Archive for April, 2009

Today we are pleased to announce the first of many new releases to the Traveling Classics collection.  We have been hard at work to grow our library and today we got word that our first batch had been approved by Apple. They are:

• Robinson Crusoe
• Emma
• Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Walden
• King Solomon’s Mines
• Pollyanna
• The Scarlet Pimpernel
• Jane Eyre
• Return of Sherlock Holmes
• Sense and Sensibility
• Anne of Green Gables

We have many, many more on the way (we are aiming to have atleast 5 a week). If you have suggestions for what books you would like to see made into a Traveling Classic please let us know either by emailing us at contact@travelingclassics.com or using our feedback forum.

As you may have noticed it has been many months since my last post. First, I wanted to explain this and give an update on the amazing progress of Traveling Classics.

Traveling Classics is essentially a ‘Mom-and-Pop’ operation. I do the software engineering and my wife does the editing. On February 16th, my wife and I had our first son. As any new parent knows, this had lead to a dramatic shift in our lives and, with respect to Traveling Classics, caused my wife to have a lot less time to spend working to edit new titles. As things settle down we are planning to continue adding more titles.

In the meantime, however, you have shown us amazing support and encouragement. The vast majority of reviews we receive are positive and to date we have now had 98,829 downloads (including both our free and paid books). That number alone is staggering to me, since it is only two months since we launched the products. It works out to something like 1,597 downloads a day, 67 an hour, and about one a minute. All I can say is: Thank you.

Now, for the exciting news. We have created a new application to take Traveling Classics to the next level. It has a simple name, Audiobooks, but a massive reach. Instead, of just including single books in each app Audiobooks provides access to the entire Librivox library. You can browse/search through over 1,800 books and then download them to your device for playback. As before, it keeps track of your current bookmarks for you. Plus, we have decided to make this app free.

We never felt totally happy with selling the content of the Librivox project, since its purpose is make these great books available to world at no charge. So what we have decided to do is to support Audiobooks with advertising and affiliate links. We will continue to charge $0.99 (or equivalent) for our premium titles that include hand-edited audio and synchronized scrolling full text.

The app was submitted to Apple for review 8 days ago, so we are hoping it will be approved any day now. When it is, we will announce it here — Stay Tuned.