The Book Creator story
It begins with a child reluctant to read.
It's 2011 and Dan Amos and his wife, children's author Ally Kennen are concerned. Their 4-year-old son (later diagnosed as dyslexic) is making slow progress with the school reading scheme.
After many frustrating evenings it struck them - wouldn't it be better if they could make their own books about the very things he loves? Books about Star Wars, books about pets, books about family.
At the same time an iPad enters the household and they wonder how do we get our kids as engaged with reading as they are with the iPad?
All the pieces were in place....
Fast forward a few months and the app is nearly ready.
At this point, Dan has made a tool to create books with his kids. He also believes it could be an effective app for authors who want to self-publish their books. There could be a market for this.
Whisper it quietly - it's not yet an educational app.
Roll on September 2011 and the app launches. From day one, teachers start using it in their classrooms, praising its simplicity and suggesting ways it could be improved.
By day two Dan realises he's built an educational app! And we haven't looked back since.
Book Creator has reached no.1 on the iTunes App Store in 90+ countries. Over 200 million ebooks have been created with our app worldwide. It's one of the essential apps for schools using iPads.
In 2017 the app expanded further, launching out in the Chrome browser and finding a new audience among Chromebook schools and those not using iPads. The web version of Book Creator continues to grow and push the boundaries of creativity in technology.
Thank you for being part of our story.
Timeline
My Story Book app in development
Dan Amos begins coding his first ever iPad app. Check out the sneak preview in this rare video from Dan - the app in development even before it had become "Book Creator".
Book Creator launches on the App Store
After 6 months of development and beta testing, Dan was finally able to release Book Creator v1.5 to the App Store. Check out our first ever press release, and our first ever review (on the same day!), from Silvia Tolisano.
Book Creator v1.9 - Add audio
Book Creator iPad app just stepped up its game. Can now record audio into ePub books you create. Awesome. #tichat #ipaded @ldelia @PGRoom209
— Dan Callahan (@dancallahan) January 7, 2012
Book Creator v2.2 - Add video
You can now add video to the app too (and rotate images). Note the change of icon too?
Book Creator v2.4 - Work collaboratively
A big update this one, making the most of features introduced to iOS 6.
- Combine books
- Export as PDF
- Add hyperlinks and rich formatting
Book Creator Free released
We celebrated reaching 1 million ebooks made with Book Creator by releasing a free version of the app. This would help teachers trial the app before buying. The app was redesigned and our icon was tweaked again.
Book Creator 3.0
We redesigned the app again to fit iOS 7, which was a big departure from the style of iOS 6. This release brought the Pen Tool to the app.
Book Creator comes to Android
After months of development and beta testing, Book Creator for Android was released to join the Google Play for Education bandwagon. The app had a slightly different design and features from the iPad version.
Book Creator 3.1 - export as video
After all that work on the Android app, it had been a long time since we'd update the iPad version. This was a huge update, as it allowed people to share books publicly in video format - ideal for uploading to YouTube or to a class blog.
The @bookcreatorapp just gave us the ability to save a book as a movie on iPad. Wow, this is going to change everything! #ade2014
— Holly Clark (@HollyClarkEdu) July 16, 2014
Book Creator for Android v2.6
The app was redesigned to fit Google's Material Design experience. There were more features added plus the app was translated into 18 languages, to acknowledge and support our growing international audience.
Book Creator wins Bett Award
We were thrilled to win the award for the best educational app at the 2015 Bett Awards. We spent a few days at the annual Bett Show in London and Book Creator was also featured at the Google stand during the conference.
WE WON! #bettawards pic.twitter.com/37mUsFEAZ4
— Book Creator Team (@BookCreatorApp) January 21, 2015
10 million books
We reached an amazing milestone in March 2015 - 10 million ebooks made with Book Creator for iPad. To celebrate, we gave away copies of the app for free!
Book Creator for Windows launches
This would be the first time that Book Creator could be used on a device other than a tablet. We released Book Creator for Windows as a free app and it remained free, as it didn't have the same depth of features as the iPad version.
Introducing Ambassadors
We've always reached out to educators when developing the app, so we realised it was time to start a closer relationship with those teachers who really know Book Creator, use it regularly and help spread the word. We now have over 1,000 Book Creator Ambassadors across the world.
Book Creator 4.0 - Comics!
Probably the biggest update we've done to date, this introduced a whole new element to making books, with comic book styles and templates added to the mix. KAPOW!!
Comic competition
To help promote the launch of comic books in Book Creator, we ran a worldwide competition for schools, and had a comic book legend judge the entries. We gave away some great prizes too.
