4 Crucial Tips to Remember While Creating Interactive eBooks for Children

With the growing demand in technology, every industry tends to experience new changes that can lead to its development. The beginning of 2020 brought changes to many domains by empowering huge transformations through digital technology. One such industry that has also experienced changes in the digitization era is education and publishing. A good example where you can see a similar type of approach is eBooks.  

The popularity of eBooks has grown among audiences of varied age groups, be it a kid or adult. Gradually, people are starting to get comfortable with the idea of going completely paperless since it can help to reduce the cutting down of trees. The growing technology has also enabled eBooks to look similar to paper versions while offering several additional perks to the readers. A few of the added benefits provided by eBooks are ease of accessibility, reuse, updating, sharing, affordability, interactivity, and more.  

In this article, we are going to discuss interactive eBooks and how they have turned out to be truly impactful for children. We have also collected the five best tips that you should never neglect while creating a kid’s interactive eBook.

Interactive eBooks and Its Impact on eLearning

Modern technology has completely reshaped the way books are read and perceived. Unlike physical books, eBook has the capacity to offer more flexibility to the readers while enhancing their reading experience. Interactive eBooks, on the other hand, can compel kids to immerse themselves in the content or different aspects of the story as compared to the printed textbooks. Research also shows that it has increased the effectiveness of the learning process of children and helped them to enhance their vocabulary, reasoning skills, and achievement capabilities.

Most interactive eBooks tend to pay more attention to visuals over the text. It comes with a variety of features such as read-aloud narration, audio, video, sound effects, animation, puzzle, games, and a non-linear reading order to provide greater levels of engagement. It makes them even a better option than paper books or static eBooks.    

Apart from children, interactive eBooks can also facilitate learning for college students and employed adults. Since it can include a variety of elements, the domain is usually referred to as transmedia, which means a narrative that can combine multiple media forms. For example, there are now various interactive video games that are able to narrate the rich compositions by smartly combining the use of different social media platforms to tell an engaging story. Furthermore, the technique can be also utilized to create a positive impact on the business as well as the environment. A few of those impacts are mentioned below:

• Investing in online learning programs can help businesses to increase their revenue.

• The retention rate of e-learning is considered to be around 25-60%.

• Due to the eLearning technology, the employee engagement rate becomes higher.

• Businesses can employ e-learning tools to get a competitive advantage.

• As compared to traditional learning, it consumes very less energy.

• 85% of the carbon emission rate can be reduced with online learning.

Now, let us move to the part where you will get an overall knowledge of creating interactive eBooks for children. The points mentioned here are taken into account by studying the strategies used by the companies offering interactive eBooks creation services.

4 Tips for Creating an Interactive eBook for Kids

1. Add interactive and engaging content

There are a variety of elements that can be included in the content of kid’s interactive eBooks. For example, you have to design a cover for your eBooks. It is a critical marketing tool that can help in attracting prospective buyers. So, get it designed through a professional, and ensure that they add compelling colors, fonts, themes, and graphics to it. The next step is to format is according to the publishing platform. For example, if you want to publish it on Kindle, then you have to convert the eBooks in the AZW format. For other publishing platforms, you can use PDF, ePUB, etc. accordingly. It is better to research in this case so that you can get a complete idea of the type of format to choose.  

For making the content appropriate for children, you can add 3D interactive elements or use widgets for incorporating mini-games or puzzles into it. Apart from that, you can also include animation or interactive behavior to make it more engaging. While choosing the audio, video, or images, make sure that it fits the content perfectly. Do not add stock images if they look generalized. You can go for various royalty-free images; however, it would require a license for using it in commercial products. If you want to add a bit of narration, then you can also opt for experienced voice artists.

2. Pay attention to demographic, platform, and device

After making sure that the content is properly developed, you can pay attention to your targeted audience, platform, and device. Statistics suggest that there are around 4 billion users that use the internet actively and 3 billion smartphone users in the world. And since your target audience is children, this age group will be having access to various browsers, languages, screens, and operating systems. That is why while publishing eBooks, make sure to take care of the following things.

• Create eBooks in an independent file format like ePUB.

• Ensure that it is available to all the targeted users by studying the demographic.

• Make the eBooks available as an app so that it can be downloaded from various app stores.

• Make sure that it offers an amazing reading experience by selecting a popular content publishing platform, like Amazon.

• Check whether it works seamlessly on multiple devices by optimizing the eBooks and making it responsive.

• Choose a wide range of mediums for publishing eBooks, however, on a specific LMS or Learning Management System.

3. Tips for editing, publishing, and distribution

eBook authors often assume that formatting would make the content error-free, which is not true. Formatting and converting become tougher depending on the interactivity of your eBooks. The areas that are mostly affected while editing and publishing are quotes, spacing, alignments, headers, bullets, etc. However, you can avoid the post-formatting mess by carrying out a final proofreading session.  

When it comes to marketing and distributing the eBooks, follow a good strategy that can offer maximum profits. You will find several vendors in the market that can help you with publishing the kid’s eBook, as well as various distributor services. You have to find the one that can work best for your needs. After choosing the retailer, you need to take care of a few more things before making the eBook online, which are

• Providing a brief eBook description that attracts the attention of readers.

• Choosing categories that the eBook can qualify.

• Researching keywords to optimize listings while increasing visibility.

• Selecting the best platforms for marketing and publishing eBooks.

4. Optimize the layout and assets of eBooks

Since optimizing eBooks is necessary, let us start with learning how to optimize its assets first. The assets mostly include videos, audios, soundtracks, links, animations, and more. The next thing you need to do is choosing a layout that can best serve the needs of the kids. The two major options you will have in this case are reflowable layouts and fixed layouts.

In reflowable layouts, the page is automatically oriented according to the size of the screen. Apart from that, the lines also rearrange themselves accordingly through expansion or contraction. It can be supported by popular eReaders like Apple iBooks, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, etc. On the other hand, the content of fixed-layout eBooks does not change regardless of the device you are using. However, users can zoom in or zoom out the content according to their convenience. Besides, there are only a few e-readers that accept this type of format.

One simple tip that you can use while creating interactive eBooks for kids is to combine the layout, multimedia elements, and content while ensuring that it provides a smoother flow, is device optimized, and does not bring down the performance.

If you have reached this far, then make sure that you do understand that developing interactive eBooks will require more hard work, especially when the content is created for children. The e-publishing industry is taking small innovative steps gradually that can make the publishing work easier and faster. Many digital conversion companies are also available that can help you with creating interactive eBooks for kids. Apart from development, they can assist with transforming your content to make it more likable and get it published on a variety of platforms. However, while choosing a company, ensure that it is having a good reputation for offering high-quality outputs, and is well-experienced.