Core Facts

• Book publishers in partnership with Kiwa Media, are bringing a number of popular children's picture books into the digital arena with QBook: the world's first touch-enabled and interactive read-along storybook.
• QBook is designed specifically for children for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (iOS)
• QBook is completely intuitive. Swipe-to-Read™ enables children to run their fingers across the words and letters and hear the story read aloud as the graphics pop and change color. Touch-to-Hear™ allows children to hear the individual word spoken and Touch-to-Spell™ enables the child to actually hear the word being spelt.
• Children and parents can customize each QBook by recording their own voice and coloring in every picture in the book.
• There are also games and puzzles included in the QBook, Wordfind and Memory Pairs
• Users can switch languages to explore the QBook story and puzzles in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Japanese and New Zealand Maori.
• QBook software tool allows for the production of 1000s of digital books in multiple languages
• QBook launched with Sebastian's Tail (Penguin) and Milly, Molly and the Tree Hut (MMH)
• Kiwa Media is in discussion with other major publishers including Harper Collins, Random House and Hachette
• Download and try QBook free - Get Seb's Tail Lite from the iTunes App Store

Quotes

Roger Shakes, Kiwa Media Vice President, Business Development

“Children’s books offer a real challenge for publishers in the digital arena. Children expect more from their e-book experience than a simple color PDF. QBook is highly interactive whist retaining the elements of the original book. We’ve worked hard to establish a set of features that enhance language and literacy development whilst providing an engaging and entertaining experience.”

"The iPad is the perfect device for QBook. Imagine a bestselling children’s book on the iPad and exploring all the QBook features. Parents can spend quality time with their child reading QBooks on an icon device that’s fully interactive. We believe we are bring stories to life with the best children’s book for the iPad."

Luke Tomes, VP Technology

"We’re extremely proud of the QBook format because it offers publishers a simple mechanism to migrate large numbers of their children’s titles onto the iPhone and iPad. All the touch enabled features that make QBook special are delivered using the QUT tool, which is the result over over a decades research and development."

"The QUT tool has been designed to produce books in multiple languages. Having touch enabled text in Japanese and Chinese is a real innovation and opens new markets for publishers and that’s really exciting."

Boilerplate Statements

QBook - Features and Functions

• Multiple languages - US English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, NZ Maori, German, Italian, Japanese and Chinese
• My Narration - record yourself reading and playback
• Swipe-to-Read - Swipe the words to hear the story read
• Touch-to-Hear - to hear individual words
• Touch-to-Spell - to hear the letters that spell each word
• Color the Page - save your new color picture  
• Wordfind Puzzle - search words from the story (iPhone only)
• Memory Pairs - match the pictures and complete the puzzle (iPhone only)
• Available on Window's 7, Symbian & Android end of 2010

About Kiwa Media

Kiwa Media is a New Zealand company that produces digital content, creates ICT solutions and develops, distributes and supports products and services for the digital entertainment and publishing industries.