and enable you to participate in a creative community. We use Macs and Apple software to create every one of our books and apps. We are grateful to be part of the extended Apple family. Through it, we’ve begun and maintained wonderful relationships with parents, grandparents, children and fellow apps developers.
Thank you Steve Jobs. You’ve enriched our lives. You’ve made work fun. We will honor your memory by creating books and apps that sing, inspire and transform.
So the fantastic news is that our Cinderella app was listed as one of the top 50 best ipad apps in The Observer yesterday. We’re absolutely delighted to be included in the same listing as, for example, BBC iPlayer, ebay and the award-winning Solar System for iPad apps!
Sadly, if you bought the print version of the paper, they used the icon for another version of Cinderella. But we know that is our version of Cinderella that they wanted to recommend, and they corrected the online version of the paper.
It’s been very exciting here at Nosy Crow. Last week we launched our second app, Cinderella, and we’ve been thrilled with the overwhelmingly positive response. We have received great feedback from parents, teachers, bloggers and app review sites.
And now, best of all, Cinderella has been recognised in the App Store. Yesterday Cinderella appeared in the list of Staff Favourites on the homepage of the App Store in the UK and Ireland. We took a screen shot because we just couldn’t believe our eyes!
Thank you for all of your support and your thoughtful emails and posts about Nosy Crow apps. Please spread the word, and keep the comments, fan photos, videos and feedback coming our way. We love to hear what you think of Cinderella and her adventures with her fairy godmother, her mean stepsisters and her shy, table-tennis-loving Prince.
It’s been a day since the launch of our second app, Cinderella, and already we’ve been blown away by the response – not just by bloggers and the press, but by everyone who has bought the app, and the parents and grandparents who’ve got in touch on our Facebook and Twitter pages to tell us what they’ve made of it.
We were particularly pleased by this great profile of Nosy Crow in the Guardian, as well as the coverage of Cinderella on Lauren Laverne’s BBC 6Music show (though I fear I may have hurt Kate’s feelings by tweeting that our workplace had become “exponentially cooler” by virtue of having been mentioned by Laverne. Sorry, Kate.) On the 6Music blog, Stuart Dredge describes Cinderella as an app that “blends animation, interactivity and plenty of humour into something that’s genuinely beautiful”. Elsewhere, Digital Storytime have written that “Like their previous app, Nosy Crow has not forgotten a single detail in this delightful title … My child has been completely enthralled with this book from the moment I downloaded it.” On the US site iLounge, Jeremy Horowitz writes that “Three Little Pigs was great; Cinderella is even better”. You can read more of the reviews for Cinderella here.
It’s also been fascinating to track, on platforms like Twitter, the word-of-mouth buzz and instant responses to Cinderella in real time – evidently some fans were up at the crack of dawn to buy the app on iTunes!
Thanks to this amazing cumulative response, Cinderella is now the number one-selling book app for iPad in the UK and number seven in the US, which we’re simply overwhelmed by.
So a heartfelt thanks to those who’ve shown such enthusiasm for Cinderella already – we hope you continue to enjoy it!
You can buy Cinderella for iPad here.
And for iPhone and iPod touch here.
I thought that I would share this cartoon which appeared yesterday in a local Brazilian newspaper following a verbal fracas in front of 3,500 people at the 14th Jornada Nacional de Literatura literary festival in Passo Fundo in the South of Brazil, to which I was invited. The row – and it really was quite heated – was between me (I’m in the blue jacket in the cartoon) and Alberto Manguel, a highly-respected Argentinian writer for adults (the bearded guy in the cartoon).
Alberto Manguel on the panel
It took place on the last day of what is a truly remarkable literary festival for adults and children. The festival draws audiences – in a huge circus tent – of up to 5,000 people, with a range of smaller seminars and children’s events in other spaces too. The event happens every other year. It was created 30 years ago and driven forward even since by the remarkable Tania Rosing. You really don’t need to speak Portuguese to understand the energy and dynamism exhibited by her here ! Passo Fundo literacy rates are significantly higher than those elsewhere in Brazil, and that’s part of Tania Rosing’s achievement.
Tania Rosing
The argument is reported – not entirely accurately from my point of view! – here, and we’ll try to get a translation out shortly.
The topic of debate was The Contemporary Reader.
It was a demonstration of our forthcoming app, Cinderella, that enraged the Argentinian writer. As soon as I’d finished my presentation, which ended with the demonstration, Alberto Manguel seized the microphone to say he thought that he’d come to debate what was forming the contemporary reader, not what was deforming the reader. He said that the app was a terrible thing and that children exposed to apps like it were not reading and would never learn to read. I asked to reply, and was handed the microphone, but as soon as I’d said two sentences, he interrupted in English saying, “That’s nonsense!” I am afraid, blog readers, that it was here that I got cross. To have a negative view, however expressed, about apps and digital reading altogether is absolutely fine by me, even if it is based on a very, very limited understanding of technology and today’s children. But to interrupt a response to it is just not acceptable. And I told him so: I’d listened to him, so now he had to listen to me.
Me on the panel
Of course, the crowd in the tent – a terrifying 3,500 strong, remember – just loved the whole thing, and every time either of us spoke, there were huge cheers from supporters of our point of view. My point of view was that technology supports reading and conversations about reading. Alfredo Manguel’s was that technology was an assault on literature, and, importantly, that the book was something that was above commerce and that technology somehow made it commercial.
Much of what we talked about is already controversial, as this Guardian article makes clear.
My own views on interactive reading experiences are outlined here. Children are spending more and more time in front of screens – as a look at the survey reported here would suggest and much of the Strathclyde and Stirling University research mentioned here covers. If we don’t provide compelling, exciting reading experiences on screens, then, because children are spending more and more time on screens, they will, it seems to me, simply read less. And if those of us with real expertise and understanding of children’s reading don’t create those reading experiences then others will fill that gap with either inferior reading experiences or with games with no reading component.
English children 7-11 report the frequency with which they read in 2005 and then again (second darker column) in 2009
The research also suggests that children are enjoying reading slightly less: English children 7-11 report how much they enjoy reading in 2005 and then again (second darker column) in 2009
When they do read, much of what they read is on screen: English children 7-11 report what they like reading in 2009. Red indicates material they are accessing on screen, blue is print: dark blue is books, and light blue is other printed material.
Our many blogs about great children’s books (most recently, our blog about books for summer), make it clear, I hope, that we value and applaud great writing for children in whatever form and want children to have access to it whether through libraries, bookshops, or supermarkets.
But the idea that technology and literature are somehow “opposites” or at least in opposition seems to me to be sloppy thinking.Technology’s just a tool and we can use it to open up conversations about reading, to facilitate access to reading, and to create new kinds of reading experiences. Packing to come for Brazil (and with the salutary memory of the number of books my family took on holiday still fresh), I just brought a paperback and my Kindle. The paperback I brought was The Observations and I tweeted about it, stimulating a Twitter exchange which involved the author, Jane Harris: technology enabled a conversation about reading, including providing me, the reader, with access to the author. Having finished the book, I decided I wanted to reread Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood… and, in a hotel room in Passo Fundo, I downloaded it in seconds: technology facilitated access to literature. And anyone doubting that an app like The Three Little Pigs is a reading experience might be convinced by this video showing a pre-schooler reading our Three Little Pigs app as a known text sent in to us by a parent.
George Dugdale, policy adviser at the National Literacy Trust, was recently quoted in the Glasgow Herald as saying,“In today’s digital age, we believe that all reading experiences must be embraced, whether children are reading text messages on their mobile phones, on-screen or a physical book. Our research has shown that children who regularly use technology, such as Facebook, actually have more positive attitudes towards reading and writing than those who don’t.”
In fact, Brazilian writer, Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna, who was on the Passo Fundo panel said smartphones and reading devices might, in a short time, achieve what Brazil has, over the years, failed to do: make a wide selection of reading widely available. He said that, while the government still hadn’t established enough libraries in all the decades of trying, perhaps electronic devices could be the libraries of the future.
The debate touched on another (largely artificial) polarisation too: between literacy and literature. I think that our apps are great, empowering, beautiful and carefully thought-through reading experiences – literature, if you like – but if I have to choose between literature and literacy (and, in this polarised debate in Passo Fundo, that’s exactly what I was forced to do), I choose literacy. In the end, what matters to me is less what children read, but that children read, whether it’s in print or on screen. Many children won’t grow up to read Alberto Manguel or his English-language equivalent, and that’s maybe regrettable, but not as regrettable as many children growing up unable or reluctant to read at all, given how essential literacy is to improved life chances. And you become a reader, quite simply, by practising reading.
“Jornada” means “journey”, and I’d be the first to say – in fact, I said at the end of my presentation – that we are all are just at the beginning of a journey when we are creating digital reading experiences. But we think what we are doing is worthwhile. We know, from blogs, emails and iTunes reviews, that many teachers and parents welcome the apps we’re creating, and that they are also being used by teachers and parents of children with special needs, such as children on the autistic spectrum, or find it difficult to learn to read.
We were thrilled to see that The Three Little Pigs app, published in French by our partner Gallimard is included in this week’s French edition of ELLE magazine.
Les 3 petit cochons has held the #1 spot in the Apps for Kids section on the App Store in France since late July. Now readers of French ELLE will find out that this app really does “enchant children and their parents!”
Tom and I are just back from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, having carried the quite-light-but-hugely-bulky Pip and Posy costumes (as seen in previous blog posts ) there.
Our visit to the Book Festival over this weekend was fleeting, but Nikalas and Tim were there earlier this week for what was, by all accounts, a stonking Mega Mash-up event while the Nosy Crow staffers were cleaning the loos and unpacking crates in the new office.
On Sunday, though, we had three great events, thanks at least in part to the redoubtable Book Festival staff, Janet, Sian and Hannah. The first sell-out event was a Pip and Posy event with Axel Scheffler (pictured above, signing the flip-chart drawings he created at the event) attended by Sarah Brown, last seen and written about by Kate at Cybermummy 11, and her sons.
We then had a Dinosaur Dig event with Penny Dale – also a sell-out – which included a draw-your-own stegosaurus (on roller skates) session.
Here’s Penny’s stegosaurus:
And here is a stegosaurus from a talented member of the audience:
Lastly, I did a session on apps as reading experiences, impeccably chaired by Nosy Crow author, Simon Puttock.
And then we went out to dinner. Scotland is another country: they do things differently there (I should know: I am a Scot, though I have lived in London for a long, long time), and it is really interesting to see the connections between individuals in different parts of the vibrant and committed Scottish children’s book community.
Tom and I were back on the London-bound train as the early morning sun shone on the coast of East Lothian… and I’m writing this in a bit of a rush as I prepare to leave for Brazil tomorrow.
It’s hard to believe it’s almost that time of year again… at least in the US (most of us in England and Wales are still happily on holiday for the next few weeks).
To celebrate the end of summer and help families in North America prepare for the start of the school year, our friends Carisa of Digital Storytime, Siva of Technology in (Spl) Education, and Patrick and Jeremy of the Teaching All Students blog are collaborating on a Back to School App Specials sale this weekend.
We’re happy to participate, along with more than 40 other app developers, by reducing the price of our The Three Little Pigs appby 50% from now through midnight on Sunday.
Who knew that a picture book app could get children to dance?! Well, we didn’t. But that was just one of the wonderful surprises at the shoot for our Cinderella app video trailer.
Cinderella is the second app in our series of 3D Fairy Tales, and we’re just a month away from its release. So while brothers Ed and Will Bryan are putting the finishing touches on the animations and coding, it was time to make our video.
All along, we’ve felt that our Cinderella app is enchanting and magical. And dare we say, it may even be a step up from our Three Little Pigs app! Ed’s illustrations are beautiful, the characters’ comments are insightful and funny, and we’ve incorporated new interactive features that truly involve children in the story. Kids can drag things across the kitchen to help Cinderella clean-up; they can catch mice in the garden for the Fairy Godmother to transform into the carriage’s coachman and horses; and they can even change the colour of Cinderella’s dress.
But we hadn’t expected the reaction we got from these girls – the second Cinderella and the Prince hit the dance floor at the ball, THEY were dancing too!
And we always thought reading was more of a sedentary activity…
Stay tuned for more news about the final weeks leading up to the launch of our Cinderella app.
We’ve got some exciting apps news to share. The French version of The Three Little Pigs app, published by our co-edition partner Gallimard Jeunesse, is currently enjoying the top placement on the Apps for Kids section of the App Store in France.
Congratulations to Gallimard on 3 petit cochons! We’re truly delighted with this success and look forward to many more in the months to come.
We all know how important it is to keep children reading during these lovely (well, not right now in the UK, but you get the idea) summer months. Plus, with family trips – long car rides, airport delays and crowded train stations – it’s good to have something portable and fun to keep the little ones occupied, right?
And while we can’t think of anything better than having our The Three Little Pigs app in your beachbag, we’d love to hear from you about what other children’s reads – apps or books – you’ll be taking on your travels or curling up with at home.
So, first of all, I’m sorry: I keep telling myself I will write up my impressions of The Children’s Media Conference (July 6 – 8) in a series of brilliantly pithy observations… and then the task sort of overwhelms me and work gets in the way, so I don’t. And I know that I have to do this blog post, so I don’t do any other blog posts. Hey ho.
Anyway…
This was my first visit to Sheffield, and Sheffield – well, the town centre at least – was sort of beautiful. The picture above is of the Winter Gardens, one of many newly constructed landmarks that were as lovely as they were full of people.
It was, therefore, my first visit to The Children’s Media Conference. The content and the delegate make-up of the conference skews towards children’s TV programme makers… and children’s TV is, on the basis of the sessions I attended, in at least as much of a state of transition as is children’s publishing.
