27,000 Horrible Kids’ Apps & Other Digital Book World Dispatches

By Jason Boog 

GalleyCat and eBookNewser have been covering the Digital Book World conference in New York City all week. Here are a few dispatches from another busy day.

Rukus Media CEO Rick Richter studied the world of children’s books apps in the “Emerging Models for Children’s Book Publishing” panel. Richter said that there are about 30,000 kids apps in Apple’s App Store and about 27,000 horrible kids apps. “There are a lot of kids books out there, but in the print world there are retailers and book clubs that curate the space … Without naming names, we do not have that curator in the app world. We need that curator that cares about apps for kids, that cares about quality for kids. That is our biggest challenge in the app space.”

In the Will Territorial Sales Become Obsolete? panel, Profile Books president Andrew Franklin, illustrated a problem with global eBook sales as Australian publishers struggle charge higher prices for books available on Amazon. He explained: “Australian publishers have worked very hard marketing popular books in their region and they are losing margin as the books are shipped in from overseas because Australian consumers are shopping from Amazon.com.”

Finally, during a morning statistical session, a Verso and Digital Book World study revealed a promising statistic about the future of independent bookstores: nearly 81 percent of eReader owners would ‘likely’ buy eBooks online from indie bookstores.