Lynne Garner has achieved wonderful success with her new e-books. Lynne has kindly written about them for us and I have also included her story on the Colleges website under Students success stories. We wish Lynne the best of luck with her illustrations and her future books and sales.
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Having had success in getting some of my books traditionally published (www.myspace.com/lynnegarner) I found late 2009 and the first couple of months of 2010 very frustrating. A couple of books were pulled from publication at the very last minute, one company went under and a couple of picture books after months of waiting joined the rejection pile. So with my partner we set up our own publishing company called Mad Moment Media Ltd (www.madmomentmedia.com). Rather than publish in the traditional paper format we decided to go the electronic route with apps for iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone. This seemed a good idea at the time but what followed over the next few months was lots of stress and many a late night. However we have finally launched our first picture book app (Captain and Nugget) and placed it for sale on the iTunes store. The next one should be up within days (a free mini app – The Enormous Carrot) with a further four titles (A New Sister for Kodi – Puppy Why Do I Love You? – Scaredy Cat – A Surprise For Mum) due for release within the next few weeks. If sales of these books do well (and the first five days of sales have pleasantly surprised us) then we already have a further five titles lined up. We would also love to work with other writers and illustrators to turn their books into apps (but that’s a fair few months away).
Each book has to go through a long process including being written, illustrated and rendered in Photoshop, narration recorded and coding created so all this digital data can be turned into an app. Each app allows an adult or child to read the books themselves, have the book read to them whilst they turn the pages (a simple swipe of the finger) or the ‘auto read’ function will play the narration and turn the pages for you. Each app is currently priced as £1.19 and can be viewed on the iTunes store via www.madmomentapps.com
