uTales, the online world of picture books for children, does things a little differently. Instead of getting titles into the app sphere on an app-by-app basis, Swedish-based uTales runs its operations under an umbrella of community.
“I guess you could say we have a little bit of Spotify’s or Netflix’s subscription idea, a little bit of Tom’s Shoes’ idea for having products create social good, and a little bit of Threadless’s idea for community-driven production – all in one,” says uTales founder Nils Von Heijne.
A subscription to uTales costs $9.99 per month, which gives full access to the company’s entire library, currently comprised of 148 books. And that number is increasing quickly, as uTales has received six new books in the past six days that are awaiting approval, and with another three titles receiving approval in that same span.
On the development side, uTales is committed to offering a platform for building talent, which means that authors and illustrators can expect streamlined creation software. Von Heijne states that users don’t need any experience with animation, sound design or web/app development to be able to publish with uTales. “We’re lowering the thresholds for talented writers and illustrators to have their stories go digital,” he says.
Here’s how the create tool works: the author gives the book a title and begins building the book on the Web site, adding new pages, entering text, uploading background and foreground images, the latter of which can be given ready-made animation or sound effects from dropdown lists. Upon completion, the book is submitted for approval, with the author setting the price. Authors can also choose if they would like to support Pencils of Promise, a partner of uTales.
When asked to name some titles which he thinks particularly harness the potential of the uTales platform, Von Heijne picks The Ugly Duckling by Hazel Mitchell, “a modernized take on the classic story,” and The Tortoise and the Hare by Jonay Bacallado Martin. “I like [Martin’s book] because of the fact that Jonay is not an established picture book illustrator. He is an illustrator/animator who worked on the movie Avatar, and it is great to see such a talent now getting the opportunity to do picture books.”
What’s different about uTales is that it thinks of its titles in relation to another, as a collective library: to Von Heijne and his team, it makes more sense for all the books to be in the same place so when a reader (he calls them “uTalers”) finds a book he or she likes, the next book is right there to be read next. “Our idea is simply that it makes more sense for readers to access an entire library of picture books in one place rather than having to ‘jump from app to app,’ ” he says.
Plans for making each individual book app available for download haven’t been decided. Von Heijne says, “It is simply a question of whether there is a risk of such PDFs being shared without compensating the uTaler or not.”
But the app-by-app model may not even be an issue: according to uTales, over 200 people have signed up for the free subscription trial in the past few days. In a changing app landscape, the app-by-app model certainly isn’t set in stone, and uTales is certainly making a case for a community-based model.
