Nosy Crow's Blog, page 189

#RateAnApp today!

Nosy Crow apps in the Interactive Kids Stories section of the App Store.

The App Store can be a fairly baffling place to navigate – not just for consumers, but also for developers like us, too. The best description I’ve heard is that it’s like “the world’s biggest shop, with the world’s smallest shop window”, which gets to the heart of the challenge rather neatly: there is a vast sea of content being squashed into a bathtub. How can any one app claim enough space and attention?

As any developer will tell you, the key to an app’s success is its visibility on the Store: its position in the charts, the promotional slots it receives from Apple (which can’t be bought – only earned on merit), and – most prized of all – a place on the front page. We’ve always been proud of how our apps have fared on the Store (and we’re incredibly grateful for the support they get from Apple), though, like any proud parent, we always want more for them.

I came across this interesting post on the VentureBeat website last week, which speculated on how the App Store’s ranking algorithm works. As the author notes, the exact formula isn’t public information, but an educated guess is that it weighs several discrete criteria: the number of downloads an app has received in the short and medium term, sales, engagement (that is, the number of times an app is actually used), and lastly, reviews and ratings.

And this is all a roundabout way of saying that reviews are incredibly important to us! In a place as crowded as the App Store, we are truly dependent on people who like our apps spreading the word. So if you’ve enjoyed a Nosy Crow app recently, we’d be incredibly grateful if you’d consider leaving a review and rating on the Store – it makes all the difference.

You can download our most recent app, Jack and the Beanstalk, on the App Store here, and watch the trailer below:

And don’t forget, our first ever app, The Three Little Pigs, is free all this week to celebrate its third birthday – you can download it here.

Win a Baby Aliens Got My Teacher notebook!

Last month we published Pamela Butchart’s HILARIOUS debut novel, Baby Aliens Got My Teacher – a brilliant, laugh-out-loud story (and Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Week) for 7+ year olds, featuring crisp twins, pea phobias, aliens-in-ears and fantastic inside illustrations by Thomas Flintham.

And today we’ve got some great Baby Aliens stuff to give away! You can win a pretty spiffy Baby Aliens notebook just by signing up to our Books Newsletter Here’s a look at the notebook in all its glory:

And you can sign up to our newsletter below (just press enter once you’ve filled in your details – you’ll receive an email to confirm your permission):

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By signing up to our mailing list, you’ll stay up-to-date with all our book news, and we’ll write to you about all of our upcoming titles, along with interviews with our authors and illustrators, information on upcoming events, and exclusive competitions and giveaways.

And If you want to find out what all fuss is about, you can read the first chapter of Baby Aliens Got My Teacher below:



Buy the book online.

The competition is open to residents in the UK and Ireland, and we’ll notify winners at the end of the week – good luck!

Download The Three Little Pigs for free from the App Store today!

Today we’re launching a very exciting promotion: Our groundbreaking first fairytale app, The Three Little Pigs, is exactly three years old today, and to celebrate, we’re making it free for the first time ever. You can download it from the App Store here.

Here’s the trailer for The Three Little Pigs:

The Huffington Post called the app “a masterpiece” and The New York Times described it as “one of the best renditions of the classic story in the app store.”

If you do download The Three Little Pigs, we’d really appreciate it if you’d consider leaving a review on the App Store.

And if you like the app, why not try some of our other fairytale apps! You can find our latest app, Jack and the Beanstalk, on the App Store here – it’s our best one yet. Here’s the trailer:

Download Jack and the Beanstalk from the App Store.

The app will be free for this week only – if you know someone who might like it, please share the news. Happy Birthday, Three Little Pigs – we hope you enjoy the story!

The Hampshire Picture Book Award

Today’s guest post is by Alison Burkert and introduces the Hampshire Picture Book Award.

We all know how wonderful picture books can be; the stories and illustrations within can inspire the imagination and foster a love of reading in even the most reluctant reader, so what better way to celebrate this fabulous medium than with a book award, where the children get to choose the winner.

