Hi Everyone,

due to popular demand I am going to write a bit about how I created the iPhone books I released yesterday.

This project came about at my frustration of not getting illustration work in the picture book industry. I just wanted to create books. At the same time I got an iPhone and was totally in love with it. I think it is a fabulous medium and kids use them so intuitively it seemed silly to not create a book.

There was and is a number of companies selling kids books for the iPhone but I found that most of them were simply scanning books and making them fit the iPhone screen size. I wanted to create a book specifically for the iPhone and utilising all the features such as voice over, sound effects, music etc.

I chose to illustrate public domain texts (Itsy Bitsy Spider and The Night Before Christmas) because I thought people would be more receptive to texts that are already familiar and also I am rubbish at writing!

So I went about creating the images for the book in the traditional method but keeping into account the size of the screen and the text overlay. As a few of you have pointed out the screen is actually really clear so you can create quite complex images, much more than for a computer screen.

On the technical side of things the software from Apple is free to download and anyone can create an App. There is a one off registration fee of US $100 once you submit your app but apart from that there is no cost involved except time. The apple software provides you with an iPhone simulator but you do need to test your app on an actual iPhone to make sure it works properly. And hey it's a great excuse to get an iPhone!

My husband Mick (otherwise known as Monkey)has unwavering faith in my illustrating ability and also wanted to have a side project for himself so took on the coding aspect and I owe a lot of the success of the books to him.


Mick is an engineer by trade and has experience doing coding. Even from his point of view the coding was difficult. He would very much recommend having someone techie who has done this kind of thing before. The thing that took him the longest was not creating the book but learning the software language. But once you have created one book it is simple to apply the same code to further books.

For those of you unlucky enough to not have your own monkey there is a number of iPhone developer groups on LinkedIn. I imagine if you put a job post up there people would willing to do the coding for you. Also Flash 5 being released next year will let you design and publish to an app format.

It is good to note that the Apple software only applies to iPhones. It doesn't work on the other brands of touch phones. But iPhones are by far the majority of handsets in the world at the moment.

I would recommend starting the paper work side of things as soon as possible. It takes about a month or more of back and forth with Apple before you are registered with them. You will need to get yourself an EIN from the IRS as you will be technically earning money from a US company and as such will need to register yourself with IRS. For people living outside the US this is just a matter of calling the IRS on a special number and they give you the EIN over the phone. If you google EIN number for foreigners then there are loads of sites which show you how to do this.

Once you have finished your app you submit it to Apple who review it to make sure that it works. The process will take about 2 weeks. The whole process probably took us about 5 months but that was working purely in the evenings and weekends and produced three books.

In terms of payment, you decide the price of your app and Apple take a commission. (I think it's about 30%?) But considering the coverage of iTunes it is worth it. As you will no doubt know most apps are 99c (US) which translates to 59p. Some people have priced their ebooks higher and I guess if you had more costs involved then you might need to but for me I wanted to keep it under the $1 mark for more downloads.

And then, well it's up to you for the marketing side of things. There are loads of tips on the web. on how to get coverage. Last night we made a small promotional video I will let people know when that is up and running.

Anyway I have probably prattled on enough. I hope this helps you. I am happy to answer questions as long as they are not on the techie side as I will have no idea!


In the new year I will be producing more books for the iPhone and will keep you all informed.


All the best.

Louise.


Find my iPhone ebooks at

http://itunes.com/FuzzIllustration