Lynette Mattke, CEO, PicPocket Books
Silver Spring, Maryland

PicPocket Books

One of the leading educational app book publishers, Lynette Mattke started her company PicPocket Books just over three years ago and now has over 130 titles in its library. PicPocket Books’ apps are different from your general ebooks because of the interactive features available within the apps (animations, “tap”-able audio “hot spots”, word highlighting for beginning readers, etc.). In our Member Spotlight, Lynette explains her efforts to grow a small business focused on improving the way kids learn.

ACT: Why did you start PicPocket Books?

Mattke: In the early months when the iPhone and iPod touch first were introduced, I noticed that there was a lot of potential to develop family friendly and educational apps using these cool devices. I thought it would be great to offer picture books for the iPhone that would utilize the smartphone touchscreen and the audio capabilities of the mobile devices.

One of my daughters was a “late” reader, who struggled with learning to read. She made a lot of progress by working with audio books (smartphones weren’t available at that time!) but I thought that having picture books, with audio narration, word highlighting and other interactive features that can help kids learn to read and LOVE to read – could help even more kids make more progress with reading.

On another level, I had a dream of working in the publishing business. I wanted to collaborate with other publishers, authors and illustrators to bring quality children’s books to the market. The barrier to entry in the traditional print publishing business was daunting, especially in an climate where brick and mortar stores were closing by the scores. Fortunately for PicPocket Books, the field of digital publishing, and especially mobile digital publishing, was exploding just at that time, so the timing was great for getting into the market.

ACT: What are some of your more popular apps?

Mattke: We have a number of apps that like to hang out in the list of Apple’s top 100 apps in the book category. Penelope the Purple Pirate is one of those that is quite popular with our kindergarten-age audience. We have a number of book apps that feature tractors that are popular: the Tractor Mac series, “Pete and Pillar,” and “Tractors.”

Our Baby MedBasics app is a reference for parents and caregivers of babies that gives step by step instructions for emergency situations with infants. We are excited to launch Toddler Med Basics in the next week or two.

ACT: How do you think technology can play a role in education? More specifically, how do PicPocket Books play a role in children’s education?

Mattke: Technology – and esp. mobile technology – is becoming more and more central in education. It can engage kids, connect them to the world, provide skills training, and enable individualized, student-paced learning and growth. I certainly can’t wait for the day when my kids’ textbooks are all on tablets, instead of these unbelievable cinder block tomes they lug around!! I expect to see a lot of changes and advances coming in the areas of video content in education, and also user generated content. Ultimately, however, technology is a tool and an enabler, not the end in itself, and parents and teachers should take care not to use it for its own sake. In fact, some of the best educational applications encourage social and intellectual interactions and explorations that take the user beyond the device and out into the real world. I also firmly believe that both in formal educational settings and at home, teachers and parents play a crucial role in supporting and nurturing our children’s learning and development, and we shouldn’t expect to hand over a device and walk away from our kids.

At PicPocket Books, we work to support early readers and their parents with content they love – help them practice reading on their own, enable parents to read to or with them while out and about, and to make reading an enjoyable, engaging activity in the age of video and games. We are also planning to branch into educational games around reading and math skills, with the same core approach.

ACT: What obstacles do you run into as a small business? What resources are available for educational app developers as they look to grow their businesses?

Mattke: Resources and time are tough challenges for a small business, but our small size allows us to be agile. The typical development time for a mobile app is 2-5 months, and usually on the quicker end of that spectrum. We are able to start and finish a lot of projects in rapid succession, and it keeps us on our toes from a creative point of view, which we love! We have tremendous demand for our services, but also do have to scale our business carefully. We have so far chosen to be self-funded, which imposes capital constraints at times.

Finally, while there are many iOS developers out there, it’s not easy finding the right ones for your business. My main resource in all of these questions is MomsWithApps.com. MomsWithApps’ 800+ developers of kid and family-friendly content have similar needs and experience as we do, and the support coming from that group (MWA Forum, website articles, and MWA social media sites) in terms of sharing of tips, tricks, resources, relationships and more is simply phenomenal.

You can find PicPocket Books apps on iTunes, or visit their website for more information.

Twitter: @picpocketbooks