I was there to speak at two sessions. First, I presented and participated in a workshop, So You Think You Need An App. Second, I presented in a tell-it-like-it-is session, A Tale of Three Apps, talking about Nosy Crow’s experience of building The Three Little Pigs from scratch, bringing together people with a publishing background and people with a games-making background.
With over forty sessions at the conference, there was a lot to take in.
Of course, I learned some some very specific things – did you know, for example, that only 4% of all video games made earn back their development costs and only 20% of video games that make it to retail earn back their earn back their development costs?
And I listened to some very inspiring people.
Lord Puttnam’s advocacy of a digital curriculum (as opposed to a digitised curriculum) in schools was authoritative and robust. He pointed out teacher Bev Evans’ site as an example of good practice. Here he is addressing a packed Memorial Hall audience:
Michael Acton Smith’s account of the rise of Moshi Monsters was compelling for anyone in the children’s creative industries, and particularly for me, as the founder of a start-up. Apart from anything else, it was also one of those very salutary stories of trying again, and plugging on, even in the face of disappointment, as you can almost see from the graph showing numbers of Moshi Monster users behind Michael Acton Smith in this (characteristically bad – I took it) photograph:
As Michael Acton Smith says, “Don’t be afraid to fail. Just fail fast.”
Michael Acton Smith’s view – and, of course, he would say that, wouldn’t he?… But it was persuasive when articulated by someone who’s got 50 million users – is that the next major children’s properties will originate not in books and not in film or TV but online.
So I learned specific things, and listened to inspiring people, but what is hard is to distill a few thoughts and ideas for the purpose of this blog from the huge mix of – sometimes conflicting – information and ideas in the presentations. Here’s my attempt to convey a few of the things I came away with:
CHILDRENARENOTBEINGTRANSFORMED BY TECHNOLOGY
Instead, children are incorporating technology into what they’ve always done – playing, learning about the world, connecting with friends, communicating. I think that the best session to illustrate this for me was Seven Myths About Young Children and Technology. Academics Joanna McPake and Lydia Plowman drew on household case studies to counter prevailing myths about pre-schoolers and technology. Here are just a few of them:
Children and technology shouldn’t mix
There’s no evidence that young children are harmed by exposure to technology, or that it impacts negatively on their learning or communication skills. Indeed, the researchers concluded that children are learning skills and are able to expand their knowledge of the world through technology.
Young children are “digital natives”
Children find technology, and especially traditional computers (this research predated iPads, of which, the researchers suggested, there would be few in the homes they studied), difficult, frustrating and sometimes overwhelming. They learned from adults and older children – there was nothing particularly instinctive in their interaction with technology.
Technology hinders social interaction
Children, even those who were, for example, exposed to a TV for most of their waking day, were able to tune out technology to play and have other kinds of interactions with the people around them. And often what they were doing with technology or what they were watching was itself the source of conversation and questions or a different kind of communication: the researchers spoke about children keeping in touch with relatives abroad via Skype, for example.
If it’s interactive, it must be educational
Joanna McPake and Lydia Plowman bemoaned the poor quality of many interactive products available to children that were just “uninspiring workbook stuff” on some kind of screen. I would, myself, completely agree with this!
You can find out more about this area of research here and here.
CHILDREN’S EXPECTATIONS OF TECHNOLOGYAREHIGH
One of my favourite sessions was Unlikely Visionaries – How Kids are Predicting and Designing the Future. Children were asked to draw something that a computer couldn’t do right now, but that they wanted it to be able to do. The results were remarkable. Children wanted a more human interface with computers – a “person” to whom they could ask questions rather than typing things onto a keyboard. They envisaged breaking down the boundaries between the real and the virtual – being able to enter the “computer world” or take things or people out of the “computer world”. They envisaged enhanced connection and communication with information and with other people, though, for example,the computer reading their minds or the computer facilitating mind-reading between people.
You can find out more about the project here and see some of the images here
STORYTELLINGREMAINSPARAMOUNT… BUTWHO IS THESTORYTELLER?
Many of the delegates at the conference – myself included – would say, I think, that we pride ourselves in telling and shaping stories for children. But there’s a tension between “the old way” of supplying fixed narratives for children (lstories that are as well-crafted as we can make them) and the opportunities (and, perhaps, the expectations) of digital consumers to make and shape their own narratives. Of course, we could go all Roland Barthes about this and say that any experience of even a fixed story belongs exclusively to the individual and differs every time that individual brings new experiences to it, but what I am talking about here is that books, and films, and TV shows are the same for everyone and stay the same every time, and that’s part of their appeal: the Gruffalo always has “terrible tusks and terrible claws/and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws”, because that’s how Julia Donaldson wrote it, and how every adult reader reads it out… to the point that many children can recite those words. The question is, will digital consumers want, increasingly, to create and personalise their own stories – a kind of limitless choose-your-own adventure, where you are the writer as well as the chooser. Personally, I think that there will be a role for technology products that enable children to influence stories, and even create and shape their own work, but there will also be an ongoing role for fixed stories (some of which will become loved and familiar, like The Gruffalo). As Lord Puttnam said, “Innovation is as much about creating new tools as it is about creating new content for distribution”… but, in the end, the reason that J K Rowling and Dreamworks are successful is that they tell a better story than their readers and viewers ever could.
Children’s creativity was brilliantly showcased in the session, Children as Content Creators. Sarah Cox, Director of the Tate Movie Project, described the process of crowd-sourcing the animated movie The Itch of the Golden Nit.
Blue Zoo’s Olive The Ostrich combined animation created by adults with animated images created by children was, and this demonstrated the commercial potential of children’s creative work (it’s on Nick Jr this autumn).
Muvizu showed some funny films (as the speaker said, “children have no appetite for anything sensible”, though he then went on to show some exceptions) made entirely by children, using Muvizu’s innovative animation software package
There’s a collection of blog posts on all the sessions here and new ones are still being posted today, I see.
There was also a good amount of live tweeting going on, and the Twitter hashtag is still being updated and is worth a browse, or you could look at this one of several Chirpstory version
For alternative individual accounts of the conference, you could try this from Ian Wareing of Vision+Media and this from Jeff Norton of Awesome Media and Entertainment.
Nosy Crow may be based in London, but we’re happy to join our friends across the pond in celebrating the 4th of July. After all, our award-winning app, The Three Little Pigs (and Nosy Crow itself for that matter!) is all about independent thinking and the industrious spirit! Just think about how the littlest pig built that brick house.
To celebrate, starting today and ending midnight on Monday, July 4, we are offering a 50% price drop on The Three Little Pigs app.
So whether you’re heading off for a long weekend, gathering with family and friends for a traditional July 4th BBQ, or planning to celebrate from afar (like me – the lone American at Nosy Crow) with some Martha Stewart -inspired patriotic cupcakes (above), download The Three Little Pigs app to your iPhone and iPad this weekend.
We are very excited to participate in a big app party taking place this weekend. The website Apps for Children With Special Needs, is hosting the party, which will take place on its Facebook page. The site will be giving away over 2,500 apps and 10 iPads to families of children with special needs. Nosy Crow has donated iPad and iPhone promo codes for our Three Little Pigs app. Gary James, the founder of a4cwsn.com, had this to say in the app party press release:
“This is part of our iPads4U campaign to help those who would otherwise find this technology unaffordable. There can be no doubt at all that touch tablet technology is opening up a new world of interactive communication for children with special needs, and we can’t wait to spread the word, but our campaign relies entirely on generous donations from sponsors and philanthropists and we have a long waiting list so any additional support we get would be great.”
The app party will also give away other prizes, including iPad covers, app bundles, gift cards, and a range of accessories donated by sponsors.
Parents of children with special needs who would like to participate in the App Party should go here for joining and participation instructions. Sponsors wishing to donate to the iPads4U campaign should contact Gary James at (Gary(at)a4cwsn(dot)com).
As a supporter of the event, we have heard from many parents of children with special needs who have left messages on the Nosy Crow Facebook page, and we are delighted to be participating in such a wonderful project.
The app party is taking place from 6-9pm tonight (Friday, June 10th), 9am – 12pm and 5pm to 8pm tomorrow (Saturday, June 11th), and from 9am on Sunday, June 12th.
Today, I did an event at the Hay Festival – for parents, authors, illustrators and teachers – with the title “Are Apps The New Picture Books?”
In short, I don’t think that they are: I think that the best apps are a different kind of engaging, personal, interactive, different-every-time reading experience from the picture book experience. I have said before that I think that it is absolutely right that we should be providing children with reading experiences wherever they are spending their time. (You can read a bit about our views in this blog post.)
At the event, I spoke about the importance of children reading for pleasure; about trends in children’s reading frequency, enjoyment and chosen reading material in the UK; about children as, in that rather tired phrase, “digital natives”; and about Nosy Crow’s experience of the process of making an app. But the one thing that I promised to include in a blog post was the list of 9 children’s “picture book” apps that I spoke about at the event. Here they are, with links, where available, to their YouTube trailers:
Schlaf Gut!
I said: “Simple, fit for purpose, rather lovely to look at.”
Wild About Books
I said “Great to see print books celebrated in app form, and this has a real liveliness about it.”
Miss Spider’s Tea Party
I said: “The grandmother of highly-produced apps. Almost more of a movie than a book, it looks lovely”.
Nursery Rhymes
I said: “Clear focus on one aspect – the parent reading to the child – but with very good reuse of old art that’s very attractively animated.”
Pop Out! Tale of Peter Rabbit
I said: “A more child-friendly use of the accelerometer than the better-known Alice For IPad app.”
Scruffy Kitty
I said: “As ever, Winged Chariot’s inclusion of multi-language versions within the one app is a stand-out feature.”
At the end of an event in Hay the author or presenter gets a rose. The picture above shows mine.
We’re delighted with the attention Apple has given The Three Little Pigs app lately! Yesterday two things happened:
The English language version of our first app made it to the homepage of the UK App Store. And, to top it off, our German language co-edition partner Carlsen emailed us to say that 3 Sweinchen iPad (the German version of the app) was selected as “App of the Week” in the App Stores in Germany and Austria.
Today’s a big day for all of us at Nosy Crow: our The Three Little Pigs app app is the Number 1 New and Noteworthy app in the UK App Store. It’s on the homepage! This is a real recognition of the app’s quality and innovation. The Three Little Pigs is Nosy Crow’s first app, and it has already been reviewed amazingly well, as you’ll see from the list of reviews in the Media Mentions section of our Media Kit page.
The Three Little Pigs has
appeared on the home pages of 12 continental European countries already it’s great to see it here in the UK App Store. Not only is the UK a really important market for our apps, but it is also “our” store: the one we buy our apps in ourselves.
The app also tops the “What’s Hot” list in book apps on the UK store:
Huge congratulations are due to Ed, who illustrated and animated the app; Will who did the engineering work; Robin Beanland who composed the music; Ali Muirden from Creative Content who worked with Lance England on the audio; the kids who did the voices, particularly Freya Wilson who provided the narration; and, in a last-but-far-from-least slot, Deb who managed the project and worked on the UK marketing.
We’ve got some exciting apps news to share. The German version of The Three Little Pigs app hit the App Store late last week, published by our co-edition partner, Carlsen and it’s already topping the charts.
Not only is Die drei kleinen Schweinchen listed in New and Notable, as of today, the iPad and iPhone versions are featured on the App Store homepage in both Germany and Austria. And the iPad version is currently the highest grossing paid app in the Books section (image above). Hooray!
There have also been several nice reviews in the German press and blogs. Here’s one example.
Congratulations to Carlsen on Die drei kleinen Schweinchen! We’re truly delighted with this successful start to our apps partnership.
Really, I think, because I was in Australia on publication date, we haven’t taken time this month to celebrate the distillations of children’s book goodness that are our May publications.
And May was a big month for us: for the first time, we were publishing more than one print “thing”.
Just to remind those of you who are interested in a kind of “previously on Nosy Crow” kind of way:
In January, we published Small Blue Thing, so the list launched with a single romantic fantasy novel.
Dinosaur Dig was inspired by Penny’s pre-school grandson Zachary’s love of all things mechanical. It’s a counting book with (very benign) dinosaurs, mechanical earth-moving equipment, a bit of suspense and a swimming pool finale. It caters quite shamelessly for the obsessions of many, many small boys. One of the things we thought that they would respond to is the carefully-realised detail of the dinosaurs and the diggers: you can see every claw and every piston. This was a book that came in to Nosy Crow from Penny’s agent just weeks after we’d started up. It was a book that we’d made an offer for within an hour of opening the envelope with Penny’s beautifully detailed sketches in it. Here’s a little flavour of what the book looks like inside:
And, to give you a sense of how Penny works, here’s a movie of Penny (re)drawing the cover artwork on an iPad:
She’s written about the process of creating the book for a boy audience in a guest post for the Book Trust blog.
Yesterday, the Nosy Crows had a bit of a lunch-time knees-up to celebrate (nearly) 15 months of existence and (nearly) 5 months of publishing. It was a non-birthday party, because we hadn’t been able to get ourselves organised enough to celebrate earlier. We’d love to have a photograph to show you what it was like, but our usual Nosy Crow photographic incompetence precludes this.
I wrote about our real birthday in our blog post of 22 February.
Adrian cooked, mainly Ottolenghi stuff as we have some vegetarians/borderline vegetarians in our group, and, besides, the recipes are great. I wheeled out the old pavlova trick. We ate like hogs, and staggered off into the early evening.
Because of how we work – three of us work from home, and some of us work part-time – and because we have as few formal meetings as possible, we don’t spend much time round a table, so it was great to have us all (well, nearly all: Deb’s in Rome but we couldn’t bear to postpone any further) in one room just to talk.
And it was a welcome moment to stop (because we hardly ever have time to stop) and think about what we’d achieved so far.
