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Non-fiction publisher Kingfisher is developing digital resources, including augmented reality, phone apps and audio devices, to help its books compete with the internet.
The company, which was acquired by Pan Macmillan in 2007, is focused exclusively on non-fiction for schools, trade and mass markets. Kingfisher is also developing more traditional series especially for its coedition markets and for the US, where its business has grown by 20% over the last year. However, UK non-fiction sales have continued to decline.
Publisher Martina Challis said: “The future in the UK market is in new technology, but while schools have the hardware, they have limited budgets to buy software.” A contraction among trade retailers has also had a negative impact on nonfiction sales.
Among the publisher’s digital experiments are phone apps, created by a licensee, and based on Kingfisher’s Flip the Flaps First Principles series for young children, with an interactive quiz game; a dictionary available as a phone app; and a non-fiction reading scheme, Explorers, that Kingfisher is developing for the whiteboard.
The publisher is experimenting with augmented reality for the Kingfisher Science Encyclopedia. Challis said: “Augmented reality works well in non-fiction because it can be used to show scientific principles in action, so it has huge educational value. We can show the DNA double helix in 3D to help students understand it, or how a car piston works in 3D.”
The augmented reality titles will be available from September 2011, mainly in the US and in coedition markets. “It is hard to find a commercial base for it in the UK where the perceived value of products like these in special markets is so low that it is sold below cost price,” said Challis.
Despite the difficulties in the UK market, Kingfisher has done well with series such as science books by Simon Basher and encyclopedias and family reference which are bought mainly as gift purchases. “We have to come up with styles and topics that are fresh and original; everything else is catered for on the web,” said Challis.