The Q-Tales project has been initiated following the approval of the H2020-ICT-2014-1 proposal entitled: “A Collaboration Ecosystem enabling EU Creative SMEs to exchange multi-media content and create multi-plot, interactive Apps for Children, curated according to Reader ability and educational value”. At its heart, lies our commitment to serve the needs of the European children app and e-book industry.
Children books are on the cutting edge of eBook innovation. It is an arena where the very definition of "book" is being stretched, and where concepts of what an e-book is and could be constantly evolve. An e-book is a digital snapshot of a book, an enhanced e-book adds multimedia and interactive features as interruptions to the linear story, and a book app is based on a book but acts more like a game with multiple pathways that require the user to interact instead of simply scroll and click or tap.
Moreover, a book app can do everything an enhanced e-book does, but crosses the line from linear storytelling to non-linear storytelling, allowing the user to choose from multiple pathways and select from a potentially huge number of photos, videos, audio files, illustrations, hyperlinks, and interactivity. The production of a complex, quality book-based app requires a team that includes programmers, graphic designers, professional actors for custom narration, music soundtrack and sound effects, interactivity, editors and page layout designers for different devices and operating systems. All these creative services (and others, directly or indirectly, related to the electronic and legacy publishing) are provided mainly by freelancers and micro companies.
“Picking the right book for the right child to read at the right moment is the true challenge of Q-Tales”
Even more interesting is what happens on the consumer side; the new technologies enable for the first time the perfect distribution from content provider to end customer, based on taste, emotional preferences and state, age and learning level etc. However potent machine learning is, picking the right book for the right child to read at the right moment is the true challenge of Q-Tales. A challenge best tackled with the creation of a potent human curating system, based on a contemporary but evolving pedagogical framework.
Our team of partners will tackle these challenges by creating a unique web and mobile children book platform, through which ebook and app creators will be able to exhibit their work, find partners, collaborate in creating unique bundled products and receive feedback on their work by experts such as educators, developmental psychology experts and publishers – having always in mind that they serve the rich and indispensable European heritage in children literature and children education themes.