The first few are also published in Australia /New Zealand via Allen and Unwin, and many will be published in the second half of the year in the USA/Canada by Candlewick Press under the Nosy Crow imprint. So far, we’ve sold rights to translate these books to publishers in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Holland, Germany, France, Israel, Korea and China.
We have one app, The Three Little Pigs, available in the App Stores throughout the world, which has been named as one of the top 10 children’s book apps by the New York Times, and been extensively reviewed and praised by people who’ve bought it, bloggers specialising in apps and some of the increasing number of children’s book reviewers who are turning their attention to children’s reading experiences on the iPad (you can see most of the reviews on our The Three Little Pigs page of the Media Kit section of our website. The app will be published in German by Carlsen and in French by Gallimard Jeunesse.
We feel lucky to have pulled together the team we have – people with the best possible experience in fields as diverse as computer games coding, picture book design and children’s fiction commissioning (you can find out more about each of us in the Who Are We? section in the About As part of our website.
It’s not all cakes and ale: these are exceptionally tough times to be a print publisher, and the apps market is in its infancy, but, 15 months on, we reckon that we’ve made the best possible start and are toddling along nicely.
London has really been partying today, and many of you will have seen the coverage of the Royal Wedding.
We are very lucky to live in the middle of London, but it wasn’t really an option to stroll out and bag a great place this morning: so many people had planned for today very carefully and secured their views by turning up before it was light or even camping out for days (I saw the first tents on Wednesday morning).
I have two girls, who were more interested in event than they were readily willing to acknowledge, both being past the pink princess stage. We watched much of the lead-up and the ceremony on TV. They liked the trees and the music (top marks to timpani man), and the dress more than passed muster even with the sartorially-critical child. Then, in the lull before the balcony appearance, my older child said she thought we ought to go out and see what was happening on the ground. We arrived at the south side of Buckingham Palace about ten minutes before the wedding party came out onto the balcony. I can’t say the view was great, but I was able to catch sight of them, and, by lifting up older child (something I don’t do often these days), she was able to see them too, even if they did look like dressed-up ants at that distance. What was amazing was to be out in the sun and part of a crowd of a million people (that’s what the BBC is estimating) all of whom seemed to be in a good mood. There were British people and non-Brits, people in wheelchairs and babies in buggies and slings, couples and families with grandparents and kids, people in sensible jeans and tee-shirts and people in wigs and wedding dresses.
We came home and made chocolate eclairs for people who were dropping by the house on their way out of London – the first time I’d made choux pastry since I was a taught domestic science at school. They are, in fact, ridiculously easy to make, and I say that as someone who can hardly cook at all.
Anyway, what this post is really about is another fairy tale altogether, so, if you’ve had your fill of princesses, it’s the turn of pigs – and, specifically, our Three Little Pigs app, which has had the most fantastic reviews online and in the app store and of which we’re very proud.
Just because we’re feeling generous, we’re giving away ten copies of our Three Little Pigs app for the iPad and ten copies for the iPhone/iPod touch.
Here’s how to enter. Answer one of these questions in the comments field below. We will pick the best answers and award promo codes so the winners can download the app.
1. Who is your favourite character in the story of The Three Little Pigs and why?
2. What’s your favourite memory of reading The Three Little Pigs either as a child, or to your own children (or grandchildren, nephews, nieces, neighbours)
3. Why do you you think your children (or grandchildren, nieces, nephews, neighbours…) will like this app?
Please be sure to tell us whether you’d like an iPad or iPhone version of the app in your response.
The contest is running now, and we’ll close it to entries at runs now, 6.00pm UK time, 1.00pm EST on Saturday 30th April.
We’re really pleased to be featured in the New and Noteworthy category in 12 Continental European iPad App Stores at the moment. That, and the great review coverage we’ve had, has made us feel all spring-like and expansive, so we’ve decided to price-promote our Three Little Pigs app in app stores throughout the world for one week. Here’s the link.
Who knows, really, what price a really good iPad app should be? This is an evolving market. While there aren’t additional costs-per-unit as there are for books, we know how much work has gone into this app, how much time a child can spend with it and how much it rewards exploration.
As Children’s Technology Review, who awarded The Three Little Pigs an Editor’s Choice Award, said, when confirming, as many reviewers have, that we’ve priced the app appropriately:
“So is it worth $8 — easily the cost of a print edition? We think so, if you’re in search of a premium children’s ebook.”
We stand by our original pricing decisions (and the app will go back to the original prices in a week), but it will be interesting, too, to see how price-sensitive apps are – in particular, whether 5 euros represents any kind of barrier in eurozone countries (where you’d find many of the App Stores in which we’re New and Noteworthy).
The iPhone and iPod touch version are still at the same – cheaper – price. You can find them here.
Oh, and if you know the app already, and rate it and would like to vote for it as one of the Best Apps for Children (it’s called The Three Little Pigs ebook, and has, at the time of writing, a looooong way to go, I’m afraid!) do please click here
What great timing! Kate’s on a business trip in the US this week and coincidentally Nosy Crow and our Three Little Pigs app was mentioned in a segment about moms and smartphones on the CBS Early Show this morning.
The story talked about how moms are increasingly using smartphones to manage their family’s activities. The downside, smartphone addiction. The upside, greater productivity, organization and cool apps for kids.
The Bologna Book Fair is many things, but the main thing it is is a market for rights and co-edition selling.
As a publisher, you have a grant of rights from an author and an illustrator, including the right to publish their work as a book. Sometimes – always if you’re Nosy Crow – you have rights that you do not want to use yourself, but are able to sell to someone else. So Nosy Crow doesn’t itself publish in Finnish, but we know several Finnish publishers who like the books we do and who would like to publish them in Finnish. So we negotiate a deal with them, and the author/illustrator gets a share of the money we make when we sell the rights.
If you are publishing illustrated books – and over half of Nosy Crow’s list is illustrated in full-colour – there is another element to rights selling: building a co-edition run. There are certain costs associated with printing a book which are the same whether you print one copy or 100,000 copies, and it makes sense to spread those costs over as many books as possible. So the aim of the game is to say to the Finnish publisher that not only will you sell them the rights to publish the book in Finnish, but you will print the books for them in Finnish too.
This makes perfect sense, because the pictures in, for example, a picture book are printed first, and then the text of the picture book is printed on top of the pictures, so you can print a whole quantity of pictures and then put the UK text on a quarter of that quantity, the French text on a quarter of them, the German text on a quarter of them, and, let’s say, the Finnish text on a quarter of them (of course, the quantity doesn’t divide into quarters because different language markets are of different sizes – Germany’s bigger than Finland – but you get the idea). Each country’s version of the book is called a co-edition.
So, in the course of the fair, two of us Nosy Crows – Adrian and me – were hard at it selling for three-and-a-half days. Between us, we had 90 pre-booked appointments with 90 different publishers from 20 countries… and a few appointments with film companies and other people too.
We were able to finalise a number of rights deals on books that had been in discussion in the course of the weeks leading up to the fair, and we have lots of interest to follow up for newer books that we had been working on in the weeks and months before the book fair that we’ll publish in 2012.
It’s bizarre to think that a queue for the loo (and the queue for the women’s loos at Bologna is always long) might make the difference between having an appointment that lasts 30 minutes and one that lasts 20 minutes… and that therefore, because you lost 10 minutes of an appointment, you might fail to make a deal that would have worked for both of you.
The skill of selling is, therefore, to cut to the chase and not waste time talking about books – however much you love them yourself – that are failing to ignite the enthusiasm of the person opposite you.
Of course, the longer you’ve been selling rights, the better you know markets, publishing companies within those markets and individuals within those publishing companies, so it’s easier to know what books to show to whom. And it’s certainly the case that there are people that I meet at fairs that I would count as friends, with whom I have been talking about children’s books for almost a quarter of a century. There are people whose reaction I can predict before I show them a book, and many people with whose own tastes and views of publishing I feel real affinity, despite the fact that we operate in different companies and countries. (And since we are nothing if not honest in this blog, there are people I have absolutely failed to connect with over years of book fair meetings. It’s a joy of being an independent company that I just don’t book an appointment to see them any more…)
Yes, we’ve been talking about apps on our blog a lot this week, but there’s simply been a lot to say. Here’s something for those of you who don’t yet have a copy of The Three Little Pigs app.
The site Cool Mom Tech is running a contest with an entry deadline of midnight tonight, giving away copies of The Three Little Pigs app, for both the iPad and the iPhone. Here’s how Cool Mom Tech says you can enter:
Just email us at contests@coolmomtech.com by midnight Friday April 1 (EST) with 3 PIGSIPHONEor 3 PIGSIPAD in the subject (pick one please!). Just tell us how old your kids are and why they’d like it. We’ll draw four winners at random. Good luck!
“When my children discovered the Three Little Pigs storybook app on a friend’s iPad, I had absolutely zero doubt in my mind that we’d be running home to purchase it that very night. In a word, this app is masterful. Or to use more words, it’s charming, it’s humorous, and darn it, where were iPads when I was a kid?”
“Kids will have a ball when they flick the pigs to make them jump and spin, tilt the device to see more of the scene, tap the pigs to help them build their houses and so much more! There are lots of hidden surprises like spiders and a sweet little rabbit who wants to be friends with the pigs. You can download this app… and keep your little techno-savvy munchkins entertained as they become immersed in this classic tale for the digital generation.”
What goes into developing a great children’s storybook app? A life-long fascination with computers and gaming technology, that’s what! Recently I talked to Will Bryan (photo of his studio above) about his experience developing The Three Little Pigs. Will’s background is in video games and before joining Nosy Crow as Head of Apps Development – Engineering, he spent 13 years working for Nintendo and Microsoft on titles such as Banjo-Tooie and Viva Piñata.
What was your first computer?
I grew up around computers and the first one I remember having was the Sinclair ZX81. It was customised with a proper push-button keyboard rather than the membrane one they came with. We soon moved on to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Atari ST and beyond. About five years ago I went onto the Internet and tracked down some of these old machines.
What kind of work have you done in the past?
I’ve built websites, developed several video games, and for the last couple of years I’ve been looking into original ideas for Xbox 360 Kinect by day and original ideas for iPhone by night, which is how I came to be at Nosy Crow.
Why have you gone from games to making apps?
Game development has become a bit of a monster. It’s no longer possible for an individual on a game team to have a nice little idea, build it, polish it and have everybody smiling about it on the same day. App development scales all that back. Individuals can have an idea for an app and ship it within a month if they want. Nosy Crow has eleven employees and not all of them are involved in the app side of the business. Those of us that are can sit around a small table and just get on with it. Ideas shared, suggestions thrown about, decisions made.
How do you and your brother Ed (Nosy Crow’s Head of Apps Development – Creative) work together to create an app?
Like a well oiled machine – if only that were true! We’ve been working together for more than 25 years, so we are starting to get the hang of it. My work usually consists of finding how we take an idea and make it a reality. Ed’s much better at honing the fit and finish of an idea once it’s working. He provided a lot of feedback on The Three Little Pigs app features, like flicking the characters. We end up exchanging emails with made up words in them: “Are they flicky enough yet?” “Is the pingyness too much?” If this goes on too long we end up looking at things together and demonstrating issues.
How do you work with illustrators?
It’s a very collaborative process. Since this is a new format, there’s a lot of learning for everyone involved. I’ve found that the quicker we prototype a scene or a character that we can look at and play with, the better. In The Three Little Pigs, we took the original 2d illustrations and arranged them in a 3d model, a bit like a puppet theatre. Each illustration had a place on the stage and we could look around the stage to reveal different things. The accelerometer on the iPad and iPhone allowed us to show how a 2d illustration could be made into so much more.
On the Animal SnApp series we’re working closely with Nikalas and Tim on how to animate their artwork for the app. Their illustration style is very different to that of The Three Little Pigs. As part of our discussions, Nikalas and Tim created a brief video clip to demonstrate how the animation should work. On my side, I expect we’ll produce a bunch of very small prototypes for this project as we work out the best way to proceed.
What was the best part of making The Three Little Pigs?
I always like the last few weeks or months of a project the best. You reach a point where you are on the home straight, the product is mostly complete and you’re busy polishing everything to make it the best it can be. Working with Robin on the music was great. He was keen to make some of the music interactive, which you can hear working in Scene 3 where the pigs first leave home: each pig has his or her own instrument that fades into the music when tapped. It’s detail like this that makes me very proud of The Three Little Pigs.
What was the biggest challenge?
There’s always a worry about whether it’ll all come together on time. The Three Little Pigs is my first iPad/iPhone/iPod touch app and although it’s “just software” I don’t have another engineer sitting across the office from me to talk through problems. Fortunately, over the years I’ve become quite good at figuring things out for both myself and others. Many problems have been solved away from the computer and at the most unexpected moments.
You must see lots of apps. Can you tell us about your favourite ones?
It’s funny, every few weeks we gather together at the Crow’s Nest to discuss projects and the table fills up with iPads, iPhones and iPod touches. I can always tell which devices are mine as I seem to have far fewer apps installed than anyone else. I’ve got a little puzzle game on my iPhone called Glow Puzzle that I continue to enjoy. I like it because I can take as long as I like to study the puzzle before making a move. I’m still waiting for the original Lemmings games to appear on the App Store. I’d be first in line to download them!
What advice would you give to children interested in making their own apps, or computer games?
I recommend looking at other people’s apps or games and begin to question how they work. What happens when you press a button or tap a character? What does a character do if you don’t do anything? If you start to break apps down, they’re often a lot less complicated than they first appear. Software developers are very good at using tricks to make things look cleverer than they really are. Plenty of smoke and mirrors!
What are you working on now?