Now in its 5th year, the Hampshire Picture Book Award aims to celebrate the wonderful variety of picture books available to children today. School Library Service Advisers and teachers put together a short list of four titles chosen from the huge range of picture books published during the previous year, which are then presented to the Year 1 pupils of our participating subscribing schools to pick their favourite. Previous winners of this award have included Emily Gravett’s Wolf Won’t Bite and Katie Cleminson’s Otto the Book Bear, and the latest shortlist offers our pupils a great selection to choose from too!

This year’s shortlist features Mini Grey’s Toys in Space, Courtney Dicmas’ Harold Finds a Voice, Alex Latimer’s Lion vs. Rabbit and Leigh Hodgkinson’s Troll Swap, published by Nosy Crow! Each of the books will be judged by the 145 participating schools, with approximately 7500 children contributing to the selection of the winner throughout the spring term.

The Hampshire Picture Book Award provides schools with a great opportunity to promote an enjoyment of reading to their pupils, and improve teachers’ knowledge of new books, getting everyone enthusiastic about brilliant books to share together. By participating in the award, children are able to develop a range of wider skills; learning to critically evaluate different materials and expanding on their listening and speaking skills in the class discussions that take place during the deliberation process. An excellent list of activity suggestions created by a Year 1 teacher, Michelle Aston, are also provided to participating schools to tie in with the wider curriculum, ensuring that schools can truly embrace and get the most from their involvement in the award. For example, some of the suggested activities for this year’s nominated title Troll Swap include using an art lesson to make troll puppets, or having a go at representing the movements of the trolls during PE – a great way to capture their imagination and the spirit of the book!

Best of all, the award has huge benefits for the pupils as individuals. Feedback from previous years has shown us that the children are immensely proud to have the responsibility of being judges, to have the power to vote for something themselves, rather than have the adults choose for them! This inevitably boosts their confidence and self-esteem in knowing that it is their opinion that really matters, and is really what makes this award so special.

Books shortlisted for the award are judged on the three Ss – style, story and stretch. From the layout of the book, to whether the pictures help to understand the story, to if the book stirs their imagination or makes them want to recommend it to others, the children are asked to consider a variety of different elements, comparing and contrasting them against the other nominees before selecting their favourite. Once all the schools have had their chance to submit their votes, we announce the winner in April, later hosting an extremely popular presentation ceremony, where the winning author is presented with their award in front of an audience of mini-judges from some of the participating schools. The presentation ceremony is a fantastic reward for the children who are involved in judging the award. Not only do they get to see the culmination of their hard work in selecting a winner, they also get to meet and listen to a successful author enthuse about reading and a love of books, inspiring the pupils and supporting the promotion of a reading culture in schools.

In Hampshire, we are hugely proud of our Picture Book Award. It is a great way of creating a buzz in our subscribing schools about books and reading, and allows children of all abilities to have access to inspirational and imaginative picture books. Children are great judges, they can quickly tell you whether they think something is good or bad, so who better to select a winner from a shortlist of picture books, than the audience for whom the books were created in the first place?!

We look forward to finding out what Hampshire’s children choose this year. Good luck to all our nominees!

Thank you, Alison, for sharing news about the Picture Book Award, and good luck, Leigh! You can find out more about the Award here, take a look inside Troll Swap below, and order the the book online here.

Two Nosy Crow titles shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize!

Today’s a very exciting day: the shortlists for the 2014 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize have been announced, and there are two Nosy Crow titles included!

Weasels, by Elys Dolan, and Open Very Carefully, by Nicola O’Byrne and Nick Bromley, have both been recognised in the Best Picture Book category (against some very strong competition: it’s a fantastic shortlist). It’s always great to have our titles recognised in this way, but particularly gratifying in the case of these two books, which are both by debut illustrators.

Here’s a look inside Weasels:



Order the book online.

And here’s a look inside Open Very Carefully:



Order the book online.

You can read the full shortlists for all of the categories here – who are you rooting for?

Nosy Crow in the Summer Reading Challenge

The Reading Agency have announced the titles included in this year’s Summer Reading Challenge, and Nosy Crow are very well represented!

