iPad: new dawn in picture books?
06.06.10 | Caroline Horn
The arrival of the iPad in Europe has been welcomed as a "pivotal moment" for picture and illustrated books in the digital arena. Fionnula Duggan, director of Random House Group Digital, said: "Finally you have a consumer device that is large enough to read a picture book on, portable and highly desirable."
Independent publisher Winged Chariot Press has already created its first picture book for the iPad, Emma Loves Pink (Piret Raud), and the company is selling "hundreds" of iPhone and iPad picture book apps every week, said m.d. Neal Hoskins. "Our main market is in Europe, but also the US. We are particularly interested in the Japanese market as they have been used to reading books on digital devices for some time."
Winged Chariot has also developed a system that will enable an app to be read across all Apple devices, including the iPad, iPhone and iPod. Hoskins said: "We are in discussion with a number of publishers to provide that service for them."
Other children's publishers said it was still "early days" in terms of developing their picture books for the iPad, particularly their pricing. Fionnuala Duggan said: "You can create a basic representation of a picture book, which looks fine on the iPad, or you can include a high degree of interactivity.
"At Random House, we are exploring many different fronts at the same time, but you have to consider what are your options for distribution channels since the established bookshelves for e-books are not taking interactive apps yet. That will happen but it's not there yet, so how do you get your book to the largest possible market?"
James Long, Macmillan Children's Books editorial director, digital, said: "We are already going through this process for adult books but we will need to approach our e-book strategy all over again for children's colour books. Some picture books will lend themselves to digital product development more than others; it won't be a case of simply making all our picture books available digitally."
Comments on this article
By ibooks
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