For those of you who don’t know, 826 Seattle is a branch of the national network of 826 centers across the country. In their own words:

“826 National is a family of seven nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping students, ages 6-18, with expository and creative writing. Each chapter offers drop-in tutoring, field trips, workshops, and in-schools programs — all free of charge — for children, classes, and schools with particular interests or particular needs.”

When we were developing A Story Before Bed, we immediately recognized that our mission of connecting distant families and children through reading was complementary to the 826 mission. We were thrilled when we called the folks at 826 Seattle and they generously agreed to provide a book for our library.

The Northwest Mythical and Unknown Creatures Organization Meeting #66 written by Noah Sather and illustrated by David Lasky is the latest addition to our collection of children’s books. Get a sneak peek into a meeting of some of the colorful mythical characters from the Pacific northwest including Seattle’s bridge troll, the living tree, and rain pixies. Royalties from purchases of recordings of this new book go to 826 Seattle to help further their mission.

Check out the book and check out 826 Seattle. They’re a great organization doing important work.

We’re a high quality indy software publisher with a new site focused on children’s books. It’s called A Story Before Bed. The site lets parents and grandparents who can’t be with their kids at bedtime, record a video of themselves reading to their child synchronized to the pages of a children’s book.

Go see our demo story to see what your lovely book might look like on the site. Of course, every time someone pays for a recording of your book, you will get a royalty. And we even provide a link for the user to buy a physical copy of your book.

We’re thrilled to have our three inaugural indy publishers already signed up: BubbleGum, Charlesbridge, and Immedium, and be talking to several more as we speak. We’d love to hear from you as soon as possible. Send us mail at publishers (at) astorybeforebed (dot) com.

Fort Lewis has over 18,000 soldiers currently deployed. A large number of those soldiers are also parents. The Children’s Deployment Fair saw over 400 families come to make up a care package for their deployed family member. We set up a conference room at the elementary school where the fair was held with four computers running A Story Before Bed and had a line several families deep waiting to record stories to send to Dad. We’re proud that dozens of families recorded stories on Saturday, and hundreds more took coupons to record stories for free at home. While we understand that internet access with webcams is not always available where soldiers are deployed, at least some of these parents apart from their families should be able to record their own stories in return.

We want to thank Ken Swarner who graciously had us come to the event, and all the families who patiently waited in line to participate. If you’re a military family with a deployed family member, make sure to sign up for our Military mailing list to receive regular free recordings. If you work with military families and would like to talk to us about providing free recordings for a deployment fair in your area, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Enjoy some pictures of families connecting with distant loved ones using A Story Before Bed. Notice the last picture where it was all kids using the software, with more kids standing in line peering in. Neat!

We listened closely to the feedback from our first three applications — Shapes, Colors, and Letters, and made Numbers even better. Not only are children asked to identify numbers 0-20, but there are counting screens mixed in where children are asked to count colorful party hats, cupcakes, and more.

Head over to the app store to get them while they’re hot!

While we originally conceived of A Story Before Bed for grandparents and parents to read to their kids, there’s been a clamor for kids to use the service to read to their parents and grandparents. We’re excited for the site to be used in any way that brings families closer who can’t be together.

In addition to free recordings, we’ll be giving away coupons to put in the care package, so those deployed parents who can get access to a computer and webcam with internet access can record their own stories to send to their children here at home. Families will also be encouraged to sign up for our Military mailing list for regular free offers.

If you’re an eligible family, we look forward to seeing you there. If you know of an eligible family, please pass the word. And if you’re a family with a deployed parent in the U.S. Military who would like us to provide free stories for a similar event, please get in touch with us to arrange.

Saturday should be fun!

A few years ago, I tried videotaping my parents reading stories to my young kids. My parents live on the east coast and I wanted my west coast children to have bedtime stories from their grandparents, even when they were far away. The effort was cumbersome and the results were not great. For the last several months, we’ve been working on creating a website that makes this process dead simple and creates beautiful results.

Anyone with a webcam and a web browser can choose a book from our library of licensed and digitized high quality children’s books, record audio and video of themselves reading that book, and share it with a special child in their lives. We’ve worked closely with our three launch publishing partners – Immedium, Charlesbridge Publishing, and Bubblegum Books to create a launch library of over 50 books. Our growing library includes over a dozen classics such as The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Frog Princess, and The Itsy Bitsy Spider, as well as state-of-the art modern children’s books like the Octonauts series created by Meomi and the first several books in the Tales from the Chinese Zodiac series. We even have a small start at our Spanish children’s library with Insectos para el Almuerzo and ¡Qué Nervios! El Primer Dia de Escuela.

These visionary publishers recognized the potential for personalized digital versions of their content. This new marketplace will not only bring them additional revenue, but reinforce the existing market for physical copies of their books. No other genre of books lends itself to this type of digital personalization. We’re working with our existing publishing partners in addition to new high quality children’s book publishers to expand our library – rapidly.

With live 1-800 technical support (uncommon for websites these days), A Story Before Bed is for parents away on business, remote grandparents, split families, military parents stationed away from their children, and even parents just going out for the night. Ultimately, we believe that these recordings of parents and grandparents reading stories to children may become family heirlooms passed down from generation to generation – “let me show you my grandpa reading me a story when I was little.” Some early users have even used the site so children can show off their reading skills to grandma and grandpa.

Military parents can sign up for our special mailing list, which offers free and discounted recordings for men and women in the United States armed forces stationed away from their children. And everyone can follow us on Twitter for deals, sales, and new book announcements. We’re currently offering recordings at a special introductory price of $6.99 per recording.

We hope you enjoy A Story Before Bed. It’s the first of its kind and there’s nothing else like it on the web. We’d love to hear your feedback. We intend to make it even better over the coming months and years.