Our next app is another 3D fairy tale: Cinderella. I’ll be building upon the code I created for The Three Little Pigs but there will also be several new features and some very cool interactive surprises. With the iPad2, I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do to make our storybook apps even more exciting for children.
“Once upon a time (five years ago), e-books for children came on shiny CD-ROMs that cost $40, plus a few dollars for sales tax. Today’s children’s e-books cost just that sales tax. All you need is a $500 iPad.
Just a fad, you say? Perhaps, but recent e-books for Apple’s iPad indicate that the professionals have arrived in the app stores. These e-books can sound out difficult words and move you with illustrations that change based on the tilt of the screen. Today’s children can actually blow the little pig’s house down, by way of the iPad’s microphone.
As in any emerging medium, quality varies — in this case, widely. There are thousands of e-books to wade through, and some are not much more than scanned pages. Here are 10 noteworthy exceptions, ranked by age, with some honorable mentions….
The Three Little Pigs($8) is one of the best renditions of the classic story in the app store. Besides excellent graphics and sounds, you get to help the wolf blow down the houses by way of the iPad’s microphone. 4-up.”
We’ve been cooking up a deal on our apps for a while, and today we announced that Carlsen will be publishing in German, and Gallimard Jeunesse will be publishing in French, a full range of Nosy Crow’s story book apps, beginning with our The Three Little Pigs app. The picture shows Carlsen’s Klaus Humann (right) and Frank Kuehne (left) with Kate, signing the agreement on the Nosy Crow stand today.
This is really great for Nosy Crow, not least because Carlsen and Gallimard are best-in-class children’s book publishers with real vision in the area of digital publishing, so they were natural partners for this digital publishing adventure. Many app publishers have chosen to bundle languages into one app, but we really believe that there are business model advantages in a digital version of “co-edition” publishing. It means that everyone gets a great app while managing their financial risk. Just as importantly, the partner publishers bring their publishing skills to create the best possible foreign-language version that will appeal to parents and children in their own language. And we know that they can provide the kind of publicity and connection with people who might want to buy them that will the apps really visible – and successful – in their own countries.”
Klaus Humann who’s the Publisher of Carlsen Germany, says:
“The question is: how to entertain the next generation of kids? Books will still play the most important part, but other media will fascinate girls and boys alike. The partnership between Carlsen Germany and Nosy Crow is an important new element in the strategic development of our digital publishing that we have started very successfully with our Pixi and Connie apps. There are only a few publishers who have the ideas and the vision for the years to come, so we are happy to co-operate with a partner whose capacity in this innovative field is outstanding and who shares our sense of quality as much as our spirit of publishing adventure.”
Hedwige Pasquet who’s President of Gallimard Jeunesse, says:
“We are excited to be able to add to our apps publishing programme through this collaboration with the talented and imaginative team at Nosy Crow. Like us, they are interested in bringing book publishing skills to reinvent children’s reading experience for the digital age. They have developed not only the best picture book app ever published, but have re-defined what a children’s storybook app can be, demonstrating the full potential of this new medium. These apps combine top quality with rich inventiveness: best-in-class for sure – in fact, in a class of their own!”
Today, Deb and I went to the first Tools of Change conference at Bologna. Tools of Change is a sequence of conferences about publishing in the digital age, but today’s was the first to focus exclusively on children’s books.
Organised, at least in part, by Neal Hoskins of Winged Chariot, who couldn’t be more passionate in his conviction about the importance of apps as a new form of story-telling for children, it was a 200+ person conference with delegates from 27 countries… and a great success.
Deb spoke eloquently about the interactivity that’s at the heart of our apps development. She spoke about the interactivity that is at the heart of the content – we want to creat apps that children want to read, explore and play with. She spoke about the interactivity that is the basis of how we create an app, pulling together original text, audio, music, illustration, animation and coding into a whole in a way that involves lots of collaboration. She spoke about the interactivity that we have with readers and buyers of the app, as the digital world provides us ways of finding out – and acting upon – what our customers think of what we’re doing. She was mobbed by publishers at the end of the panel discussion in which she took part, all keen to find out more about what we do and how we do it.
And, at the very beginnning of the conference, I delivered the first keynote address. Frankly, this was playing against type: I could bore for Britain about Nosy Crow and what we believe is important, but I thought that the first keynote should sort of sketch out the landscape that the rest of the conference might cover. Armed only with data from Book Marketing Limited and The Futures Company, together with a few opinions, I talked about, on the one hand, digital selling and marketing of print books and of eBooks and other reading experiences; and, on the other hand. about digital products. First I talked about what was happening now in those two areas, and then I looked at what might happen in the future.
The opportunities for digital selling and marketing are already huge. One in four books – and one in five children’s books – in the UK is sold via an internet-only retailer (and Amazon is much the largest of these) so digital selling is a real and growing fact of life. Websites, electronic marketing and social media have opened up a way for publishers, who have traditionally “handed off” relationships with readers and book-buyers to retailers, to communicate directly with their consumers in a two-way conversation, and we have seen the development of the “consumer critic” – blog and rate-and-review website-enabled people whose opinion is trusted by other consumers, perhaps more than they trust the voice of the professional critic.
The opportunities for digital selling and marketing will, I think, only grow in future, and I quoted Aaron Miller of Bookglutton:
“Social publishing is the natural evolution of publishing as a business. It encompasses the web and all new distribution platforms including the way people read and discover on them… Social publishing involves a deep interest in, and study of, what happens to a text after it’s disseminated – how readers interact with it, how they share it, how they copy it, how they talk about it.”
The market for digital product is still evolving. Ebooks (and I’m not including apps here) accounted for only 1.26% of the UK book market by volume in 2010 and 0.4% of the UK children’s book market in the same year.
Nevertheless, the rate of adoption of digital reading is accelerating: in January 2010, just 3% of US book-buyers had bought a digital book, but by January 2011, that figure was 13%. And where the US leads, I think, the rest of the world will follow. Looking ahead, one concern is the consumer expectation that digital product should be cheap, or, indeed, free. As Lyle Undercoffler of Disney said, “Free is the four-letter word of digital publishing – the word that we don’t want to hear.” Another concern are the ongoing challenges to copyright. Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog post welcoming England’s Digital Economy Bill, and it now seems perfectly possible that the current government may not implement this protection of creators’ rights. Whether or not this Bill represents exactly the right way to protect the rights of creators is less important to this post today than the fact that this challenge to copyright may be in line with consumer expectations that they should be able to interact with, personalise and change the things that they read in ways that suit them. I quoted Adam Penenberg:
“Instead of stagnant words on a page we will layer video throughout the text, add photos, hyperlink material, engage social networks of readers who will add their own videos, photos, and wikified information so that these multimedia books become living, breathing, works of art.”
When I think about the impact of the digital world on publishing, I think of this quote from the twentieth-century economist Joseph Schumpeter:
“A railroad through new country upsets all conditions of location, all cost calculations, all production functions within its radius of influence and hardly any ways of doing things which have seemed optimal before remain so afterwards.”
The role of the publisher is changing. If there is this thing that we call “content” – ideas, words, images, audio, video, animation – and there is a reader, and there is a process for getting that content to the reader, we need to think strategically about what our role in that process is. We don’t, as publishers, have any kind of right to play a part in that process. We have to carve out our place in the process, by bringing to it something that we can do better than anyone else.
No-one owes us publishers lunch. We have to earn it.
This is big bananas for us, and we have been working flat-out to get ready for it.
It is one of two weeks in the year – the other is the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, but Bologna’s the big one – when we meet the non-UK publishers we’ll do business with for the rest of the year. At Bologna, we have just 30 minutes (20 if they have to queue for the loo before the appointment) to impress a foreign publisher with our books. The aim of the game is to sell, or at least interest them in buying, the right to publish our books in translation.
For the last few months, Anne-Marie’s been putting together the schedule of selling appointments for me and for Adrian. We have appointments every half-hour from 9.00am to 5.30pm without breaks for three-and-a-half days.
For the last month, since the launch of The Three Little Pigs app, Ed and Will have been working with Deb on our next app in the 3D Fairy Tale series, Cinderella.
For the last month, too, Imogen’s been collecting together final print and freight prices for books of many different sizes and kinds – board books and pop-up books and picture books, and working out how much we have to sell them for in order to stay in business. This is a hard task: we always want our books to be the best they can be – to have the heaviest paper, the most spectacular pop-ups the most unusual touch-and-feels – and it’s tough to compromise!
For the past few weeks we’ve been receiving artwork from illustrators. Some of it arrived in time for us to proof it, but most of it, because we are still new and building our list and publishing sooner after artwork delivery than is ideal, did not, so we’ve had to make dummies using photocopies of the art stuck into blank books. This is an unbelievably time-consuming, tricky, painstaking and monotonous task, and Steph and Nia, in addition to doing lots of last-minute designing, have been working on this tirelessly with Camilla. Nia finished the very last one at 10.30pm yesterday evening.
And for the past few weeks we’ve also been pulling together words and pictures to add to the books section of our website to announce some of the books we’ll be taking to Bologna, including The Grunts, the acquisition of which we announced to a great response on Wednesday.
For the past day or so, we’ve had a steady stream of meetings with people who are in the UK before they go to the book fair – our Japanese agent, Noriko Hasagawa, for example – who I mentioned in a recent post – and Liz Bray from our Australian distributors, Allen and Unwin. They have gamely picked their way through the chaos of the office, and brushed scraps of paper and fur-fabric (for touch-and-feel books) from chairs before sitting down at a table that is slightly sticky with glue.
For the past day or so, too, I have finally been getting down to working on the slides for the first Tools of Change Conference to happen in Bologna, at which I am – eek! – the first keynote speaker on Sunday.
And yesterday, as if we didn’t have enough to do, we bought (or at least confirmed the deals on) three picture book texts, illustrations for two picture books and a debut novel.
This is a series of four books by award-winning author Philip Ardagh. The books, which feature the eponymous and disgusting Grunt family, will be illustrated in black and white by Axel Scheffler and the first book, The Grunts in Trouble, will be published in May 2012.
Philip makes me laugh – as a person and as an author. Always has done, always will. His combination of professionalism and irreverence make him the perfect Nosy Crow author, and we are pleased and flattered that he’s chosen to publish with us. Pairing him with Axel Scheffler is going to make this an utterly irresistible series for children of 9 and up.
Philip says:
“I’m delighted that The Grunts, my latest series of (very silly) novels, is to be published by Nosy Crow with the crow so fresh from the egg, and still slightly yolky. For Axel Scheffler to have agreed to illustrate it — without my having to resort to threats of any kind — is the real icing on the metaphorical cake. I very much look forward to working with him, Kate Wilson, and the rest of the Nosy Crow team on what I hope will be some of my most outrageous books to date. These are exciting times! FUN just doesn’t express it.
And Axel says:
“It’s been several years since I’ve illustrated fiction, but there was an anarchy and humour in the outrageous Grunt characters that really appealed to me, and I look forward to working with Philip on his series with Nosy Crow.”
This is the most high-profile of several recent great fiction acquisitions, including a series of four titles by best-seller Holly Webb, that make it clear how serious Nosy Crow is about fiction publishing as well as full-colour publishing. We’ve got world rights in all languages for all of them, so there’ll be lots to talk about at the Bologna Book Fair next week.
Today, as well as announcing this acquisition, we have added our 2012 titles to the Books section of our website. We will publish 25 new titles this year, and at least 35 next year. This year we’ll launch 5 apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch and we’re planning to make at least 8 new apps in 2012.
It’s funny to think that we didn’t include music in our initial plans for The Three Little Pigs. Back then, we didn’t know how much it would underscore the story’s drama and the characters’ personalities. Thanks to Robin Beanland, now Three Little Pigs app enthusiasts everywhere are humming along as they read. By day, Robin works in the games industry creating audio and composing music for Rare Ltd as their audio director. In his spare time, he’s the man behind the music of The Three Little Pigs app. We thought you might like to know more.
What sort of work have you done in the past? Have you ever made music for an app?
I’ve been composing music for video games for the past 17 years. Prior to that I wrote music for TV with a smattering of session work on various albums and library CDs. I can honestly say this is the first children’s book I’ve written music for.
How did you get involved with The Three Little Pigs app?
Ed Bryan called me just before Christmas and asked if I would be interested in writing some music for a project he was working on. If memory serves correctly, I think I replied something along the lines of “I thought you’d never ask.” ☺
Did you use real instruments to make the music or is it digitally generated?
I played a bit of trumpet and harmonica, the rest of the score was generated using sampled versions of traditional orchestral instruments.
What sort of feelings were you trying to evoke with the music?
The first thing I wanted to do was to write a tune that was upbeat, positive and friendly. I wanted the tune to allow me to introduce the personalities of the three main characters. This is the first piece of music you hear on the title screen of the app and it’s one of the main themes that runs throughout.
Next I focused on the wolf. I didn’t want anything too scary but I still wanted the music to be ever so slightly menacing. I wanted it to be something that I could have fun with. I think this comes across in the scenes where the wolf is chasing the pigs down the road and at the climax of the story where I use ‘laughing’ woodwinds and wah trumpet.
Why did you make each character have unique music?
I wanted to use the music as a tool for reinforcing each character’s personality. I chose certain instruments to help make that happen. So you have whistle, piccolo and banjo for the little pigs and contra bassoon and bass clarinet for the wolf. I think listening to Peter and the Wolf as a child probably influenced my decisions about which instruments to use for each of the characters in The Three Little Pigs.
What was the most challenging thing about working on this project?
To be honest the biggest challenge was the amount of time I had to get the music written! The project fell around the Christmas period and an unusually busy January. I did have a nice view from the studio window to inspire me though.
What was the most fulfilling part of working on this app?
