Book Creator logo

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

June 2011

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".

15 Sept, 2011

Original Book Creator iconBook 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

Add sound to the app
Multimedia in Book Creator v2.2
July 2012

Old Book Creator iconBook Creator v2.2 - Add video

You can now add video to the app too (and rotate images). Note the change of icon too?

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

Sharing books in v2.4
Choose a page layout
August 2013

Book Creator Free iconBook 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.

Pen Tool v3.0
April 2014

Book Creator for Android iconBook 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.

Book Creator in Chinese
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 iconBook 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.

Book Creator Ambassadors
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!!

Comic book competition
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

Webinars
New website screenshot
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.

September 2016

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.

5-years-sale
Words highlighted within the app in reading mode
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.

Read the blog post

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.

Book Creator One icon
Words highlighted within the app in reading mode
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

Image showing our Windows and Android apps merged together
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.

Read the blog post

Book Creator book in Read Mode on the web
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.

Read the blog post

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!).

Using Book Creator in the classroom - screenshot of books on the shelf
AASL award bage and the Book Creator icon
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.

Read the blog post

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!

Read the blog post

Series of screenshots showing embedding process on iPad
Google for Education partner badge
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.

Read the blog post

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.

Read the blog post

'Write Our World' published libary
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!

Read the blog post

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.

Read the blog post

Adding video captions
Book Creator on Microsoft Edge, on a Lenovo Yoga
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, and Edge.

Read the blog post

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.

Read the blog post

Upgrade account message in Japanese
Cool Tool Awards Winner 2020
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.

Read the blog post

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

Read the blog post

Book Creator Certified Author
Discover section in Teacher Dashboard
August 2020

The 'Discover' section in Book Creator

Introducing the new Discover tab in Book Creator, with specially curated books, libraries, templates and more.

Read the blog post

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!

Read the blog post

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.

Read the blog post

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.

Read the blog post

Tech & Learning badge
Common Sense Selection badge
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!

Read the blog post

Analytics in Book Creator
September 2021

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.

Read the blog post

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!

Read the blog post

Lainey Franks and Dan Amos
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.

Read the blog post

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.

See them in Discover

Foundational Literacy Templates in Discover

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.

Read the blog post

15 Sept, 2011

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.

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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!

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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!

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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

Read the blog post


August 2020

The ‘Discover’ section in Book Creator

Introducing the new Discover tab in Book Creator, with specially curated books, libraries, templates and more.

Read the blog post


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!

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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!

Read the blog post


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!

Read the blog post


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.

Read the blog post


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.

See them in Discover


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.

Read the blog post