Free webinars
We teamed up with Book Creator Ambassador Monica Burns to put together a series of interactive webinars for people wanting to get to grips with Book Creator. These should prove to be an invaluable resource in the future.
New website
A website redesign was long overdue. The main aim was to make all our case studies more accessible to teachers. Plus we needed to make the site work more nicely across all devices.
5 years on the App Store
We celebrated 5 years in the App Store with a flash sale of the app, reducing it for a week.
Book Creator 5.0 - Reading mode
We introduced a reading mode which allows you to preview the book in-app, and also have Siri read your book to you in a variety of different languages.
Book Creator One
We renamed our 'Book Creator Free' app to Book Creator One, to help highlight the fact that this is a demo version of Book Creator, and you can only create one book, to try out the app.
Book Creator 5.1 - Publish and read online
Perhaps the best update to Book Creator for iPad yet, we built and online platform reading books and enabled one-tap publishing from the iPad to the web.
Book Creator for Chrome goes live
After launching in beta during ISTE 2017, we publicly released the app later in the summer, finally bringing Book Creator to laptops and desktop computers—pretty much any device running in the classroom running the Chrome browser.
Windows and Android apps retired
After launching the Chrome app, it no longer made sense to run so many independent versions of the app. Book Creator for Windows and Book Creator for Android were removed from sale.
Real-time collaboration comes to Book Creator
Initially just for our Chrome app, this update means students can now work on the same book together at the same time, from different devices.
'Read to me' comes to Chrome
In our iPad app, ‘Read to me’ is incredibly popular already – it was used over 600,000 times in March 2018 alone. Now it's on our web app too.
New series of ebooks
We published the first of our series of 'Using Book Creator in the classroom' ebooks, written for educators, by educators (in Book Creator!).
Book Creator wins AASL award for best website
The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) chose Book Creator as one of the best websites for teaching and learning in 2018.
You can now embed content in Book Creator
YouTube videos, Google Docs, creations from other apps – you name it. With this update you can bring all of this content into Book Creator for iPad or Chrome. Let the App Smashing commence!
Google for Education Partner
In recognition of all the ways in which Book Creator integrates with Google, we became an official Google Partner.
Publish whole libraries
With a few clicks you can now publish a collection of your books online. This led us to curate some amazing example libaries from classrooms across the world.
AutoDraw comes to Book Creator!
A massive creativity update - new pen styles, magic ink, a fill tool, emojis, but best of all - the amazing AutoDraw from Google AI!
230+ accessibility features added
We take digital equality seriously. These enhancements allow for video captioning, dictation in multiple languages, and keyboard navigation, plus much more.
Book Creator now works on Microsoft Edge
We added support for the MS Edge browser, which means Book Creator is fully cross platform, working in Chrome, Safari, and Edge.
You can now use Book Creator online in 10 different languages
We translated Book Creator so it now works in 10 languages (including English). We hope this will really help with remote learning throughout the world, especially where students are trying to get to grips with Book Creator from their homes during lockdown.
Book Creator wins EdTech “Cool Tool” Award
Book Creator picked up another award, winning the EdTech Cool Tool Award 2020 from EdTech Digest. Book Creator beat the competition to be the winner in the ‘Authoring Tools Solution’ category.
Book Creator certification
We launched a self-paced training programme inside Book Creator to help you get up to speed and become a Book Creator Certified Author
The 'Discover' section in Book Creator
Introducing the new Discover tab in Book Creator, with specially curated books, libraries, templates and more.
Integration with the Noun Project
The Noun Project is the most comprehensive collection of icons in the world, with over 2 million beautifully crafted icons grouped together in easy to search sets. And now these are all available in Book Creator!
You can now create with templates in Book Creator!
All new templates in Book Creator! Choose from 18 beautifully designed preset themes to create amazing books.
Book Creator named Winner of the 2021 Best Remote Learning Tools
Tech & Learning named Book Creator as a Winner of the 2021 Best Remote & Blended Learning Tools for Primary (K-6). Reward for all our efforts during the pandemic.
Common Sense Selection for Learning for 2021
Common Sense Education updated their review of Book Creator, giving it 5/5 stars and choosing Book Creator as a Common Sense Selection for Learning for 2021.
At the same time, we worked with them to release three activity books based on their Digital Citizenship curriculum.
Remixing and analytics
Two things – you can now make your books available for other teachers to download and edit. PLUS, find out how many times your book has been read across the world!
Book Creator turns 10 years old!
