Some cool facts that book publishers should be made aware of is that there are now 250 million iPads out in the world now. It used to be that you wanted to stretch your reach, you would need to publish on the iPhone to reach the 400 million iPhone users and only 50 million iPad users. But now that we're reaching more and more iPad users, our content won't be compromised. That's great news for us as we try to create experiences only on the iPad that would simply be futile on the smaller screens of the iPhones and iTouches.

The other thing that is very exciting is that Apple has reported that there are now 1,000 schools participating in a program to award one iPad per child  in their schools. So if we continue to provide great content aimed at children, we'll have even more eyeballs directed at our products.

Some other news in the news is Adobe. Back before the Flash debacle between Adobe and Apple, Adobe was creating apps using their software. And then Apple lowered the iron fist on third party software developers and told them only xcode would be allowed to make apps. Well the reigns have loosened and now you'll see more and more companies that are building software frameworks that sit on top of xcode. One of which is a new software title called, Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Create single, custom iPad applications for a one-time payment of just $395. Leading publishers and companies are already using Adobe® Digital Publishing Suite to deliver their next generation content—and soon freelancer designers and small design studios can too. Starting next month, create dynamic reading experiences, attract new audiences, and broaden your business capabilities. With new Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition, you can use the classical design qualities of print, add interactivity, and draw on your imagination to develop engaging content for the iPad—all within the Adobe InDesign® CS5.5 software you already know and love. More to come when we hear more about this.

If you don't know by now, we use Corona SDK to build our apps. The first one, My Basketball Stats was built directly in xcode using Objective-C. The last one, "Opening Rome" and the new one, yet to be released, "Hippos Name" was built using a combination of "Kwik" extension for Photoshop and Corona SDK. Both work very well together. Corona gives us the flexibility to create special effects for our app that would have taken months to figure out in Xcode alone. Granted this process isn't entirely easy. We've had some hiccups along the way we hope to resolve soon, so that you can see our great new book, "Hippos Name!"

All in all, it's an exciting time for all of us involved in technology and publishing. We're off to a great start in 2011, and 2012 promises to be even better! Keep coming back for more info. Enjoy!

Okay, now that you've got some of the logistics out of the way, I have to throw some more at you.
This blog is for anyone who doesn't have the foggiest where to start, is an author or designer and pretty much anyone who wants to or has always wanted to create their own app. In essence become a software studio. That's what I did, and I'll show you how too!

I have little to no background in coding aside from HTML 3.0. But if I see something that is popular and alows me the flexibility to publish something that I've created, I'm going to do my best to figure out how to do it.

Today it's easier than ever to create your own app without the need of a programmer. But that wan't the case in 2009 and 2010 when building apps was in its infancy stage. Since I'm not a programmer, I found one on Craig's list in my area and hired him. He did a great job coding my first app, MyBasketballStats which is available on the app store. I believe it took between 3-6 months to complete. For my second app, I wanted to have more creative control, decrease the production schedule, and save money. I thought about going the route of someone else publishing it for me and their are lots of companies out there that do that, but their terms didn't seem that attractive to me. I wanted complete ownership without paying any royalties to anyone, aside from Apple of course. (By the way, Apple takes 30% off the top. More on that later).

Back in June of this year (2011), my old college roommate asked me how to start making apps. I told him about the Apple Developer program he had to buy ($99), and that he had to own a Mac ($999 -$2,000), and that he needed to learn Objective-C. Although he was a programmer, he didn't know Objective-C and asked me if I had ever heard of Corona. I checked it out and after reading what they were about, my jaw dropped. Yes I reached Nirvana that day. Thanks Mike!

Corona is from a small but quickly growing company called Ansca Mobile in Palo Alto, CA. Started by two ex-Adobe engineers who worked on Flash-lite. They started their company just this year and have a huge following. More on them later. Corona is much like X-Code, but it uses .lua instead of Objective-C as a language to write code. Lua is very easy to learn and was made for newbies and professionals too. In fact, do you know that little app called Angry Birds was built using .lua.
With .lua, you can drastically cut your coding down to minutes in what would normally take weeks! I'll cover Corona more later. So here is the nitty gritty. Corona will help you make apps not only for the iPhone, iPad, and iTouch, but also Android apps, the Nook, and other tablets in the market today. So your book/or app can be seen by twice as many people as you thought possible.

I also recommend using Kwik, which is a Photoshop extension. It's great for anyone who doesn't want to write a line of code and still produce their very own interactive book or comic book. Great tech support and new features added all the time. My first book and second app in my store was created using Kwik, Opening Rome!

If you want to do this, you can. And here's your shopping list.

Corona works on Windows too but you will need to have a Mac to compile it in X-Code before you upload it to Apple. Here's the list of items you'll need.

Apple Developer Membership  ($99)* Yearly
Apple Mac, ($699-$2,000)
Corona Subscription ($199 -$349)* Yearly
Kwik ($79)
Photoshop (check prices)
Word Processor (check prices)

Nick Nebelsky, is CEO and Creative Director at Intense Media, LLC. Intense Media focuses on products that entertain, enrich, and empower their customers. They create and publish their own line of books, ebooks, CDs, and software for the iPhone and iPad devices. You can reach them at nick@intensemedia.com or www.intensemedia.com.

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