The Challenge encourages children aged 4 to 11 to read six books during the long summer holiday, and every year helps gets three quarters of a million children into libraries to keep up their reading skills and confidence. Children can read whatever they like – fact books, joke books, picture books, audio books – just as long as they are borrowed from the library. There’s a different theme each year – this year’s challenge is Mythical Maze (illustrated by Sarah McIntyre), and there are two lists – one for younger children and one for older children – with 69 titles between them.

The younger collection includes a trio of fantastic Nosy Crow picture books – first on the list is the Greenaway-nominated Open Very Carefully, by Nicola O’Byrne and Nick Bromley – here’s a look inside:

The yet-to-be-published The Princess and the Presents, by Caryl Hart and Sarah Warburton, is also in the younger collection – here’s an early preview:

And Troll Swap by Leigh Hodgkinson has also been selected – here’s a look inside:

And that’s not all! Baby Aliens Got My Teacher, the hilarious debut novel by Pamela Butchart, has also been selected for the older collection. Here’s the first chapter:

You can find out more about the challenge at The Reading Agency’s website, here – if your family is taking part, good luck!

It’s Safer Internet Day

Jack with Flappy Bird

Today is Safer Internet Day, which is held to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world. Some interesting research into children’s use of mobile devices has been commissioned this year as part of the awareness campaign – you can read a bit more about it here.

We’ve written before about our approach towards protecting children’s privacy in our apps, but this seemed like a good opportunity to repeat it. It’s pretty simply really: our apps don’t carry any advertising, analytics, or any other method of covert data collection. Our information page (labelled ‘For Grown-ups’, and protected with a parental gate designed to prevent young children from accidentally accessing it) has an option to sign up to our Apps Mailing List (we use MailChimp to store the information securely), Like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter, and that’s all. Our story apps don’t use any form of in-app purchasing: once you’ve bought one of our apps once, you’ve got the whole thing – we won’t pester you to carry on paying for upgrades or add-ons. We have a “More Apps” page, with information about our other apps, and it’s also protected with the parental gate – we don’t take any form of payment through the apps themselves, and in order to buy any of our apps, you’ll need to visit the App Store and enter an iTunes password.

The parental gate in our Jack and the Beanstalk app.

We think getting this stuff right is incredibly important: we want parents, teachers and carers to feel comfortable letting children use our apps, and that means taking every precaution to ensure they can do so without being exposed to anything at all untoward. And we think that approach makes the most sense: we want those parents (and teachers, and carers) to recommend our apps to other people, and we know they’ll only do that if they feel the apps can be trusted.

So happy Safer Internet Day! Be careful online – and if you’d like to find out more about our award-winning apps, you can download our latest fairytale, Jack and the Beanstalk, on the App Store here.

Using our Jack and the Beanstalk app - a guest post by Polly Faber

Polly Faber got in touch with us on Twitter to say that her two sons were enjoying our new Jack and The Beanstalk app, and kindly agreed to write a blogpost for us about her family’s experience of using the app.

My boys, now 7 and 9, have grown up with Nosy Crow apps. That’s a pretty extraordinary idea isn’t it? We’ve had an iPad for about the same amount of time that Nosy Crow has been in existence – but when that’s almost half your lifetime, it becomes pretty hard to remember a time Before Apps. Those times already exist for Bill and Eddie as a hazily remembered Dark Ages. Eventually they won’t be remembered at all.

They use the iPad, not as an alternative to books and reading, but as an alternative to other sorts of screen consumption; watching television or playing on the wii/computer. All these whether I like it or not are considered high treats or rewards at the end of a day of Doing Things Their Mother Approves Of. And when it IS screen time, it is their choice as to what device they choose and what they do on it. So there’s a bit of competition; both between entertainment devices and with what to do with that device. iPad time for instance could mean watching the BBC iPlayer or endless slightly dodgy Youtube clips (Tango ads from the 90s are a current favourite) or playing a conventional game like ‘Temple Run’ or ‘Cut the Rope’. Or it can mean (maternal fingers crossed) a story app…

This is all a long winded way of saying Nosy Crow Apps have to be good, well more than that really – they have to be BRILLIANT if they’re going to be ‘chosen’ above all the other digital goodies on offer.

Cut to Friday evening, when the boys had elected to watch telly and I was having my own laptop based screentime on Twitter and saw the news that Jack and The Beanstalk had just come out. I announced this and I think it’s an indication of how much Nosy Crow get right that both boys TURNED AWAY from the TV and demanded I download it immediately.

There was then a certain amount of competition and tussling between the three of us as to who was going to get to play with it first. Unsurprisingly the 9 year old won, but we all pitched in.

They LOVED the section where Jack walks along to market and you can make the cow moo in answer to his observations. After several minutes of the two of them back and forth cow conversing in fits of giggles I was the first to get impatient to move on.

Initially Bill, 9 found the games within the story pretty straightforward. ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ had been billed as being a ‘step up’ in complexity from other Nosy Crow apps and is being sold in the 6 to 8 category of the App store. I’d say that was spot on, for as we progressed he had to pause and think again. Having approached it all with the slightly world weary air of one playing with things slightly beneath his dignity, he became increasingly involved.

There may have been a slightly unseemly tussle between us at one stage where I tried to solve a puzzle for him and he told me (rightly) to let him do it himself.

All in all, the three of us were wrapped up in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ for something like 40 minutes. Past bedtime in fact. 40 minutes of family story sharing and game playing and problem solving. That made them happy but it also makes me happy too; screen time with a bit of heart.

Of course the real test with any app is whether having played it through once they choose it AGAIN. Three days and four more goes later I think we can say Nosy Crow have made another hit. ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ is lots of fun; Nosy Crow apps, just like my boys, keep on advancing.

Thanks for sharing your experience with Jack and the Beanstalk, Polly! You can watch the trailer for Jack and the Beanstalk below, and download it from the App Store here.

Nosy Crow in six Independent Publishers Guild award shortlists!

Ahem.

No, no – I’m not slightly teary. Must be grit in my eye.

We have just heard the news that we have been shortlisted for the four Independent Publishers Guild Awards for which we entered, and more than any other publisher. And Tom and Ola have been shortlisted for the Young Independent Publisher of the Year Award. And Bounce, who are our partners in selling books to booksellers, are shortlisted for the Services to Independent Publishing Award.

We are shortlisted for the Children’s Publisher of the Year Award, together with Usborne, Barefoot and Walker. The judges said that the quality of entries this year was exceptional, and this is reflected in the four-strong shortlist. To be on this list again, and with publishers who are so much bigger and so much more established, feels remarkable to us. This is our third shortlisting for this prize – so we’ve been shortlisted each year we’ve been eligible to enter – and we won in 2012 and 2013.

The judges said: “Nosy Crow was the winner of this award in both 2012 and 2013, and is shortlisted again after another impressive year of sales growth and digital innovation. Judges particularly admired its outstanding international business, imaginative apps and beautifully produced books, as well as its efforts to build a strong consumer brand. It has had another superb year—to have got so far so quickly is a remarkable achievement.”

We are shortlisted for the International Achievement of the Year Award, together with Advance Materials, In Easy Steps. We we’ve been shortlisted for the prize in both years in which we’ve been eligible to enter, and we won it last year.

The judges said: “Nosy Crow completes what judges considered a strikingly strong shortlist after substantially growing its rights, export and international app business. It added new territories and pulled in more trade and consumer supporters in 2013, both through digital campaigns and tireless work at fairs and worldwide. Nosy Crow is fast becoming a powerhouse not just here but around the world. The international story is incredibly impressive.”

We were shortlisted for the Digital Publishing Award, together with Bloomsbury Publishing, Faber & Faber and Jordan Publishing. We won the Innovation prize in 2012 and were shortlisted for the Digital Publishing Award in 2013.

The judges said: “Nosy Crow completes what judges felt was an exceptionally strong category for its work with Apple apps and the launch of Stories Aloud, a bundling of free audio content with its picture book apps. Judges applauded the way Nosy Crow used digital technology to bring its content to life, and admired its download figures. Nosy Crow constantly tries interesting things, prepares them beautifully and executes them with consummate professionalism.”

We were shortlisted for the Digital Marketing Award, together with Constable & Robinson and Faber and Faber. We were shortlisted for the prize in both 2012 and in 2013.

The judges said: “Nosy Crow is shortlisted here for a third successive time after another strong year of online brand building and customer engagement. Across social media, mailing lists, websites, blogs, events and an ambassador programme, Nosy Crow tirelessly pursued every marketing avenue. Nosy Crow has a very impressive sense of community in all its digital worlds. It’s very cost-efficient too, which is important for all independent publishers.”

We are ridiculously proud of Tom and Ola for their Young Independent Publisher of the Year Award shortlistings. This is what the judges said about Tom: “Tom Bonnick, digital project and marketing manager at Nosy Crow, makes the shortlist for his energetic and imaginative work producing the publisher’s apps. Beyond that, judges were impressed by his energetic PR, events, social media, ambassadorial and speaking work. “He has the can-do attitude that is so important in an independent publisher. He seems happy and able to pick anything up and run with it, and has delivered some exceptional projects.”

This is what the judges said about Ola: “Ola Gotkowska, rights executive at Nosy Crow, is the second in a double act at the publisher on the shortlist. She makes the cut for her tireless work growing foreign rights business, especially in eastern Europe. “Ola has thrown herself into publishing, picked things up very quickly and achieved a great deal,” judges commented. “Like many young people at independent publishers she is doing much more than her simple job title suggests.”

The IPG says of the judging process, “The 2014 shortlists were compiled over two days of judging by panels of experts from across the publishing world. They feature 27 different companies and three individuals, between them representing all corners of independent publishing. Nosy Crow, Bloomsbury, Barefoot Books, Faber & Faber and Constable & Robinson each receive more than one nomination.”

Of the shortlists themselves, the IPG says, “Judges were very impressed with the high standard of entries across the Awards, especially in the categories for Children’s, Academic & Professional and Specialist Consumer Publisher of the Year, each of which have four shortlisted companies this year. The strength of the Digital Publishing and Digital Marketing Awards reflects the innovation and ambition of independent publishing in this sphere now, and judges also admired evidence of the sector’s rising talent within the Newcomer and Young Independent Publisher of the Year categories.”

Here are the full shortlists:

IPG Children’s Publisher of the Year

Barefoot Books, Nosy Crow, Usborne Publishing and Walker Books

The London Book Fair International Achievement Award

Advance Materials, In Easy Steps and Nosy Crow

Ingram Content Group Digital Publishing Award

Bloomsbury Publishing, Faber & Faber, Jordan Publishing and

Nosy Crow

Nielsen Digital Marketing Award

Constable & Robinson, Faber & Faber and Nosy Crow

IPG Young Independent Publisher of the Year

Tom Bonnick, Nosy Crow; Ola Gotkowska, Nosy Crow;

and David Henderson, Top That! Publishing

GBS Services to Independent Publishers Award

Attwooll Associates, Bounce Sales and Marketing,

Compass Independent Publishing Services,

Faber Factory, powered by Constellation and Faber Factory Plus

IPG Trade Publisher of the Year

John Blake, Constable & Robinson and Summersdale

Frankfurt Book Fair Academic & Professional Publisher of the Year

Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, Edward Elgar Publishing, Liverpool University Press and SAGE

Librios Education Publisher of the Year

Bright Red Publishing and Crown House Publishing

PrintOnDemand Worldwide Specialist Consumer Publisher of the Year

Absolute Press, How2Become, Quiller Publishing and Search Press

The Nick Robinson Newcomer Award

Critical Publishing, Fine Feather Press and Sedition Publishing

IPG Diversity Award

Accent Press, Barefoot Books and Phonic Books

One more Award, for the overall IPG Independent Publisher of the Year, will be chosen from a shortlist made up of the winners of the five Publisher of the Year categories.

