Marco Gustafsson

Childhood Memories Inspire Digital Projects

The brand new picture books resource was officially launched a few days ago. The project called uTales has consolidated more than 1,000 professional authors and illustrators from all over the world.

uTales creator Nils von Heijne tells to dbReaders.com, that the idea of the project appeared after visiting his grandparent’s summer house.

“I found a few old picture books that I loved as a kid but had not seen in more than 20 years. I was amazed of how much of these books I actually remembered and it made me think how important picture books are for kids growing up. My next thought was, however, how sad it was that I had only a handful of them to inspire and educate me when I was little. So I decided to create something that would allow more children access to more great picture book”, Nils von Heijne says.

While building the uTales platform, Nils and a few friends started to invite authors and illustrators to become “uTalers” even before uTales was ready to be launched. Most of them were from the US, but now they are from all parts of the world. “The first uTalers have been very helpful in creating great books for uTales, but equally important in shaping the uTales concept. We listen a great deal to our readers and uTalers when planning the future of uTales”, – Nils continues.

The creators want to make uTales a safe place for kids and offer high-quality books, so all books are approved by their editorial panel (led by renowned editor Emma D. Dryden). The approval process is, however, much faster than at traditional publishers (days compared to months).

The project currently has 149 fully approved and published books in English, and more are awaiting approval in the next few days.

For now visitors can access all books on uTales.com and in the free uTales apps for iPad and iPhone.

“We’re aiming to change the publishing industry at its core and make it more social, engaging and modern. uTales is the first-ever community-driven and subscription-based platform for quality digital picture books. We’re changing the way picture books are created, bought and read,” – Nils says. “Our aim is simply to build something good; good for talented storytellers, good for parents, and good for kids. uTales is a new way to enjoy modern picture books, and in doing so also making the world a little better for kids, one story at a time,” – he adds in the end.

According to Mónica Coca, an author of kids books from PixelMoon, one of the main targets of the uTales project is an effective marketing.

“As an author I think that this kind of projects are the future and will bring to the light new talents. I like the idea of paying a small amount of money every month, as a plain rate, and have unlimited access to all the titles. I think uTales is going to be a huge community of readers if they know how to market this project properly. I’ll follow them closely! Children have the opportunity of reading an extensive catalog of books that otherwise would be difficult to find, parents have the reassurance that their kids will always choose a quality read and of course, this is a great chance for writers and illustrators to show their work,” – Mónica concludes.

Article Tags: Picture Books

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