App Of The Day: Papercut

UK studio ustwo wants to reimagine the reading experience for short stories on iPad.

Every publisher and their aunt is releasing book-apps at the moment, but many still look a lot like physical books with a bit of animation and interactivity added on.

Studio ustwo is trying something different, throwing out the idea of 'pages' that have to be 'turned' in favour of something that's more filmic. The app is called Papercut, and it went live on the App Store today as a £3.99 paid download for iPad.

Included are three short stories by authors Richard Beard, Nadifa Mohamed and Laura Dockrill. Rather than turn virtual pages, you swipe to scroll the text. As you go, animations, sounds, music and interactive elements are triggered around it.

Papercut is more a showcase for ustwo's platform than a new business in its own right: while the company could sell more stories via in-app purchase, it's more likely to be licensed by another book publisher for their own content.

Beard certainly seems impressed. "For writers it's the first glimpse of how writing skills and technology can come together to create a new art-form," he says in the App Store listing. Here's the company's official promo video: