App tour: between the pages

Yesterday's post about the World of Richelle Mead app discussed browsing and buying the books. But what happens then? Once you've purchased a copy of any of the books, or chosen to read a sample of one of them, a pretty copy of the book will open up for you. You can swipe left to turn the page, or jump forwards and backwards using the progress bar at the bottom.



If you look above, you'll see a red seal. Seals like this are placed in the margins throughout each of the books. If you click the seals, you'll gain access to the information hidden behind the page. These can be notes from me, behind-the-scenes information about characters and places mentioned within the text, photos, videos, and any community interactions that have been added to that location in the text. Red "R" seals indicate notes directly from me, purple "i" seals indicate other information, and community seals let you know when someone else has tweeted a particular passage or posted it to Facebook. Here's what it looks like when a seal is opened.



If you love something you've read, you can post about it directly to Facebook or Twitter. The app FAQ explains how and also answers a lot of common questions about availability and whatnot with the app. More questions will be added to their FAQ as time goes on, and the "app" tag below will take you to the rest of the app posts I've done.

One question that comes up a lot is if people who've purchased digital copies of the books in the past will be able to read the app editions. Unfortunately, the answer is no. A helpful way that it was explained to me is that the app is sort of functioning as its own e-reader. So, you can't import other e-copies, any more than you could read a Kindle book inside a Nook. Sorry about that! This goes for past copies from the iTunes store as well. So, if you want to read the enhanced versions of the books, you'll have to buy (or re-buy) them in the app. If you aren't able to buy new copies, you can wait for new books to come out. And remember, you can still use the other features of the apps for free, like the character section, without buying anything.

Tomorrow's release day!