For me it was the interactive music. I wanted the music to change as children tapped on different parts of the screen and on the characters. When I initially suggested this to Will he said we didn’t have time to implement it. But within hours I got an email from him saying “Actually I think we can do it!” A few days later Ed and Will popped round with the latest version of the app and Will had worked his magic. I remember giggling as he tapped the pigs and we heard their individual melodies fade up. It was brilliant!
On Tuesday evening, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row broadcast an interview with me; with Henry Volans of Faber Digital; with a representative of new French company, Byook and with Philip Jones from The Bookseller. We were talking about enhanced ebooks and apps. And yesterday, Kirkus online published a (starred) review of The Three Little Pigs. A week or so ago, the Times Online blog, School Gate included The Three Little Pigs in a round-up of apps (it’s behind the paywall but you can see it here).
It’s great – really great – to have this coverage… but so far, though we’ve had a lot of really excellent online review coverage from bloggers and app specialist sites for The Three Little Pigs app, it strikes us – and fellow app developers certainly seem to agree – that that it’s a challenge to get reviews or features from established book critics in the traditional media (by which I mean established print newspapers and magazines and broadcasters) about apps and enhanced ebooks. From our perspective, this seems to be particularly true for one of the most exciting areas of digital publishing: children’s storybooks.
This is perhaps because the market, and therefore the readership, for apps and enhanced ebooks is in its infancy, and so, therefore, is the market and readership for reviews of apps and enhanced ebooks. But we think it’s also perhaps because there are no established criteria for judging an app or an enhanced ebook, and credible critics with deep experience in judging children’s stories have yet to emerge.
The truth is that no-one’s an expert in this rapidly-evolving area, but here are some questions that we ask ourselves when we are judging a story book app:
Does it have child-appeal?
Why is this story presented as an app, rather than as a printed book?
How easy is the app to understand and navigate?
Is the language, art and interactivity age-appropriate?
How have the creators used the features of the devices to tell the story in a new and engaging way?
How have the creators balanced the narrative thread of the book against the opportunities for interactivity?
Has the interactivity been woven into the story in a meaningful way that enhances the story?
Frankly, we are more than grateful for any coverage and feedback that we can get, wherever it comes from. The App Store’s rate and review section offers an opportunity for us to hear back from real readers, and we also offer the opportunity within the app itself for readers to contact us to tell us what they think.
Less than a year on from the launch of the iPad, and only 18 months on from Winged Chariot’s launch of the first picture book for iPad, this evaluation and these conversations are only just beginning.
Now iPhone and iPod touch owners can experience our highly-acclaimed fully-animated, interactive version of The Three Little Pigs fairy tale app. We’ve spent the past two weeks making sure it looks and works just as well on small screen iOS devices as it does on the iPad.
For more details, including a video, click here
You can click on the App Store logo to download it:
And once you’ve got the app, be sure to try:
Flicking the characters to make them jump, spin and speak
Blowing on the screen to help blow down the pigs’ houses
Helping the pigs build each of their houses
Tilting the screen to reveal more of the scene and to find hidden characters
Chasing the pigs down the road in the wolf’s van
Dropping the wolf down the chimney and celebrating with the pigs
We’ve got very cheering videos of a pair of two year-olds reading each of the books in the “extras” tab for each book.
These books have simple rhyming texts and really sturdy mechanisms and are really great for children from 18 months to 3.
We’ve got some to send to reviewers and bloggers. So, if toddler books float your boat, let us know: contact us on hello@nosycrow.com with the subject line, Reviewing Bizzy Bear.
And if you are in East London today (4 March), you could come to our Bizzy Bear event at 11.30am for 45 minutes of songs, stories and colouring at the Discover Centre’sBig Write festival, where we’re doing other events, too:
We are proud members of Moms With Apps, a collaborative group of family-friendly developers around the world who create quality apps for kids and families. MWA is a great network for us as app developers and now it’s a great resource for us as parents too.
With thousands of apps in iTunes it’s hard to find the gems. Thanks to Moms With Apps, now there’s an app for that! The Moms With Apps Mobile App is free and includes a directory of 600+ child-friendly apps. New apps are added all the time. You can search by categories such as music, science, reading and math, add them to a wish list, and share with friends. It’s free, organized, and an awesome resource.
For those who don’t know, World Book Day is run as a charity by the UK book industry to celebrate reading and to increase children’s access to books. It’s celebrated throughout the UK and Ireland, particularly by children (though, this year, there’s World Book Night for grown-ups).
At Nosy Crow we’re big supporters of World Book Day – I’m on the World Book Day Executive Committee. This year we are celebrating digital storytelling too. For 24 hours, beginning at midnight tonight and ending at midnight 3 March, our Three Little Pigs app for iPad will be available for £1.19 ($1.99 in the US and 1.59 Euros). The app’s normal price is £4.99 ($7.99 in the US and 5.99 Euros).
The app has received the most extraordinary reviews. Just this afternoon, The Times’ School Gate blog (@schoolgate on Twitter) called The Three Little Pigs “fresh and new. . . our favourite app of all” in their round up of Top Children’s iPad apps. You can read the full review here.
Every year on World Book Day children dress up as their favourite character. Here in the office we are proud parents to children going to school tomorrow as Ruby the Red Fairy, the witch from Axel Scheffler’sRoom on the Broom, Pippi Longstocking, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz... and, in a tribute to the BBC adaptation: Miss Flyte from Bleak House, (complete with clip-on birds.) Children are given £1 vouchers to take to bookshops to exchange for books, and there’s a range of special World Book Day £1 books to ensure that no-one’s left out. The brilliant Philip Reeve is even coming into my children’s school to talk about books, writing and reading.
We recently sat down with actress Freya Wilson, 11, to discuss her role in creating The Three Little Pigs app. Freya also plays the part of Princess Elizabeth in the Oscar-nominated movie The King’s Speech. And, quite the professional, she answered the phone only once during our interview: a call to discuss a homework assignment.
Which character or voices do you perform in the Three Little Pigs app?
I narrated the story and I did the bit parts of Mr. Pig and the Spider.
What was it like in the recording studio? Did you have to do multiple takes to get it just right, or was it pretty easy?
It was hard work! We spent several days in the studio over the course of a few months. We started the day warming up our voices by doing tongue-twisters like “Popocatapetl, copper-plated kettle” to get going. Each of us went individually into the recording room, which has a sound-proof glass wall. When we were in there we could hear the comments of Ali (Muirden, voice audio expert) and Deb through earphones. We did lots of takes because we had to try different ways of saying the lines – sometimes whiny, sometimes scared, sometimes less expressive. We had to stay in character, which was hard because we’re not used to being fairy tale characters! We had to remember to speak the parts as though we were reading the story to a child who was younger than us.
What is it like to hear your voice coming out of the mouth of the characters when you use the app?
I thought it would be embarrassing to hear my voice coming out of a spider and a pig, but it’s not! I don’t think it sounds very much like me. I think I sound younger. You know, I think the Three Little Pigs is an incredibly interactive app – there’s lots for children to do – and it’s been really cool to see it come together from the script to the finished thing.
Do you have any memories of reading The Three Little Pigs or other fairy tales when you were little?
Mum used to read me fairy tales and also other books. I remember reading The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig which is a parody of the real The Three Little Pigs story. I remember reading the Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson a lot.
You recently played the part of Princess Elizabeth in the film The King’s Speech. How did your experience recording the app compare to working on a film?
Well, when I was being filmed in The King’s Speech I spent quite a lot of time in hair and make-up and we had very good food at lunchtime. For The Three Little Pigs I just wore jeans and we only got sandwiches. But in other ways it was similar: for both we had to spend a long time waiting for takes and needed to be very thorough and say the lines again and again in a different ways. In both, we were very serious, but also silly.
What’s next for you? More movies? Voice-overs?
I’m going to be the narrator and maybe other parts in the next Nosy Crow fairy tale app which is Cinderella. I really want to be an ugly sister, though. I have recently filmed a short film called Elevator Operator where I get to play the part of a girl with a hearing-aid who can’t speak.
If you could write a children’s book or app, what would it be about?
I would write something about an imaginary land or I’d write historical fiction. I do a lot of writing now, mainly poetry and play scripts.
What do you do in your free time?
I like to read and play the guitar and talk to my friends. No sport – never, never!
How did you get into acting?
A casting agent came to an after-school drama club I went to. I was sent to an audition for an HBO series called Game of Thrones, and I think I got quite far. Then my parents decided it wasn’t really right for me to act in something I wouldn’t be allowed to watch because some bits aren’t suitable for children. But this led to my getting an agent.
How did you get the part in the King’s Speech?
My agent put me forward for an audition, I think. I listened to clips of speeches made by Princess Elizabeth beforehand. I was called back three times and finally got the part.
What is it like to see the King’s Speech nominated for so many awards?
Astonishing and exhilarating! It wasn’t what I’d expected. But they’re awards for people like the director and for Colin Firth mainly, not for people with little parts.
Do you want to continue acting?
Definitely! I love transforming into another character. But I also really enjoy writing and would like to write professionally.
The reaction to The Three Little Pigs app for iPad has been fantastic. Everyone is commenting that we’ve hit upon something new and different with this high-tech fairy tale. We’ve come to know the app well whilst working on it over the past few months, so it’s really exciting to get the reactions of people who have just downloaded it from the App Store.
In a post last week, Kate shared some of the early reviews The Three Little Pigs has received on blogs that cover children’s books, digital books, storybook apps and on publishing industry websites. More and more reviewers are singing the app’s praises and you can see links to some of them on our site. [If you come across any new ones, or if you’ve written your own, please share them with us!]
This week we have heard directly from many parents and a few children too. We love getting this important feedback! Mums and dads and grandparents in places as far afield as China, Thailand, the US, Korea, Canada, Australia and Mexico have downloaded the app and here are some of the things they say:
“This is great, my little Nicole is almost two years old and she knows how to play.” — Eryka
“I love love love it. My two-year-old loves it too, but doesn’t quite get how special this is, she just expects every other app to be just as good. Thank you and congratulations, I look forward to more nosy crowd magic.” — Ximena
“This is the most gorgeous app I have seen. Fabulous art and animation, in a class by itself. You’ve created your own gorgeous art form. Brava!” — Kathy
“Awesome! My boy loves it!” — David
“We LOVE the wolf especially when he squeals after burning his bum! But could he please have a gruffer voice as long as it doesn’t scare the kids? We also love the spider and the bunny, and the movement. And now it’s time for bed.” — Catherine and Elizabeth
“Fantastic. I know my grandchildren (ages 3 and 5) will love it.” — Charles and Barbara
“It’s utterly laugh out loud fabulous. What fun! Who’d have known pigs are ticklish? A beautiful and wonderful story app for big and little kids.” — Denise
“It’s fantastic! My four year old loved it for tonight’s bedtime story. Can’t wait for the next one!”— Deborah
On Monday morning we heard from the mother of 4-year-old Dylan, who told us “Dyl is completely enamoured with it, and has been grabbing the iPad first thing to read it, and as soon as he comes home from school he’s been heading straight for “the pad” as well. The result is that by Saturday he could recite the whole thing (in his Dylan-esque way).”
In case we didn’t trust her, she attached this video to prove her point. She explained “The video goes on to show the whole recital, including much howling when the wolf burns his bottom, but is too big to email!”
Thanks to Dylan’s mum and to all of you who have written. Please keep these emails coming!
I’ve written about it about it for The Bookseller online, but you can read about it here too:
I’m dating the start of the company from our announcement of our existence, which we sent to the trade press and others on 22 February 2010. In some ways, we didn’t feel quite ready to announce, but our hand was forced by two things. The first was that I had been asked to judge the British Book Awards and had given my job title as “MD of Nosy Crow” for an announcement of the make-up of the judging panels that came out in the week of 22 February 2010. The second was that I’d been messing around with Facebook on the evening of 21 February, working out how to set up a fan page and invite people to it, when I inadvertently sent out a message to my entire address book for a profile that referred to Nosy Crow.
We had, from memory, just three projects signed at the time we announced, and a stated intention to acquire from established talent and from newcomers. We also clearly stated that we intended to create apps from scratch. There were four of us – me, co-founders Camilla Reid and Adrian Soar, and Imogen Blundell – in a single room in an office complex in a Victorian school building.
One year on…
We have three print titles published. In mid-January, we published Small Blue Thing, a debut romantic fantasy that was written by the colleague of the headhunter I consulted when I was thinking I’d get the hell out of the industry. In mid-February, we published Mega Mash-up: Romans v Dinosaurs on MarsMega Mash-up: Robots v Gorillas in the Desert, innovative two-colour combinations of fiction and doodle-book drawing on popular boy themes by a team who came to us because I’d worked with one of them at Scholastic when he was a designer there.
This year, we will publish 23 print titles for children from 0 to 14, most acquired since February 22 2010. True to our original vision, these are books that children will really enjoy reading: when we acquire a book, we do so with a strong sense of who it’s for. Our books are by established names like Axel Scheffler and Penny Dale and from newer exciting talents. The list – and we’ll be announcing the first six months of 2012 before Bologna – will grow in 2012.
We have one e-book published. Small Blue Thing is our only black-and-white book so far and was the first ebook we created with the support of Faber Factory. I decided that we’d focus our digital aspirations on illustrated publishing and apps.
This year, we will publish 5 straight ebooks.
We have one app published. Last week, we published a cutting-edge story book app, The Three Little Pigs, to quite remarkable reviews (including one from FutureBook, The Bookseller’s digital publishing blog).
This year, we will publish at least 5 highly-interactive, cutting-edge, multimedia apps.
