It was my friend Bridget who – struck by the vibrant illustrations – said, “Why don’t you see if you can turn it into an app with simple animation?” Once I had the idea in my head it wouldn’t go away – a bit like the beautiful fox I first saw one misty November evening over 15 years ago, which inspired my Ferdinand Fox stories to start with….
#KOTOBEE AUTHOR KINDLE EXPORT TAKING FOREVER HOW TO#
In fact I don’t think I really understood what a ‘book app’ was until earlier this year, never mind how to find one! I was simply looking at how to turn the print book of Ferdinand Fox’s Big Sleep into a colour eBook.
See this YouTube clip at the end of this post.Ĭreating an app wasn’t my original intention I have to confess. Or, now I think about it, would I? After all, I am an indie author – and I of all people should know that once we get an idea in our head there tends to be no stopping us! If you’d told me this time last year that 12 months on I’d have an interactive iPad App version of my picture book Ferdinand Fox’s Big Sleep for 3-5 year olds in the App Store, greats reviews from four educational app sites, and almost 1,500 downloads during its free promo launch, I’d have rolled my eyes at the joke. My app was hand coded back in 2013, but I’m sure there are simpler tools available these days which will make keeping up to date simpler and cheaper! Enjoy the post! Still, I will leave this post here for those of you who may wish to pursue this route. It’s had a fabulous run with over 550 sales, however in order to keep up with changing iOS requirements it will require expensive upgrades for which I cannot justify the cost on top of the annual App store fee. Update – As of this week I’ve withdrawn my app from the App Store.