Moderated by: Neal Hoskins (WingedChariot) Gus Balbontin (Lonely Planet), Michel Kripalani (Oceanhouse Media), Pete Myers (BirdsInTheHand, LLC)
Hoskins: been a year since they started. Key thing is languages and translating and core pretty much remains the same. Are a micro-publisher who has morphed into a publisher/developer. As a small company it is difficult to know where to go and where to provide content. Have to be very careful with the iPad because it has very little memory. Take user comments into account. For the first time as a publisher are getting comments from the public and this is a real benefit of the e-platform. Made a major mistake in putting a wrong page in a book and this would have been a disaster when the were a paper publisher, but could be easily corrected now that are digital. Customers were very forgiving. Would like the book section of the iBooks store to have sections that would making apps easier to find. To build awareness of apps did a gallery app and made it free and it promotes artists from all over the world.
Balbontin: in last year were very opportunistic and jumped in with a book based structure. Now structure has changed to more of a crafting books for users want. Again, many changes to the engine. Big change in developing the content and how to make things more intuitive. Focusing on iPad for foreseeable future and won’t do Android for a while. Lesson learned is don’t be afraid of screwing it up. It’s all so new that customers understand that this will happen and they will work with you. Get huge amounts of feedback from customers. Beauty is that can correct quickly if there is a mistake. Lucky to have large social networks in place cause been building a community for 36 years. One problem is that being online the consumer has lost the ability to compare books and would like to be able to replicate this ability. Constantly monitoring all the data they can about their print and ebook offerings and make real time adjustments based on the data. IBooks can command a higher price than apps can. Can sell an iBook for $15, but not an app. For promotion: take every angle you possibly can.
Kriplani: in last year working on optimizing our engine and figuring out how to scale. Core is teaching kids how to read and this informs all the design decisions. For them is about building a pipeline – how build books, marketing and book. Customer only sees the one part of the process. Re-wrote the Dr. Seuss engine 3 times in 15 months. The way they build the app allows them to support many devices because have a strong software background. Android has worse memory issues that iOS does, but can work around it because of their software background. Autoplay feature is the most liked and this came about from user comments. Amount of money you spend on a project does not equate to the quality on the back end. At the end of the day this type of business is a word of mouth business. Are a developer and a publisher and market from within the apps themselves. Can send messages to individual devices. Use a lot of cross promotion. Believe that children’s books need to be apps and not ebooks. Amazon Android store: think it will be a fantastic place and hope roll out to many countries. Amazon’s curation in the Amazon Android app store is very exciting and will be a real benefit since they will doing some curation.
Myers: market is moving so that customers wanting more and more and that is a real challenge. Easy to load app up with all sorts of fluff and had a list of stuff a mile long and just cut and cut and cut and had to focus on the core of the app. Re-wrote the underlying engine multiple times, but the customer doesn’t know it. Don’t have enough revenue to grow the app at the pace the customer wants it to grow. Very small operation. Biggest request is for an Android application. They suck data from Cornell every day and want the app to add to the database so it can full cycle. Had an inexhaustible supply of beta testers because birders want features and will work with them to get it right. Find that a lot of toddlers using the birding app casue can hit a button and get a sound. Tiny company and to develop the app didn’t take a whole lot of money. Challenge is to get people to know that you have an app. Luckily made NY Times app of the week and made a big difference in sales. If starting over again would make sure had a more serious promotion budget. Android store on Google is the wild west and really excited about the Amazon store since it will do curation.
