At BookExpo America 2012, Pinwheel Books was fortunate enough to attend and walk the floors. We wrote about the experience in several posts last week; from “transmedia” to the future of epub and much more.

Today we wanted to share our meetup with Demibooks. You may have already heard our praises of them before, but we today we wanted to officially announce our collaborations with this innovative company.

The amazing connections via Rhode Island School of Design first showcased Demibooks, and piqued our app-developer interests. When we then began the conversation with the company, the responses were so positive and immediate that we instantly felt a connection. Their generous support of “All About Poop” has made it possible for us to publish our app under our own developer name. Pinwheel Books is growing fast thanks to this software.

Getting to meet the CEO Rafiq and his fellow colleague (and recent RISD alum!) Will (pictured above) was enlightening and exciting, and we couldn’t wait to share our excitement here with our kidslit community. The community of users at Demibooks is growing fast, and experienced users are extremely interested in helping out their fellow developers. The growing world of app-making has brought along with it a group of individuals ready to take on the market head on.

Demibooks is a unique approach to app-building software. For one, the app is built directly on the iPad. To an app developer, when I started using the program I just thought, “Yes, this makes so much more sense! Now why didn’t anyone think of this before?”

I have rarely used programs this advanced on the iPad (it usually houses my ever-growing collection of kids book apps!), but after a few hours building pages for the All About Poop app, I realized how comfortable the experience was. The intuitive ”IF-THEN” sequence of creating “Behaviors” within the app makes creating interactions much easier. This ease of software usage makes the app-building process more accessible for developers big or small. In just a few weeks, our app is continuing to come to life in ways we hadn’t even thought of before.

If we learned anything from BookExpo America, one takeaway is this: less is more. One marketing director, part of a panel of speakers during the “Future of Children’s Books” Discussion, mentioned his work on developing the “Tickle Me Elmo”. He explained that at the time, the company was pushing to sell an elaborately-complicated talking Big Bird toy. But it was Elmo that soared. And what did he do? He had but one function. And it was a good one.

Our creative juices are churning, and Demibooks has given us the tools to put together a very smart app for a rather funny subject. I mean, we are animating poop here! But we are sure that with this software, our app is going to be full of surprises and interactions that are simply and smartly placed. Readers, we hope you join us on this journey!