Update for “One in a Thousand”

When Ian Coristine published One in a Thousand on May 1st, we asked if we at TI Life could be involved in some small way.  Of course we reviewed the book* (April 2012 Issue) but we also asked if we could follow its path – for like so many of Ian Coristine’s projects One in a Thousand has the potential to build more pride in our region by exposing the Thousand Islands to more people around the world.  This has begun…

Update from Ian Coristine:  

One in a Thousand has been doing well, getting very strong ratings and reviews in Apple's US and Canada iPad App Stores. The reviews and reader feedback has been amazingly supportive (we've posted some of it here: http://www.oneinathousand.ca/Reviews.aspx and here: http://www.oneinathousand.ca/Comments.aspx).

One has been downloaded in thirty different countries.

At the moment, there are only two interactive eBooks telling stories at this level of sophistication, One and Al Gore's Our Choice. Because there is not yet a category for them, readers don't realize they exist. They're buried in the iPad App Store in a sub-category of books, not in the iBook Store or even the iPad Book Store. This App Store is almost entirely populated by children's cartoon books like Toy Story and Cat in the Hat, where the text and cartoons to create them are readily available.

Sourcing relevant images, video, music and other components presents real challenges. I was fortunate in that I already had a career's worth of images, a wonderful relationship with writer Donna Walsh Inglehart, who helped me forge the story, HD video from a History Channel TV show about my plane and photography, wonderful music from Tony Dekker and Great Lake Swimmers, and a map I had created for the printed books. We briefly considered using Apple's new textbook app technology, but we knew that the cookie-cutter formatting would not work with our material. McLellan Interactive Publishing joined us, developing the sophisticated software for One in a Thousand. They aren't offering the software to the public, publishing only very selectively titles, one at a time.

 

Despite One's wonderful reception, we realize it may be too far ahead of the curve. We chose iPad for its rich capabilities (One is not available in any other tablet format), and while people are actually buying iPads to view One, to build this market, Apple needs to collect hundreds, thousands of interactive eBooks similar to One so that people get used to and expect stories to be told in a multi-dimensional way.  It becomes addictive!  So we are waiting patiently until the world catches up, first with software, then with more titles, relying on publicity, reviews, and word-of-mouth promotion, especially from Thousand Islanders.  Because we believe in One and our readers around the world have been so enthusiastic about our work, we think that it is only a matter of time before it reaches the next level.

 

Take a sneak preview into “One in a Thousand” by Ian Coristine and Donna Walsh Inglehart.

$8.99 at the iPad App Store

By Susan W. Smith,  susansmith@thousandislandslife.com