Technology company Demibooks has partnered with publisher Kane Miller to form a new children's book imprint called InkPad Press. InkPad, which will be doing approximately 20 titles per year, with a focus on picture books, will release titles traditionally in print, while allowing authors to use Demibooks's Composer platform, a software program for creating digitally enhanced versions of books.
Composer is a platform authors can currently pay to use on their own, and it allows creators to add everything from voiceover to animation to sound to their books. Currently Composer is set up to create enhanced e-books for the iPad only. While Demibooks will continue to work with self-published authors and others who wish to use Composer, InkPad will bring the capabilities of Composer to a list curated and handled by Kane Miller's staff. Kane Miller is an imprint of Educational Development Corp., which earlier this fall made an investment in Demibooks.
InkPad, which will feature fiction and nonfiction titles for kids up to age eight, has some projects in the pipeline and will start accepting sbumissions in the early spring. The imprint is on target to publish its first titles in the fall of 2012. A rep at Kane Miller also said that, while submissions will be traditionally accepted as the imprint gets off the ground, through agents, the hope is that, down the line, InkPad will begin to release some of the best self-published work being funneled through the Composer platform.
