The beauty of a web 2.0 site is that your users innovate with the tools you give them.

We originally saw the site as a book publishing tool. But Jennifer Poulter, an educational author form Australia, saw in Sharing-Books a tool to publish one page books that she calls poster-poems as classroom aids to help students learn poetry and/or help teachers introduce discussion topics relevant to their classes. The form of the poster-poem has been received well and Jennifer's work has been used in classrooms around the world. One of our authors, Urs Dietrich, who wrote Miki Makes a Promise, reported that on his last trip to Odessa, he visited a classroom where Jennifer's poster-poems were used to teach English.

Now it is author Timothy Schenk who published last week a surprise he had hinted was coming. Timothy has previously illustrated two poster-poems written by Jennifer. He also wrote and illustrated My Pretty Pointe Shoes that won the second prize in the July 2009 Simone Woods Awards. This time Timothy published our first talking book: Fan of Halloween.

Fan of Halloween demonstrates Timothy's technical know-how as he took advantage of a new feature Adobe introduced to PDF files, the ability to insert flash files. So as you download what looks like a normal and relatively small PDF file, you also download a little movie and a recording of Timothy reading his poem. When you click on the image of the pumpkin on the page, the pumpkin moves in as Timothy reads the poem.

This is very exciting and very promising. We deliberately limited the file type of our books to PDF so that universal distribution would be easy and that given the small size of the files, our books could be downloaded in low bandwidth regions of the world. Obviously this limited the books in being two dimensional. Now we can see the form of the e-book developing new and valuable attributes. Imagine a PDF e-book where a child can click on a cow and hear it go Moo! Or have an alphabet book read to them or having technical details added to a science book.

We thank Timothy for innovating with this first book and showing the way to one more imaginative use of Sharing-Books.com

Labels: children books, digital publishing industry, e-books, Halloween, J.R. Poulter, new features, picture books, publishing, teaching english, technology, Timothy Schenk

I woke up today to find an email sitting in my inbox from Mark Gladding letting us know that there were some posts up on eBooks Just Published about Sharing Books. I am always excited to see anything that mentions our company, particularly when I'm not mentioning it.

eBooks Just Published is a real find, they trawl the internet to bring people ebooks that are new, fresh, and DRM-free. And they do it every day. For any of our authors, take note, this is exactly the type of site you want to discover your work. We already have one book from our roster, recently published Scatsby the Bear, show up on their site. I'm hoping down the road we see more of our authors showing up on eBooks Just Published, since it is definitely a place to spread the word about your work.

While poking around on the site I found an interesting article on eBook readers for children. There are some interesting points here, mainly revolving around what the reader needs to look and be in order to work for children. While I completely agree, the device describe in the post would be an absolutely fantastic computing device, not just an ebook reader for kids, I do think that there are current devices that can bridge that product gap.

I think that the real targets for children's ebooks is not some down the road technology, but rather the tools that exist today. Things like the Leapster, the iPod Touch, the Nintendo DS, the Playstation Portable ( PSP ). These are all existing products with high market penetration, and they all support some form of ebook reading. The iPods and Nintendo DS are particularly attractive, since they support DRM free file formats such as PDF. Kids are already using these devices for all sorts of things, from browsing the internet to reading to playing games. All that needs to happen is one decent bit of software marketed towards children, and the nut is cracked.

Some may argue that the Nintendo DS is too small for children to enjoy the books, or to use before a certain age. I do tend to agree on an aesthetic stance, the DS has a small screen and small controls. That being said, I've seen 4 year old children pick up a DS and start playing a game. I see no reasonable barrier to usage that can not be solved with proper interface design. Same goes for an iPod or PSP.

I honestly feel that technology devices are converging, that computing power has reached a point where it makes more sense to build devices that let you play games, surf the internet, read a PDF, listen to music, etc. Certainly there is a place for illustrated ebook readers as a specific market product, but when it comes down to it, if I am spending $300-500 on a device for my kids, I'll lean towards one that has functionality they can grow into and with, rather then a one-use product. Though I really do want a nice tablet computer, about A4 size.

Labels: discussion, e-books, media coverage, news, technology