From the beginning, we were interested in using websites and social media to communicate with potential consumers – mainly parents in our case – as well as with potential suppliers in the form of authors and illustrators and customers. We launched with a lively website that has evolved over time but remains true to our original plan. We wanted to create something with real personality, that was professional but also warm, honest and informal… and that was updated constantly: we blog several times a week to provide a window into what we do. In our first year, we’ve had a over a quarter of a million page-views from over 20,000 visitors in 129 countries, and, since we’ve had books and apps on the market, visitor numbers have risen sharply. Thank you very much for visiting us.
We’ve sold in our first list via Bounce and have promotions with Sainsbury’s, Tesco, ELC/Mothercare, WH Smith, WH Smith Travel, Waterstones and Foyles. Our books are in shops from museum giftshops to Toys ‘R’ Us.
We’ve been active internationally too. In May, Allen and Unwin begins distributing our books in Australia and New Zealand. So far, we’ve sold rights in our books to Germany, France, Holland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, China, Korea and Israel with more good news lined up for announcement over the next few weeks.
There are 11 of us now. We’ve been able to attract the most extraordinary talent to work with us, from games coding genius, Will Bryan, to picture book supremo, Kate Burns. Most of us are parents; several of us work part-time; and several of us work from home and only come into our (slightly bigger) open-plan office occasionally.
There have been challenges and disappointments, and there will undoubtedly be more ahead! There has been constant, grinding, sometimes dull hard work.
We worry – of course we do – about the book market and our place in the print and digital future that is unfolding. But it’s been fun.
It’s been a good year!
Things we haven’t loved so much about this year:
Queuing at the post-office.
Being responsible for all the boring stuff like printer maintenance.
Cold-calling people without a big name behind us.
Things we’ve loved:
Being able to buy great books from authors and illustrators we want to work with as they develop.
Being able to act quickly and decisively.
Selling our books!
The conversations that have opened up online between us and readers, parents, creators and sellers.
Working with great colleagues in a relaxed and fun environment fuelled by cake.
What’s it like to make an app? We thought you’d never ask! Recently I talked to Ed Bryan about his experience creating our debut iPad title: The Three Little Pigs. Ed’s background is in video games and before joining Nosy Crow as Head of Apps Development – Creative, he was an Art Director at Rare Ltd (Microsoft Games Studio). For the past 15 years Ed has worked on a variety of successful games titles as a 3D artist, animator and illustrator, including Kinect Sports, Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Piñata and Grabbed by the Ghoulies.
1. What sort of products have you developed in the past and how does creating an app compare?
The games I’ve worked on in the past have all been made by more than two people! The first Banjo-Kazooie game for the Nintendo 64 was built with 14 of us, whereas my last game, Kinect Sports had a team of around 70!
As the teams get bigger and bigger, you find yourself doing less hands-on creative work and more leading and directing. With The Three Little Pigs (TTLP), I was back to doing everything, which is scary and exciting.
Something that TTLP has in common with most of my previous work, is a focus on characters, and a younger audience. I want to make things that are beautiful,, charming, funny, have high production values and attention to detail.
2. What was the biggest creative challenge of this process?
The scariest thing for me was having to draw and colour in so much art! The technical challenges of building the app are things I understand well. But proving to myself that I was up to the job of illustrating the whole story on my own was something else!
At the start I was determined to try and produce art that had the look and feel of a picture book. I wanted new poses for each character as they appeared throughout the story. Everything had to be unique. I didn’t want it to end up looking like a video game. Against this artistic desire was the constant thinking about how on earth I was going to take the art and turn it into the 3D scenes that appear in the app, and how I should draw the characters so I’d be able to animate them well.
3. How did you approach the illustration? Was there a character you drew first and then the rest flowed from there?
In March 2010, when we had our first conversations about making apps, we made a quick mock-up of the wolf knocking at the door of the brick house. Amazingly, he changed very little; I think for the final story I just gave him a new pair of trousers!
A very early version of the sister pig (Pig 2) appeared in the demo too. But she was initially a boy!
When work started properly, I worked through the story and sketched how I thought each scene would look. Once we had all settled on that, I was able to start illustrating.
The first complete scene was the pig family at home. This was a good place to start as it gave me a chance to get most of the characters out of the way and get the feel for how the app would look.
For all the other scenes, I took the original storyboard sketches, worked through what interactions would take place and started to build up the final art on the computer. I had to remember that in the app you can look behind objects, so I’d had to make sure that I coloured in everything, even if you couldn’t really see it in the original 2D illustration.
4. Do you have a favorite character or scene?
Truthfully, I love them all. I think we were able to create individual personalities for each character, not only with how they look, but also the way they move and the way they all talk.
I like how the older brother pig (Pig 1) heads the football (soccer ball) in the final scene; how the sister pig dances a lot; how the confident little brother pig (Pig 3) builds his brick house, and how poor Mr. Wolf gets stuck in the chimney – these always make me smile. It was a lot of fun putting it all together.
My favourite scene? The football (or soccer) scene worked really well, and gives a little nod to Banjo-Tooie, a game I worked on a long time ago. I think the way the houses blow over came out rather well too.
5. What was the hardest part to draw or animate?
Getting the wolf up the ladder was tricky. No matter how I animated him, it never quite looked like the image I had in my head.
I had a few scary weeks where I put off illustrating the third little pig’s kitchen. I’d already had one go, but it was dreadful. I spent some time doing other bits and pieces for the app, but eventually I had to face the fear, and get on with that last scene.
6. Have your children seen the app along the way? How have they reacted? Do you incorporate their input?
Yes, both of my children saw the app taking shape and always wanted to see the latest build. It’s always tricky showing unfinished work to anyone and having to explain that the bit they want to play with isn’t working yet, or is broken at the moment.
The watershed moment came when my eldest son, who is five and a half years old, was able to read through from start to finish for the first time. Seeing him with the app made me confident that other children would enjoy what we were trying to make.
What I found very reassuring was that both children would always be asking to read ‘Little Pigs’. My eldest would offer advice too, such as putting a big arrow pointing up the chimney, so the reader would know where the wolf was going to come down!
Towards the end of the project, both children helped to test the app too. It’s remarkable how quickly a 2 year old can break a piece of software! This final stage of development is vital, and having children using the app regularly helped us to tune and polish the final product.
Click on the App Store icon below to get The Three Little Pigs for iPad. iPhone and iPod touch versions will be available in early March.
Our first app, The Three Little Pigs is available on iPad (there’s a Lite version too), and will be available on iPhone in the first week of March.
The gestation was longer and more complicated than we’d thought, but I really think the result was even better than we’d hoped.
We thought it was great… but we would, wouldn’t we?
What’s been very encouraging, is that, already, after just a day or so, other people seem to think so too. We’ve just had our very first online reviews:
Pad Gadget wrote: “Do your kids act like the Big Bad Wolf and try to huff and puff and blow the house down? If so, give them the perfect iPad app and let them go to town. A new version of The Three Little Pigs app just hit the App Store and kids will love it… If you and your kids love an entertaining app with lots of interactive features, this version of The Three Little Pigs is a wonderful choice
Fun Educational Apps wrote: “The version [of The Three Little Pigs] from Nosy Crow, is simply one of these app you need to have.There are just so many plus points with this app; the best is for you to give it a try. Here at Fun Educational Apps, we all loved it and are really looking forward to see more apps from Nosy Crow.“
Digital Storytime wrote: “[The Three Little Pigs] is interactive in unique and fun ways that make the story feel more ‘alive’ than any other ebook I’ve read with my chid… It’s a multi-media reading experience you and your kids won’t soon forget.”
The Literary Platform wrote: “on opening the app, I found myself thinking, ‘well if you can’t get this digital publishing thing right, what hope for others?’ Thankfully Kate and her talented team have got it right… The voices of child narrators are beautifully complemented by original music (adding real drama to the chase scenes) and a flurry of inventive iPad features.”
Kid Lit wrote: “What an app this is! It’s Nosy Crow’s Three Little Pigs, A 3-D Fairy Tale… This is a breathtaking app with beautiful art and really rich user interface.”
IPhone and Kids Forum wrote: “This app features sophisticated animation, original interactive music, child narrators and hundreds of interactive touch points. Kids will want to read it again and again. It’s never the same twice.”
There was a great and positive buzz on Twitter too, with lots of positive mentions for @nosycrow and @nosycrowapps (we tweet using both). We even had a hashtag spring up.
On the App Stores int the UK and US, there are already several reviews (for the Lite and the Full versions:
Awesome – ★★★★★
by Summer dolly – Version 1.0 – 16 February 2011
Best kids’ storybook I have seen on app store. Looks amazing, and just makes you smile on every page. My 7 year old picked it up and engaged straight away, and I loved it just as much. Bought the lite version to try it and loved that, but the proper version is at just a whole new level. Not cheap, but for once, an app that’s worth the money.
Brilliant app for kids! – ★★★★★
by Emma Wells – Version 1.0 – 16 February 2011
Wow, this takes children’s apps to a whole new level! My children, 5 and 9 years, love The Three Little Pigs App. There is so much going on and they find something new every time they use it. Easy to navigate, great to look at and really good fun. Highly recommended.
Best interactive story app – ★★★★★
by Rebecca Smart – Version 1.0 – 17 February 2011
From the professional opening animation to the end of the story this interactive picture book app is wonderful. Easy to use, beautiful and clever artwork and animation. Lots of lovely details which give a sense of a great deal of care and attention having gone into this work. Natural children’s voices provide narration. Fun interaction with the characters throughout. Best children’s story app I’ve seen.
An immersive, entertaining and charming pop-up – ★★★★★
by Lylers – Version 1.0 – 18 February 2011
There are some pretty tough app critics in my house, but The Three Little Pigs got a unanimous thumbs-up! The 3D technology is so immersive, you really feel like you’re going on the journey with them! We loved the subtle and fun interactions like the spider. If you want an iPad book that can KEEP them entertained and engaged, I highly recommend this kids’ app.
A beautiful, playful, interactive experience – ★★★★★
by Harry Robinson – Version 1.0 – 18-Feb-2011
This is quite simply the most charming rendition of The Three Little Pigs that I have ever experienced. The illustration is stunning, the music delightful and the overall package a sublime use of the iPad’s strengths. An absolute must-buy for anyone with children or for someone seeking to reignite their inner child.
Perfect – ★★★★★
by Lev Parikian – Version 1.0 – 19-Feb-2011
My son’s review: “It’s great!”
My review: This app gets it right in every way. Children reading the story, fantastic illustrations, great and fun animations, hidden stuff that you don’t discover until you’ve read it a couple of times, excellent music. Nosy Crow haven’t put a foot wrong with this – look forward to more great ones in the future.
Charming and fun – ★★★★★
by Tania:) – Version 1.1 – 19-Feb-2011
The classic Three Little Pigs story gets a makeover in ths delightful app by Nosy Crow. Packed with goregous illustrations, charming voiceovers and plenty of interactive fun, this is everything an app should be. We especially enjoyed helping the wolf blow the houses down and spotting the rabbit, but there are plenty of other hidden exras.
With options to read and play, read alone or have the story read out loud, The Three Little Pigs is perfect for confident readers as well as the more reluctant reader. A big thumbs-up from me and my daughter.
The Lite and the Full versions are currently number 1 and 2 on the UK App Store’s book section of New and Noteworthy apps, as you can see from the picture.
My 4-year-old wears sneakers with Velcro straps. My 6-year-old’s shoes have laces, but he often comes home with the strings flying, his heels popping out of the soles. Once, he arrived missing a sock. His sneaker had fallen off at recess, and after stepping in a puddle, he threw his sock in the trash. He was too busy to stop playing and tie the laces.
Nevertheless, my boys are technologically savvy. They can turn on my iPad, find their favorite apps and get them running without my help. And according to a new study, they’re right in line with their peers. Here’s a clip from a Wall Street Journal story:
In a recent survey, 14% of kids age 4 or 5 could tie their shoes, while 21% could play or operate at least one smartphone app.
In the same study, which polled 2,200 mothers in several developed countries, 22% of children that age knew at least one Web address, 34% could open a Web browser and 76% could play an online computer game. By comparison, 31% knew to dial 9-1-1 in an emergency, 35% could get their own breakfast (which we assume doesn’t mean making eggs) and 53% knew their home address…
The study also found some interesting differences among countries — like the fact that 30% of children between the ages of 2 and 5 in the U.S. could operate smartphone apps, while 11% of kids in Japan could. About 70% of young children in the U.K. and France could play computer games, compared with 61% in the U.S. and 44% in Japan.
Since I began consulting to Nosy Crow, preparing to publicize the launch of the 3-D Three Little Pigs app, I’ve seen firsthand how easy it is for children to learn digital skills. In fact, they take to the screen much more intuitively than adults.
My boys have tested the Three Little Pigs app at various stages of development, and where an adult might fumble with the screen, trying to figure out how to make the pigs talk, run and jump, the boys just get it. Most importantly, from my perspective, the app is reinforcing their reading skills. They read the words while the narrator speaks. They direct the dialogue by tapping on the characters, and my 6-year-old uses the Read By Myself feature.
What’s even more interesting is the way the app has sparked small bursts of creativity when they aren’t using the iPad. Several months ago, my older son wrote a short story of the Three Little Pigs on his own initiative. No prompting whatsoever.
Most recently, as I was making dinner one night, both boys grabbed paper and pens and, lo and behold, started designing their own apps. My 4-year-old drew a crane with a wrecking ball that knocked down a building. He made several screens, and in each one the building got bigger and bigger. As for my 6-year-old, his app is a story of a monkey trying to get bananas from a tree. In each scene, the screens gets harder as the monkey dodges flying coconuts, lightening bolts and snow balls.
Truth be told, they had recently seen a news story about a 14-year-old boy who had created a best selling app called Bubble Ball. They decided that they, too, wanted to make their own apps.
