Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime and Paper Cut take the stage in London.
UK creative studio Ustwo showed off two of its book-apps at the Futurebook conference in London this afternoon - one released already (Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime) and one to come (Paper Cuts).
The former was a partnership with developer Atomic Antelope, merging the artwork of illustrator Denslow from a Mother Goose book - more than a century old so out of copyright - with interactivity on the iPad. So users (and their parents) could play with the characters from various nursery rhymes, with a headline-grabbing feature allowing this to be done remotely - a parent in their office could share the experience with their child at home.
"This was a reaction to what we were seeing out there from good and bad publishers," said co-founder Mills. "It was mainly built for the iPad, but we also wanted to penetrate the iPhone market too. The price had to be really considered: People on the iPad are willing to spend more money, but people on the iPhone won't, so we ended up in the middle with a £2.39 price." Although it eventually settled at £1.79.
He also said that the remote access element was designed to get the attention of the technology press, who drive a lot of early sales of apps. The result: a barrage of press coverage, including the mainstream media, and lots of promotion from Apple.
Mills gave some numbers too. 41% of sales came in the UK, and 45% in the US. He also said that when the app cost 59p in the UK, there were lots of negative reviews saying it was too expensive, whereas when it was £1.79, the reviews were overwhelmingly positive.
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The app has sold 37,339 copies in total so far, for £24,048 of revenue - it cost close to £60,000 to make. And yet for a couple of weeks it was the Top Grossing app in the App Store's Books category, at a point when it was making around £2,000 a day - Mills said this shows how much (or rather little) other publishers of book-apps are making on iOS.
So what's next? Something called Paper Cut - an enhanced reader. "One thing we've got on our side is naivety," said Mills' colleague McFarbs. "We're not publishers, so we can do things for our reasons. One of the things we want to do is explore the capabilities of the iPad... Maybe we're defining a new genre, we don't know." But Ustwo is working directly with authors on the platform.
The app will limit the text viewing area, so readers scroll and swipe through the text - which in turn means Paper Cut knows where they are within it. And then this can trigger animation and interactivity around those words.
"Innovate now, don't think this is about making money now," said Mills. "It's about pushing the medium forward. Have a lot of fun, and you'll benefit in the future... And hilariously, always judge a book by it's icon, because if you make a crap icon, nobody's going to download your book."
And the pair finished off by tearing into what they see as poor-standard iPad apps for children, which are simply rehashing old picture-books for tablets. He also had advice for publishers on working with developers versus going it alone in the apps world: "You've got to partner - it's not that easy to bring it in-house and expect it to do really well."
Are the economics device-driven - if Nursery Rhymes had been published in 2012, would it make that £60k back quicker, when there will be more tablets in people's hands. "Every year it's going to grow and grow, and people are going to be willing to spend more money," said Mills. "That's why we've got to push that price point gradually up."
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