Wow - 10 years flies by! We celebrated with a big giveaway, and shared reflections from educators that we've worked with over the years.
The Book Creator App Store
We launched a brand new integrated app store in Book Creator to give you access to app such as Canva, Bitmoji and Giphy. More to come!
Book Creator appoints new CEO – Lainey Franks
Founder Dan Amos has appointed Lainey Franks as CEO and will now move into the role of Chief Product Officer.
Foundational Literacy Templates
Following the appointment of our new Head of Literacy Learning , Randi Ahrndt, we published a plethora of new templates to double down on our commitment to improving literacy.
LMS integrations and more
Recent updates have been focused on behind the scenes tweaks to improve the school and district experience. This culminated in a big update to improve LMS integration with Book Creator.
Book Creator launches on the App Store
After 6 months of development and beta testing, Dan was finally able to release Book Creator v1.5 to the App Store. Check out our first ever press release, and our first ever review (on the same day!), from Silvia Tolisano.
January 2012
Book Creator v1.9 - Add audio
"Book Creator iPad app just stepped up its game. Can now record audio into ePub books you create. Awesome." - @dancallahan 9:26 PM - 6 Jan 2012
July 2012
Book Creator v2.2 - Add video
You can now add video to the app too (and rotate images).
January 2013
Book Creator v2.4 - Work collaboratively
A big update this one, making the most of features introduced to iOS 6.
- Combine books
- Export as PDF
- Add hyperlinks and rich formatting
August 2013
Book Creator Free released
We celebrated reaching 1 million ebooks made with Book Creator by releasing a free version of the app. This would help teachers trial the app before buying. The app was redesigned and our icon was tweaked again.
October 2013
Book Creator 3.0
We redesigned the app again to fit iOS 7, which was a big departure from the style of iOS 6. This release brought the Pen Tool to the app.
April 2014
Book Creator comes to Android
After months of development and beta testing, Book Creator for Android was released to join the Google Play for Education bandwagon. The app had a slightly different design and features from the iPad version.
July 2014
Book Creator 3.1 - export as video
After all that work on the Android app, it had been a long time since we'd update the iPad version. This was a huge update, as it allowed people to share books publicly in video format - ideal for uploading to YouTube or to a class blog.
January 2015
Book Creator for Android v2.6
The app was redesigned to fit Google's Material Design experience. There were more features added plus the app was translated into 18 languages, to acknowledge and support our growing international audience.
January 2015
Book Creator wins Bett Award
We were thrilled to win the award for the best educational app at the 2015 Bett Awards. We spent a few days at the annual Bett Show in London and Book Creator was also featured at the Google stand during the conference. Read the blog post
March 2015
10 million books
We reached an amazing milestone in March 2015 - 10 million ebooks made with Book Creator for iPad. To celebrate, we gave away copies of the app for free! Read the blog post
June 2015
Book Creator for Windows launches
This would be the first time that Book Creator could be used on a device other than a tablet. We released Book Creator for Windows as a free app and it's since remained free, as it doesn't have the same depth of features as the iPad version.
August 2015
Introducing Ambassadors
We've always reached out to educators when developing the app, so we realised it was time to start a closer relationship with those teachers who really know Book Creator, use it regularly and help spread the word. We now have over 1,000 Book Creator Ambassadors across the world.
October 2015
Book Creator 4.0 - Comics!
Probably the biggest update we've done to date, this introduced a whole new element to making books, with comic book styles and templates added to the mix. KAPOW!!
April 2016
Comic competition
To help promote the launch of comic books in Book Creator, we ran a worldwide competition for schools, and had a comic book legend judge the entries. We gave away some great prizes too. Find out who the winners were
May 2016
Free webinars
We teamed up with Book Creator Ambassador Monica Burns to put together a series of interactive webinars for people wanting to get to grips with Book Creator. These should prove to be an invaluable resource in the future. Webinar archive on YouTube
September 2016
New website
A website redesign was long overdue. The main aim was to make all our case studies more accessible to teachers. Plus we needed to make the site work more nicely across all devices.
November 2016
Book Creator 5.0 - Reading mode
We introduced a reading mode which allows you to preview the book in-app, and also have Siri read your book to you in a variety of different languages.
April 2017
Book Creator One
We renamed our 'Book Creator Free' app to Book Creator One, to help highlight the fact that this is a demo version of Book Creator, and you can only create one book, to try out the app.
April 2017
Book Creator 5.1 - Publish and read online
Perhaps the best update to Book Creator for iPad yet, we built and online platform reading books and enabled one-tap publishing from the iPad to the web.