So are they on their way to writing complex computer code? Not quite yet. But they are way ahead of their parents. And even if they can’t tie their shoes, I have no doubt they’ll be just fine.
Now could someone please design a shoelace tying app?
— This post was written by U.S.-based marketing consultant, Andi Silverman who is helping us promote our first app next month.
What do you get when you bring together nine children, a camera crew and the latest version of our soon-to-be-released 3-D Three Little Pigs app?
Total mayhem!
Actually, you get lots of giggling, “not by the hair on my chinny chin chin” chanting, some ooh-ing and ahh-ing, a semi-serious discussion about whether it’s okay to choose the straw house as your favourite character, ideas for our next app, multiple swan dives off the sofa, and a whole lot of fun.
And soon we’ll have a very cool app video trailer to share with you. Watch this space.
Yesterday, Kate met up with Neal Hoskins (pictured) of Winged Chariot in the Crow’s Nest to talk about the opportunities for collaboration amongst apps publishers, and, specifically, children’s apps publishers. For all of us involved in apps publishing, the challenge is how people – parents in our case – find good apps among the ever-growing sea of apps on the store.
They also talked about the Bologna Tools of Change Conference 2011, which Neal is heavily involved in, and at which Kate will be a keynote speaker.
Then Kate and Imogen left for the Bounce Marketing sales conference for April to August titles in Islington, wrapping fizzy wine in the back of the car to give to the Bounce reps so they could drink to Nosy Crow’s first book (Small Blue Thing) being published on 13 January 2011. Kate presented to an enthusiastic audience of 18, and it was great to see how many of the reps had already read many of the titles: Bizzy Bear and Pip and Posy were being enthusiastically read by one sales manager’s two year-old. The six year-old “reluctant artist” son of one of the reps had loved completing his first Mega Mash-up book. And one of the reps told everyone how much she’d LOVEDOlivia’s First Term.
After a meeting at the Publisher’s Association about World Book Day 2012 (which’ll be the subject of another post), Kate met up with Imogen and Kirsty at Bounce’s Christmas Party, and Kirsty and Kate had to be asked to leave as the pub was closing. A fine time was had by all.
It’s Kate B’s birthday. Happy birthday to her! We can’t let standards slip, so a cake has been baked. Look at Twitter later for pictures.
Yesterday, Kate W spoke in a Digital Book World/Publisher’s Weekly webinar on Children’s Publishing in the Digital Age with Rick Richter of (US-based) Ruckus Media and head of Harper Collins Children’s Books in the US, Susan Katz. The webinar is available for one week, before it goes into the members-only section of the Digital Book World site, and for now you can see it/listen to it here
Kate said that we had ten aims for our apps:
To create something new and exceptional
To experiment (and to experiment in media other than text and still images)
To find new talent
To commission creative material that really uses the features of the touchscreen devices
To avoid squashing existing book-based content onto touchscreen devices
To make sure that a child who is used to the interactivity and multimedia experience of the touchscreen device is not disappointed by anything we make
To create an enhanced and different reading experience for children
To create something that parents will feel happy to give to their children
To invite the reader into the story through interaction and personalisation
To create or evolve a business model that works for us, for our creative talents and for any partners we may work with.
If you’d like to see a (very basic – a professional one’s in the works) video of our first app (which we’ll release in January), here’s the link to it on our YouTube channel
On Saturday, we were back in the recording studio recording yet more audio content for various things, including more funny comments and noises for the first of our 3-D Fairy Tales, The Three Little Pigs. As we work on the apps that we will be releasing next year, we are learning never to underestimate how much content – visual, textual, audio and animated – a really rich and interestingly interactive app requires.
Here are our three pigs and our narrator, practicing their piggy grunts.
From the moment I saw a touch-screen device – an iPod Touch – I was excited about the potential for apps to become reading experiences for children.
The first thing that struck me was the immediacy of the experience relative to other screen experiences: when you touch the screen, something happens. As adults, we have learned that we can make something happen on a screen by fiddling around with a mouse or a keyboard or a remote control. But if you showed a computer to someone from Shakespeare’s time, she wouldn’t touch the keyboard, but (when she’d got over her fear) would, I think, try to make something happen by touching the screen. If you type “toddler using an iPad” into google, you’ll see two year-olds using that device for the first time instinctively.
The second thing that struck me was how portable the devices were. I am a mother, and, when my children were little, I carried a huge bag that contained, as well as snacks and wet-wipes and a change of clothes, toys and at least five board or picture books. I realised that you could store hundreds of books in this tiny thing: an iPhone is approximately12 centimetres by 6 centimetres by 1 centimetre.
The third thing that struck me was how lovely the screen looked, and how beautiful colours looked on it. The backlighting that many people find annoying when they read texts on screen meant that colour images were lit up like little stained-glass windows.
And the fourth thing that struck me was that, now these things were in the world, they are unlikely to go away.
At The Bookseller’s Children’s Conference in September 2010, Justine Abbott, from Aardvark Research shared some of her research about young children’s engagement with digital media.
She talked about the fact that 28% of children under six have a television in their own rooms.
She said that pre-schoolers in her survey were watching television for over two hours per day.
She said that the youngest iPad user she’d met was four months old.
She quoted the mother of her 20 month-old son, “he’ll probably learn to read from the computer”.
She said that parents welcomed iPhones as “electronic Mary Poppinses”, providing interactive and engaging entertainment for their children without their intervention.
She concluded by saying that families were increasingly embracing screen-based technology as entertainment for their child, saying it was “portable, personal and (importantly) permissible”.
I know that many people involved in the world of children’s books shake their heads in sorrow or horror at Justine Abbott’s statements, and would, I know, recoil from the other statistical evidence that children are spending less time with print and more with screens and that their parents and teachers are letting them or encouraging them to do so.
But what are we to do? We could turn our back on the evidence, and say it is nothing to do with us, and keep our focus exclusively on print. Or we could try to ensure that some of that screen-time is reading time.
At Nosy Crow, we love books. We love the smell of them. We love the feel of them. We love the way that everything changes when you turn a page. Some of the books we will publish really have to happen on the printed page: they are very physical things. There are touch-and-feel elements throughout the Noodle books illustrated by Marion Billet that we will publish in May 2011. There are illustrations for the reader to complete with their own pens and pencils in the Mega Mash-up books by Nikalas Catlow and Tim Wesson that we publish in February 2001. And there are good, “old-fashioned” (in format, not content) paperbacks like S C Ransom’s romantic fantasy Small Blue Thing, published in January 2011, and beautifully produced picture books like Axel Scheffler’sPip and Posy titles that are published in April 2011.
But, while we love books, we love reading more. And we profoundly believe in the potential for literacy and, specifically, reading for pleasure, to transform lives. We know that reading for pleasure correlates with increased attainment in reading and writing; that reading for pleasure fosters creativity and imagination; that reading for pleasure develops good social attitudes; that reading for pleasure contributes to knowledge and understanding of the world and that reading for pleasure contributes to self-esteem. We don’t just make this stuff up. These are the conclusions of decades of research: PIRLS 2007; Cox and Guthrie 2001; Meek, 1987; Allen et al 2005; Bus et al, 1995; Stanovich and Cunningham, 1993; Hatton and Marsh, 2005; Pressley 2000.
I’ve just come back from speaking at a children’s publishing conference in Munich: Wie digital wird das Kinderbuch?(How digital will children’s books become?). There the statistics presented about German children’s embrace of technology were just as overwhelming, but several publishers there were advocating a softly-softly approach: let’s make apps, but let’s not make them too different from books. Let’s keep the book, but have it appear on the screen. Let’s not get into competition with computer games and animated films.
That’s not what I think we, as publishers, should do.
I think that this route risks making reading less exciting to children. If games and books exist in the same screen space, the comparison between the two will be made. If something happens – a noise, a movement – when you touch the iPad screen when you are playing a game, won’t you feel disappointed if nothing much happens when you are reading a book?
I think that, as publishers, we shouldn’t be trying to squash the books that already exist onto a phone. We should, I think, be creating reading experiences for touch-screen devices. The devices have the capacity for sound, animation and interactivity built into them, and we should use those capacities to tell stories in a new and engaging way.
We’re trying to do just that. If you go onto YouTube and search Nosy Crow, you will find a video of the first of our 3-D Fairy Tales: The Three Little Pigs. It has text and it has illustrations, but it also has an audio track, and animation. When you touch the characters, they move, and you get additional comments. You can make the wolf blow down the house. You can explore the picture, and, when you tip the device backwards and forwards, the images look as if they are in 3-D. Here’s the link.
Making this app, and working on the others that we are developing has used many of the skills we already had: shaping text, determining pacing and choosing illustrations. We have had to learn new skills too, some of them purely technical, but many of them about how to tell a story in this new medium.
We think that, for us and for the people we have worked with, the process has been exciting. But what is important is that we’ve ended up with a reading experience that is engaging, fun, scary, funny, worthy of repeating – in the same way that a good book is all those things.
We shouldn’t turn our back. We shouldn’t go a little way down the digital path or do it half-heartedly and with reluctance. We should, I think, go to where our readers are going, and make sure that they read along the way.
(This is an edited version of an article that Kate has written for Books For Keeps, published in 2011)
The New York Times recently wrote an article about the rising popularity of the iPhone and apps for toddlers. Parents are increasingly turning to app-filled devices to occupy their kids. A little iPad or iPhone time in the doctor’s office waiting room, the supermarket, and of course the back seat of the car really can keep everyone happy.
But the New York Times story raises questions about whether using the device is harmful to the developing minds of young children. From the NYT:
“Along with fears about dropping and damage, however, many parents sharing iPhones with their young ones feel nagging guilt. They wonder whether it is indeed an educational tool, or a passive amusement like television. The American Academy of Pediatrics has long advised parents not to let their children watch any TV until they are past their second birthday.”
With every technological development, there’s bound to be some hand-wringing. Ever since television was invented, parents have had to balance screen time with other activities. Spending too much time using any sort of screen can’t be good for anyone. But we believe that apps can provide an educational experience. And we’re grateful to have an opportunity to make apps that don’t merely pacify children.
Our apps inspire kids. When designed with a child’s curiosity in mind, an app can open up new worlds, enhance literacy and foster a child’s own creativity. For us, one of the most exciting parts of creating an app is testing it with kids and watching them explore.
As we near the end of development on our 3-D Three Little Pigs app, we’ve been sharing it with more and more young readers. They hear the story and read along. They spin the pigs in the air, make the van race ahead, help the wolf blow down the houses and impersonate the characters’ voices. We’ve even seen some American children try on British accents! And we see this as a good thing.
But the best thing of all is something we hadn’t anticipated. We are seeing kids take something away from the app and incorporate it into play when they aren’t using the iPad.
In one case, a 6-year-old boy in New York used our 3-D Three Little Pigs app and then – completely unprompted – grabbed paper and pen and made his own booklet of the story. He took the digital experience and made it physical. He took the app we created and created something himself. If you didn’t already view the video above, see what I mean right here.
As those of you who follow @nosycrow on Twitter may know, Kate and Adrian spent last week at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Kate thinks that last year was one in which publishers were allowed to say that trading was rough (many publishers are pretty good at spin), but people seemed genuinely more upbeat about the fair this year… and (really: no spin) Nosy Crow’s fair couldn’t have gone better.
Kate started her publishing career as a rights girl, so a Book Fair is duck (back) to water in a happy way for her. She hugely enjoys selling to people from different countries, in different languages. You learn about cultural differences in everything from preferences in artwork styles to ways of celebrating Christmas (or, of course, not celebrating in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Israel). You are selling to editors, who really care about stories and illustration, and who are used to commissioning themselves. And there is, of course, a great buzz when you close the deal.
Adrian was also selling. This was his 35th Frankfurt, many of them as what the hard-working rights people refer to as a “floating suit” (a senior executive who has very few appointments and talks to other senior executives he bumps into in the halls). But this was his first Frankfurt selling children’s books (so a bit of an old dog, new tricks scenario – though he’s a pretty nifty salesman).
Preparing for the fair is a very hands-on process for Nosy Crow as a start-up. We sweated over the stand design done by the brilliant Floron at Floron Design and went straight from the airport to Frankfurt’s IKEA for our flatpack stand furniture… which we spent all of the next day assembling. We also bought two huge bags of Dime bars which was our only food between breakfast and supper.
We then had three-and-a-half days of 140 meetings with foreign publishers – many of them pre-booked, but a number of people requesting appointments when they saw our lovely and very busy stand.
We had so much more to show at Frankfurt than Bologna, and, honestly, we were nervous. We needn’t have been: we had really strong interest in everything. That’s not to say that every single publisher loved every single thing, but we had deals and/or interest to follow up for every single project.
So the books were a huge success (we could have sold Axel Scheffler’sPip and Posy books twenty times over in each language) and people were really fairly slack-jawed when they saw prototypes of our apps.
Our hard work – and the hard work of our authors and illustrators – in the lead up to the fair really paid off.
Kate and Adrian agreed it was the best – and much the most fun – Frankfurt they’d ever had.
On Thursday, Kate took time off from Frankfurt presentations to speak at The Bookseller Children’s Conference, which focused on digital – both digital marketing and digital products. Deb came too.
It was a really good day. You could, if you wanted a blow-by-blow if (necessarily) bitty account, look at the #kidsconf hastag on Twitter.
Highlights of the conference for Kate included:
Adrian Hon from Six to Start, who concluded an overview of digital product innovation with his sense of trends to come which included :
“The race to quality”. There’s a lot of ditigal and online rubbish out there, and consumers will become more discriminating. Kate thinks this is really true in relation to apps for children.
“Disintermediation”. Creators (like authors) connecting with and selling directly to consumers (like readers). Kate thinks that this is a real risk for publishers, and that publishers have to be very clear about what they’re offering creators and consumers before assuming that they have a role to play in the supply chain. Hon also expects to see a lot of new entrants: the existing big players won’t necessarily drive innovation and success. Kate agrees.
