Mark Coker writes at Smashwords:
Last month I provided a brief update about the ScrollMotion relationship (September 19 Site Updates update below) where I linked to an interview I did at The Savvy Book Marketer. In that interview, I commented about the delays ScrollMotion faced in distributing Smashwords ebooks as apps. Despite the fact they completed thousands of apps, last week we ended the project. The app world has changed dramatically in the last few months and it no longer makes sense for either of us to continue pursuing it. They originally planned to distribute the apps to the HP TouchPad tablet (HP canceled its TouchPad tablet August 24), to the Apple app store (their partner couldn’t make this happen) and the Android store. We were holding out for Android, though they tell us there are so many devices powered by Android now that it’s really difficult (read: expensive) to make a single app look good across multiple devices. My thanks to ScrollMotion for taking a valiant stab at this interesting opportunity and investing many months of effort on our authors’ behalf, and my apologies to Smashwords authors who were looking forward to this interesting opportunity. In the next week expect to see mention of ScrollMotion removed from your Channel Manager. We and ScrollMotion have agreed to reengage discussions if they can surface a sensible opportunity in the future. Until then, I decided it’s best we make a clean break so we can focus resources on more immediate opportunities.
It was a strange partnership to begin with – because if you’re not adding a lot of extra app-like features to your book, an app won’t offer much that iBooks can’t – especially for fiction with no images. If you’re interested in entering the app market, there are app tools available.
About the Author: Henry Baum
I’m the author of The American Book of the Dead. The novel won Best Fiction at the DIY Book Festival and the Gold IPPY Award for Visionary Fiction. Largehearted Boy says it's "reminiscent of Philip K. Dick and Haruki Murakami, a book that boldly explores the future and defies genre." I'm also the author of North of Sunset, winner of the Hollywood Book Festival Grand Prize, and The Golden Calf - first published by Soft Skull Press, with editions in the U.K. (Rebel Inc.) and France (Hachette Littératures). Visit henrybaum.com for more information. I’m the editor of Self-Publishing Review.
