Picklets 1.1 is now live in the App Store in Canada, US, UK, EU countries and Switzerland in addition to Australia and New Zealand.

The Picklets app is a free download.

The 3 Baddest Bandits of the Wild Wild West by Ben Hutchings and Mummy in the house! by Peter Nishitani are available for in-app purchase at $0.99 (Canada, US, Australia), £0.69 in the UK, €0.79 in Europe or CHF1.00 in Switzerland.

You can read a fully interactive sample of these picklets in the app before you download or pay for anything. How good is that?

http://picklets.net

It’s happening this Wednesday Melbourne time. Sometime on Wednesday Picklets 1.1 will go live. (It’s been approved, just fixing a few web things now.)

The price of content will also drop to $0.99 (that’s the Australian price, at least) and for the first time the app will be available in US and UK App Stores (plus others).

So it will be properly launched. Which is quite exciting for me.

But it’s fixed now, so that’s cool, right?

On the off-chance that someone out there on the internet downloaded the Picklets app last week, tried to preview ‘bandits’ or ‘mummy’ noticed the failure and was curious enough about it to track down this blog, I’d like to apologise and kindly ask that they try it again, because it’s working. For now.

I broke it when I pushed some changes relating to what I call ‘fullsize’ content, which is part of the next release of the Picklets app. Which app will have a lovely new iPad interface, and be just generally a better picklet reading experience. The images look sweet. I can’t wait.

A media release went out this week pitching Picklets as “A new opportunity for animators, illustrators and authors to get digital”. From the release;

Could we lose more than just the feel and smell of a book as we move to reading digitally? Have you considered what will happen to the traditions of pop-up books, comics and children’s picture books in the digital world? Picklets is an e-publishing platform for interactive picture books that blends reading and animation to replicate these much-loved book forms for digital natives.

Here’s the pdf version of the full Picklets Press Release.

My thanks to  @McFifi for driving it.

This is something that I’d like to do for each picklet published in the Picklets app.

The concept is to provide a 30 second grab of content/author bio, equivalent to the in-app picklet preview, but intended for embedding in web pages on picklets.net and the author’s own web sites.

‘Mummy in the House!’ author Peter Nishitani skyped in from early morning Boston and Ben Hutchings and Arran McKenna did a live reading of ‘The 3 Baddest Bandits of the Wild Wild West’;

My thanks to all who joined the celebration.

Onwards to version 2 and new picklets!

If you’re interested in making picklets get in touch with stewarthaines@gmail.com.

Download the Picklets app now from the App Store.

An introduction for writer/illustrators interested in making interactive picture books for the Picklets app on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

• Where: Wheeler Centre Workshop Space Boardroom, 176 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
• When: 6:00 6:15 – 7:30pm Wednesday April 18
• How much: Free

Bring a laptop if you have one.

RSVP to stewarthaines@gmail.com

UPDATED: Start time changed to 6:15pm and we’ll be in the Boardroom. Wheeler Centre reception will direct you.

Picklets is in the Australian App Store and we’re having a party!

Join us at LOOP bar next Monday evening to celebrate the launch of the app and the first two picklets published;

‘The 3 Baddest Bandits of the Wild Wild West’ by Ben Hutchings with Arran McKenna and Jase Harper, and

‘Mummy in the House!’ by Peter Nishitani.

• 6:30 – 8pm Monday April 16
• LOOP
• 23 Meyers Place, Melbourne

There’s a Facebook event for the Picklets launch.

It’s here*.

Picklets version 1 is now available as a free download in the Australian App Store.

After you download it to your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad you’ll be able to read previews of;

• ‘The 3 Baddest Bandits of the Wild Wild West’ by Ben Hutchings with Arran McKenna and Jase Harper, and
• ‘Mummy in the House!’ by Peter Nishitani.

You can buy them for AU$1.99 each.

This is gonna be great.

* for certain values of ‘here’