“Transmedia” . Products existing digitally and in physical form, an example of which would be Scholastic’s 39 Clues and Webkinz.
The truly scary (to Kate) insights into Stardoll (from Katie Bell) and the slightly less scary ones into Moshi Monsters (from Divinia Knowles).
Sue Cranmer of Futurelab, talking about the danger of assuming that children are digitally competent “natives” while adults are digitally incompetent”‘immigrants”, because this is not necessarily the case and it creates a divide where none needs to exist. She talked persuasively about children’s naivety in relation to the web, though, suggesting that they thought that it was regulated and authoritative, and quoting 10 year-olds saying that Mr Wikipedia was responsible for Wikipedia’s content. (Kate’s own children. roughly the same age, turned out to know that Wikipedia was written “by anyone” so “you can’t be sure it’s right but other people will check”, which suggests that they have a fair old grip of the principles.)
Dan Martin of Chamelion Net’s emphasis on video as an ever-increasing means of communicating with people online, and especially with teenagers. He said that YouTube serves up a billion videos a day, and that YouTube is the second most used search engine after Google.
Matt Locke of Channel 4 comparing the current peak oil situation to a “peak attention” situation: we are managing a precious and finite resource. He spoke, too, about the polarisation of ways we conume of content: we are either engaging in long, immersive experiences (binging on a Mad Men boxed set) or consuming content in tiny, short chunks (and this is, of course, not necessarily how traditional media presents content).
Justine Abbott of Aardvark Research, talking about parents becoming increasingly comfortable with allowing children screentime, and the role of the iPhone as a “free babysitter”, being used increasingly to entertain children especially when parents are out and about. As a qualitative researcher, she had some scary anecdotes like the one about the two five year-olds whose favourite game was Grand Theft Auto, and some interesting stats, like the fact that 28% of UK children aged six and younger has their own TV in their bedroom.
Neal Hoskins of innovative app creators Winged Chariot, who gave a candid and clear-eyed insight into his experience (more than most of us have) of delivering reading experiences into the apps market.
Kate got to go last, which made for a nerve-racking day, but allowed her to think even more about the role of the publisher in the digital landscape. The conference was at the British Library, just north of Bloomsbury, and she remembered the Bloomsbury Group’s (gay) Lytton Strachey’s response to the chairman of the military tribunal to whom he had to prove that he was a consciencious objector. Asked what he would do if a German soldier was attempting to violate his sister, Strachey is reported to have said, “I would try to interpose my body between them.” Kate thinks that if publishers want to interpose themselves between creators (authors etc) and consumers (readers), then we increasingly have to earn the right to do so.
While we’ve been working throughout the summer, today was the first day in a while that Imogen, Kate, Camilla and Adrian have convened in the office, and, though Deb: wasn’t with us as she’s on holiday, and Steph and Kate B have yet to start (they join us on 13 September), it did feel like the beginning of a new phase, as we rev up to publication of our first app in October 2010 and our first print publication in January 2011.
This feeling was reinforced by the arrival today of bound proofs of Mega Mash-up: Romans v Dinosaurs on Mars They were very, very handsome. We’d set out to create a unique package combining fiction with doodling, in a fiction-friendly paperback format and with two-colour illustration throughout. They’re novels, but they invite even the most reluctant reader in by suggesting that they complete the illustrations. What’s more, they’re funny in a scatalogical boy way (funnier even than a book has any right to be whose central premise is that dinosaurs and Romans will have to work together to save their Martian colony from an asteroid by firing hardened dinosaur dung from catapults). And they look great!
Here’s Imogen, fast becoming our book production as well as our admin supremo, looking through one of the proofs. We need them to check that we haven’t made any mistakes (so we have sent them to Kirsty, their editor, and Nikalas and Tim, who created them. We also need them so that Nosy Crow and Bounce can show them to booksellers, some of whom have already told us they like them: Waterstones will be promoting Mega Mash-up: Romans v Dinosaurs on Mars in stores on publication in February 2011. We’ll also be taking them to the Frankfurt book fair, to sell translation rights.
This evening, Kate was on a very busy train. At the first station out of London, a mum and two little girls got on, one of whom sat in the empty seat next to Kate. She wriggled and sighed and looked pretty bored, so Kate, who was planning to work, took out her iPad and introduced her to the magic screen.
She’d just turned four, and hadn’t seen an iPad before, and it was interesting to see how quickly she got to grips with it. At first she asked what to do next, but Kate let her find out, and she gained confidence incredibly fast. Once she worked out that touching the screen meant that things happened, she very quickly discarded even beautiful apps that didn’t deliver in terms of interactivity.
One of her favourite was DoodleBuddy, and she particularly liked the stickers. But the one that made her laugh was the prototype of Nosy Crow’s 3-D Three Little Pigs app, where she bounced the pigs and made them grunt and raced them down the road away from the big bad wolf in his van.
Given its quality, you probably think it was Kate who took this picture at last night’s Mobile Monday London event. Nope. She spent the evening at an end-of-year function at her daughter’s school. Photo credit here belongs to Deb – who, as you can see, has quickly adopted the Nosy Crow photographic style as her very own.
Last night’s MML theme of 200,000 apps, where’s mine? was particularly timely for us. We’re in the process of building our app marketing strategy so Deb was all ears as the panelists discussed the issue of discoverability, apps as marketing tools, and working with app aggregating portals.
Although the conversation was fairly generic, there were a few interesting take-aways. In a discussion of demographics, Eli Camilleri of mobile market analytic firm Vision Mobile commented that app creators need to increase their focus on niches. Even on niches within those niches. At Nosy Crow we believe our apps customer is the savvy “iPhone mum” seeking engaging, narrative-rich content to share with her child. But we’re well aware that there are subsets of mums in that group, too.
Another panelist insisted that the handset itself is the most important marketing space and that app creators would do well to focus attention there. After all, we do all look at our phones several times a day!
It is now over a week since Kate came back from Editech, where she was a speaker, representing the UK, on a panel, and she’s failed to post about it. Editech’s the Italian Publisher’s Association’s digital publishing conference.
Italy’s another country: they do things differently there. They do conferences differently for starters. This did not work out well for Kate, who’d understood that she was there for a jolly chat about exciting digital topics with a chairman and questions from the audience rather than to do a slide presentation. How wrong she was. Hey ho.
But she ended up talking saying the following things:
The UK had better watch out: the digital market is a global market, and, while UK print looks and feels different from US print, she often can’t tell whether she’s on a UK website or a US website, and people won’t care. The UK’s print publishing industry depends on (1) the international use of English and (2) us seeing the world as our market (we publish more per capita than any other country and we can only do so because we sell outside our own market, while US publishers have such a huge market of consumers themselves that they haven’t had to focus on international selling as much). But much digital innovation is coming from the US, and without the hassle, time-lag, cost and stock-management issues of print publishing, they may eat our European lunch.
And the people who eat UK publishers’ lunch may be US publishers, but they may be people we’ve never heard of before, and certainly people who haven’t been around long. Traditional publishers will have to prove their competence and innovative skills in this new world.
From a children’s publishing perspective, particularly, she sees the smartphone and the iPad and other tablet devices as game-changers. There are over 100 million Apple touch-screen devices out there. She talked about the need to commission material for the device, rather than squashing existing intellectual property onto the phone. That’s what we’re doing at Nosy Crow: we think about what the device does, and think how we can use that to create or enhance a reading experience.
She said that the publishing industry has traditionally given away its relationship with readers to other people – to retailers. We need to build brands and to have relationships with our readers.
Finally, and, she thinks, most importantly, she said that she thinks that publishers need to decide what they are for. In the supply chain between author and reader, no-one has a place by right. As publishers, we have to earn our place. Publishers have historically earned their place by providing creators with up-front payments (advances) and investing in stock and distribution infrastructures. If stock becomes irrelevant, and distribution infrastructures become less expensive (no need for big cross-docked warehouses in digital land), what are publishers bringing to the party. We have to bring
Credibility: publishers need to have brands that consumers trust, so that they believe that the fact that something’s been published by an organisation means that it’s worth looking at or buying because it’s been sieved,
Creativity: publishers need to shape material, and bring together different kinds of intellectual property, including, increasingly, kinds we’re not used to such as animation, video and music.
Consumers: we need to know how to reach readers through intelligent, innovative and trustworthy marketing, and to facilitate readers telling other readers about their experience of us.
Oh, she could bang on about this for hours, and probably will expand on some of this in later posts, but enough for now.
If you want to know what everyone else said, and there were interesting things said and interesting information provided (did you know, eg, that 65% of households in Italy have no broadband, and that 50% have no internet access?), Kate as @nosycrow put a fair old bit of it on Twitter with the hashtag (which she used pretty religiously) #editech10.
Other highlights were a nice saffron risotto and meeting other speakers, including Peter Balis (now, there’s a clever man) digital guru of John Wiley (now, there’s a savvy publisher), here showing off his iPad in a restaurant.
Here’s a sneak peek of a scene from our forthcoming 3-D retelling of The Three Little Pigs. It’s still a work in progress but we love how this app is coming together and wanted to share it.
If you think this looks good here, wait until you see it on an iPad!
We’re in full production mode now and operating at a feverish pace. Our stellar development team is hard at work animating Mrs. Pig and sorting out the mechanics of how speech bubbles appear when characters comment on the story. Deb and Kate have been working through our apps business model and pricing strategy. And next week – along with a few voice actors – we’re heading into the studio with Ali Muirden of Creative Content to record the app’s narration and sound effect tracks.
Tomorrow Kate will be in Milan at EDITECH, the Italian conference on technological innovation in publishing where she’s been invited to participate in a roundtable about digital strategies, challenges and the opportunities ahead. If you can catch her when she’s not speaking or tweeting (follow her at #editech10) she just might show you the latest build of our 3-D Three Little Pigs.
We spent part of today storyboarding an app. This kind of process really points up (a) how different creating an app is from creating a book and (b) how transferrable our children’s publishing text+image+paper-engineering/audio training and experience is to the exercise, particularly when combined with Deb’s digital thinking. Also, it is fun.
In a landmark moment, Deb brought in her first cake today (banana loaf, pictured) so we feel that she is truly at one with the Crow.
Nosy Crow has always said it was serious about creating apps, and it’s good to be able to tell all of you what we’ve been working on in this area since our launch seven weeks ago.
Not only do we have these two apps (and ideas and plans for more than you can shake a stick at), but we’ve also just appointed Deb Gaffin as Digital Product Director, so now we have someone – only our fifth member of staff – who is very experienced concentrating on the development and marketing of apps.
We’ve decided to concentrate – for now – on apps for young children, but as we build our profile and our range in this area of this rapidly evolving market, we hope to branch out, so contact us if you’ve any brilliant ideas for apps for children or their parents, or skills in this area that you think we should know about: we’d love to hear from you.
It was a gorgeous spring day today, and Kate and Camilla were off to the corner of St James’s Park, where the crocuses were blooming, for the annual Books and The Consumer Conference. There was lots of interesting stuff said, but the overall message for books was a sobering one: the number of books bought, and the amount of money paid for them (both the average price and the total amount of money spent) decreased in 2009 compared to 2008. The percentage of people in the 15,000 sample who’d bought a book dropped to 56%, though the number of books bought by people who had bought books had increased. Steve Bohme of Book Marketing Ltd, who gave the main presentation, pointed out that books had done less badly than other entertainment products sold in physical form, like DVDs, computer games and CDs (the growth in download sales doesn’t compensate for the loss of revenue on music in physical form).
On the bright side, this was another conference at which the industry considered its digital future, raising all the challenges of staff recruitment, piracy and high costs of devices that any discussion of books and digital involves. A presenter from the US, Kelly Gallagher, reminded us that ebooks currently represent just 3% of the market there, but also pointed out how young the market was, with 34% of the people who said they’d bought an ebook in a survey conducted in November 2009 saying they’d bought their first ebook within the previous 6 months. We felt glad, certainly, that Nosy Crow has an apps dimension.
Another good news story was that the number of children’s books bought increased between 2008 and 2009. This was true even after Stephanie Meyer sales were subtracted: Meyer’s titles are classified as children’s books, even thought they are bought more for young women (17 – 34) than for any other group and people under 17 represent a relatively small part of her audience. The increase was across both fiction and non-fiction, with picture books and early learning (at one end of the age-range spectrum) and horror (remember the Meyer books) and science fiction/fantasy (at the other end of the age-range spectrum) performing perticularly well. Money spent on books bought for children had also increased. Again, we felt pretty chipper that Nosy Crow is a children’s book publisher.
Today’s photo was taken at the conference and is of Camilla with Dawn Burdett (who did a cracking presentation on the Simon and Schuster campaign for The White Queen) and the great Steve Bohme himself, who once again contrived to make statistics – some of them gloom-inducing ones – comprehensible and entertaining.
Here are the flowers that we got yesterday. Sorry we can only share them photographically! 27 cheering messages on the comments page (do please leave one!) and more encouraging emails than Kate could count. People love the logo/name/website, and, more importantly, really welcome a new independent children’s publisher with an interest in apps as well as print.
Speaking of apps, here’s an interesting piece about the impact of the iPod on music, which could give those of us interested in book/book-ish/book-based apps pause for thought:
Kate spent the morning in the North London Office (aka the Wellcome Centre cafe). Robert Hanks, freelance journalist, took her through the intricacies of Twitter from his perspective; Dom Horner, brother of the more book industry Damian, talked about what he might offer the changing book business as a brilliantly skilled and flexible film-maker; and she had a first meeting with someone who could be important to Nosy Crow’s apps work.
