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Nosy Crow adds audio to picture books
Nosy Crow is to offer free digital audio readings of its print books through QR codes printed in its paperbacks. The Stories Aloud content will come to the UK in January.
Readers will be able to scan the QR code on the inside of Nosy Crow's forthcoming paperback picture books using a tablet, smartphone or iPod touch, and a reading, complete with sound effects, is streamed to their device.
The readings, which use children's voices, can also be downloaded from iTunes, Amazon or Google for 99p, meaning it can then be listened to without a 3G or WiFi connection.
The first books to include the technology will be released in January 2013: Pip and Posy: The Little Puddle and The Super Scooter by Axel Scheffler, The Princess and the Peas by Caryl Hart and Sarah Warburton, Dinosaur Dig! by Penny Dale, Hubble Bubble, Granny Trouble and Whizz Pop, Granny Stop! by Tracey Corderoy and Joe Berger, and Goldilocks and Just the One Bear by Leigh Hodgkinson. All future Nosy Crow picture book paperback releases will feature the readings.
Digital product and marketing manager Tom Bonnick said the technology was designed for readers who want to read alone, but haven't quite yet achieved the necessary reading competency. He said the publisher had been monitoring QR codes for a while, and saw this programme as an innovative and worthwhile way to use the technology.
Nosy Crow founder and m.d. Kate Wilson said it was a way of involving all booksellers in "the world of digital content": "Every bookseller who stocks one of our picture book paperbacks will be offering their customer free digital content when they sell a copy."