August 2017
Book Creator for Chrome goes live
After launching in beta during ISTE 2017, we publicly released the app later in the summer, finally bringing Book Creator to laptops and desktop computers—pretty much any device running in the classroom running the Chrome browser. Read the blog post
September 2017
Windows and Android apps retired
After launching the Chrome app, it no longer made sense to run so many independent versions of the app. Book Creator for Windows and Book Creator for Android were removed from sale. Read the blog post
February 2018
Real-time collaboration comes to Book Creator
Initially just for our Chrome app, this update means students can now work on the same book together at the same time, from different devices.
April 2018
'Read to me' comes to Chrome
In our iPad app, ‘Read to me’ is incredibly popular already – it was used over 600,000 times in March 2018 alone. Now it's on our web app too.
May 2018
New series of ebooks
We published the first of our series of ‘Using Book Creator in the classroom’ ebooks, written for educators, by educators (in Book Creator!).
June 2018
Book Creator wins AASL award for best website
The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) chose Book Creator as one of the best websites for teaching and learning in 2018.
August 2018
You can now embed content in Book Creator
YouTube videos, Google Docs, creations from other apps – you name it. With this update you can bring all of this content into Book Creator for iPad or Chrome. Let the App Smashing commence!
September 2018
Google for Education Partner
In recognition of all the ways in which Book Creator integrates with Google, we became an official Google Partner.
January 2019
Publish whole libraries
With a few clicks you can now publish a collection of your books online. This led us to curate some amazing example libaries from classrooms across the world.
June 2019
AutoDraw comes to Book Creator!
A massive creativity update – new pen styles, magic ink, a fill tool, emojis, but best of all – the amazing AutoDraw from Google AI!
January 2020
230+ accessibility features added
We take digital equality seriously. These enhancements allow for video captioning, dictation in multiple languages, and keyboard navigation, plus much more.
January 2020
Book Creator now works on Microsoft Edge
We added support for the MS Edge browser, which means Book Creator is fully cross platform, working in Chrome, Safari, Edge.
April 2020
You can now use Book Creator online in 10 different languages
We translated Book Creator so it now works in 10 languages (including English). We hope this will really help with remote learning throughout the world, especially where students are trying to get to grips with Book Creator from their homes during lockdown.
May 2020
Book Creator wins EdTech “Cool Tool” Award
Book Creator picked up another award, winning the EdTech Cool Tool Award 2020 from EdTech Digest. Book Creator beat the competition to be the winner in the ‘Authoring Tools Solution’ category.
June 2020
Book Creator certification
We launched a self-paced training programme inside Book Creator to help you get up to speed and become a Book Creator Certified Author
August 2020
The ‘Discover’ section in Book Creator
Introducing the new Discover tab in Book Creator, with specially curated books, libraries, templates and more.
November 2020
Integration with the Noun Project
The Noun Project is the most comprehensive collection of icons in the world, with over 2 million beautifully crafted icons grouped together in easy to search sets. And now these are all available in Book Creator!
January 2021
You can now create with templates in Book Creator!
All new templates in Book Creator! Choose from 18 beautifully designed preset themes to create amazing books.
February 2021
Book Creator named Winner of the 2021 Best Remote Learning Tools
Tech & Learning named Book Creator as a Winner of the 2021 Best Remote & Blended Learning Tools for Primary (K-6). Reward for all our efforts during the pandemic.
June 2021
Common Sense Selection for Learning for 2021
Common Sense Education updated their review of Book Creator, giving it 5/5 stars and choosing Book Creator as a Common Sense Selection for Learning for 2021
At the same time, we worked with them to release three activity books based on their Digital Citizenship curriculum.
June 2021
Remixing and analytics
Two things – you can now make your books available for other teachers to download and edit. PLUS, find out how many times your book has been read across the world!
January 2022
The Book Creator App Store
We launched a brand new integrated app store in Book Creator to give you access to app such as Canva, Bitmoji and Giphy. More to come!
January 2023
Book Creator appoints new CEO – Lainey Franks
Founder Dan Amos has appointed Lainey Franks as CEO and will now move into the role of Chief Product Officer.
September 2023
Foundational Literacy Templates
Following the appointment of our new Head of Literacy Learning , Randi Ahrndt, we published a plethora of new templates to double-down on our commitment to improving literacy.
January 2024
LMS integrations and more
Recent updates have been focused on behind the scenes tweaks to improve the school and district experience. This culminated in a big update to improve LMS integration with Book Creator.