IPG Chief Executive Bridget Shine said: “We are delighted to honour the companies and individuals on our shortlists this year, and proud of the examples they give of the strength and diversity of independent publishing in the UK. We congratulate them all, and thank the many IPG members who submitted entries. Competition for the Awards has been exceptionally strong this year, and we thank our judges for their careful deliberations and astute judgments. We look forward to celebrating our eighth annual set of winners—and the success of all independent publishers—at the end of February.”

It's February Publication Day!

It’s our February publication day! We’ve got a fantastic selection of titles out this month – here’s what you can find in shops now.

We’re publishing Cutie Pie looks for the Easter Bunny! by Jannie Ho – another adorable board book in the Tiny Tabs series. Designed for the smallest of hands, these robust, colourful books will delight little readers again and again. With simple stories, repeated refrains and a host of faces to spot and name, they are the perfect books to engage and entertain the very young. You can buy the book online here.

We’re releasing a board book edition of Books Always Everywhere by Jane Blatt and Sarah Massini – a joyful celebration of the physical book in all its glory! A simple, reassuring text is brought to life by delightful and nostalgic illustrations of babies and toddlers discovering the new, magical world of books – it’s a triumph. Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

Toot Goes to Dinosaurland by the incredible duo Catherine and Laurence Anholt is out today – a fantastic story featuring an adorably inquisitive new character – Toot. Toot’s little car has a most unusual feature – a magical sat nav system. So, when he presses the special button, off he zooms on an adventure with his trusty toy puppy for company. And where will he go first? To Dinosaurland, of course! Here’s a look inside the book:



Buy the book online.

We’re publishing Captain Beastlie’s Pirate Party by Lucy Coats and Chris Mould – a funny, disgusting story with gorgeous artwork that’s perfect for boys who like bogeys (and, of course, anyone who likes pirates!). Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

It’s publication day for the first paperback edition of the incredible Open Very Carefully, by Nick Bromley and Nicola O’Byrne – one our most successful hardback titles last year, with a Greenaway nomination to its name already. It’s a lovely book for sharing and discussing how words and pictures work – with a very clever story and stunning use of the physical page. Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

The first paperback edition of Weasels by Elys Dolan is out today – another Greenaway-nominated picture book that was also shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize. It’s almost impossible to put into words how original and witty this book is: imagine spoof James Bond meets Scaredy Squirrel if you can. It’s packed with cross-over humour to amuse kids and big kids too. The art is stylish yet accessible and full of details for poring over time and time again – there’s always a new joke to find! Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

And we’re publishing the first paperback edition of Pip and Posy: The Big Balloon by Axel Scheffler, the fourth wonderful volume in the Pip and Posy series. Full of comfort and gentle humour, these books are perfect for reading to toddlers. Here’s a look inside:



Buy the book online.

All of our paperback picture books come with a free Stories Aloud reading, giving you a digital audio version of each book, available to stream online.

And there’s also some great new fiction out today! It’s publication day for Zoe’s Rescue Zoo: The Silky Seal Pup, by Amelia Cobb – the latest instalment in the fantastic Zoe’s Rescue Zoo series. Zoe is very worried because the rescue zoo might have to close down. She MUST find a way to save it or the new baby seal will lose his home. And so will Zoe… Here’s the first chapter:



Buy the book online.

And finally, Space Pirates: Mutiny, by Jim Ladd is out today – the third thrilling Space Pirates book. Sam and the crew of the Jolly Apollo are still searching for Planet X, where they hope to find Sam’s parents and a whole load of treasure! This time they are joined by a new pirate. Goldstar is flashy and takes them to Pirate Paradise, before making them get rid of poor old Captain Comet. It’s mutiny! But Goldstar is not all that he seems… A fast- paced, funny series with gags galore, this is a chase through space that will have you cackling from start to finish! Here’s the first chapter:



Buy the book online.

Congratulations to all of today’s authors and illustrators!