I’ve been waiting for some time to write this blog entry,
expecting that creating apps would be easier as technology develops. But I decided to stop waiting. My experience over the last six months,
creating three different apps, is that developing an app takes a fair amount of knowledge and
a good deal of money as well. Apps are
great, and there are hundreds of highly useful self-help apps now available for
free or for very little money. Creating a self-help app is certainly something you might want to
consider—with your eyes wide open.
In the next few blog posts I’ll write about each of the three
apps I’ve help create, and maybe you’ll want to download them. Each one provided a different learning experience.
The most recent app I helped develop was based on a book I
wrote with Stew and Kim Leonard. The
book, Stewie the Duck Learns to Swim, teaches young kids water safety
rules. The book and the app were
published by the Stew Leonard Children's Charities, a foundation started by the Leonards after they lost their four-year-old
son to a drowning accident in their back yard pool.
The first thing we considered was whether the original book
should be an iBook or an app. There is a
big difference in cost and functionality, but the Leonard’s desire for a multi-media
experience to engage young children made the app the best choice. The app is best played on an iPad. It’s usable on an iPhone or iPod touch, but its’
hard to read on a small screen. It’s not available for the Android
platform.
Download the app if you get a chance, and certainly share it
with anyone who has small children. It's free, and it quite literally may save a child's life. The
apps shows many ways that books can come to life for kids, and includes a game within the book, a
separate “extra” matching game, a song, and of course the book can be narrated
or read by the user. A Parent’s section plays a video of the Leonard’s talking
about their loss, and also links to their foundation.
Even though the app has only been out a few weeks, it
already has thousands of downloads. The
Leonard’s highly successful grocery stores in CT and NY provide them with an
in-house publicity department, as well as numerous partnerships with
organizations like the YMCA and the CT Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. It was
developed by the Allen Group, a very professional group of developers who
brought the app in on time and within budget. The app is great, and pretty much everything went right because the foundation had the resources to get it all right.
So is there a lesson here for individual authors who want to
create a self-help app? Yes. One good option to help you develop an app is
to align yourself with a foundation or association. Apps are expensive, and unless they are
highly entertaining games, they will not likely make enough money to even cover the development costs. This type
of organization will also have the wherewithal to help market the app, a
difficult task for an individual or even a small press. Having your app funded
will allow you to offer it for free, and this will certainly help you reach
more people with your self-help message.
In my next post, I’ll talk about an app that teaches
social skills to children, and although it is free, it is designed to be the start of a “conversion
funnel” for a paid self-help web site.
