Ever gone to an author reading at the local library or children’s bookstore? Now you can see authors and illustrators reading their own creations 24 hours a day on StoryTime in the Reading Room from A Story Before Bed. Details inside.

I certainly hope so… I know I am. This updated book is dark, sparkly, and gahgeous! We’d love for you to check it out. You can get all the details in our fancy new video newsletter embedded below.

Not interested in reading our brilliant prose? How about a video version introducing all our new books. Let us know what you think!

We have some fun announcements today.

We took a little break here at A Story Before Bed over the last couple of weeks. It’s been hot here in Seattle and we needed to recharge. But… we haven’t been totally devoid of progress. For some time I’ve been promising to unveil a bunch of new books for your reading and recording pleasure, and today is the day. While we get most of our books from established high quality children’s book publishers, we saw how much fun they were having and couldn’t help but join in. Our house label has already added 15 books to our collection and today is adding ten more. Thanks to our team of talented illustrators, authors, and my partner Jenny who brings it all together into the final book you get to read, we have some fun stuff for you to look at.

Our selection is grounded in stories that you’ll most likely find familiar, but many of them have a twist that you won’t expect. For example, you all know the Little Mermaid. But in this story, the prince has to join his love in the ocean. Let the guy chase the girl this time. Oh yeah… and they’re cats (and catfish)! The illustrations in this book positively sparkle like the ocean in the sun. Check out Prince Kai and the Little Mermaid.

We’re very proud of Snow White in the City. Snow White herself is adorably illustrated with her mass of red hair. The urban setting brings new life to the story. Rapunzel is updated as well where a misunderstanding turns the story into an episode of Three’s Company (for those of you who remember that show) but appropriate for kids of course. And in this version the witch is just a touch insecure but not really evil. This version is called Rapunzel and the Missing Hare. (I just love how the title on the cover of the book is made out of Rapunzel’s hair!)

Aurora goes to sleep and eventually wakes up in this version of Sleeping Beauty – A tale of a not-so-sleepy baby, a sleepy prince, and vanilla cupcakes. And while it’s not an huge departure from the original like some of the books above, there are vanilla cupcakes and a cool Kremlinesque aesthetic in the drawings. Throw vanilla cupcakes and onion domes into any story and I’m on board. And as for the Ugly Duckling, it gets the urban treatment here (like Snow White did above) when a family of pigeons gets a new foster sibling in The Strange Squab – An Ugly Duckling Story. The illustrations are all etched in scratchboard. Cool!

Little Brown Dog, a traditional folk tale has gorgeous painted illustrations with super expressive characters. Hickory Dickory Dock goes more minimal with an animation style reminiscent (at least to me) of the Iron Giant (Brad Bird’s film prior to The Incredibles). I can’t tell if it’s the drawings or the clock itself that makes that connection in my brain, but you should judge for yourself.

Babu, the star of Babu’s Healthy Hoppy Bunny Tale, is a rabbit who doesn’t like raw carrots. His vision isn’t great, and his candy habit is becoming a serious problem. With the help of some of the other forest creatures he figures out how bringing some other healthy foods into the mix might solve all his problems (and even get the girl). This books is perfect to foster discussion with that picky eater in your family. The Button Box is like Toy Story, but with buttons. And the collages/illustrations are the perfect mix of real items and illustration giving this book a really distinctive aesthetic.

And finally, Baa Baa Black Sheep. Cause after all… where are you going to get your wool? While the other books were drawn, or painted, or computergraphicallypixeldrawn (I think that’s the technical term), those were paths well worn for Stephanie Toole, the illustrator of Baa Baa Black Sheep. She sewed her illustrations. Needle, thread, felt, fabrics, etc. Wow. The handcrafted goodness shows through on every page.

OK. The only thing I love more than getting presents… as you may or may not know is giving presents. As you may or may not know we have a subscription offer… $29.95 lets you record any book in our subscription collection as often as you like for a whole year. Up until now, our subscription collection had 15 books. Great books, and even with only 15 in the collection it ends up costing about two bucks a book if you only record them once. And even less if you record them multiple times. But we can do better! All ten books we’re releasing today are now part of the subscription collection. And if you’re already a subscriber (we love you for that) these new books are automagically included in your existing subscription. We love making the subscription offer even more valuable, especially for our early customers. (And don’t think we won’t do it again!

So… for all you folks for whom 15 books wasn’t enough in the subscription offer, there are now 25 books in the collection. For $29.95 a year, if you record them all once, that’s around $1.20 per recording (compared to the regular $6.99). And if you record them more than once, that cost goes down even further (think the same book read by grandma AND grandpa AND mom AND dad, etc.). And if you act now, we’ll throw in some Ginsu knives. Well… ok… just kidding. No knives. But certainly lots of great kids books.

Click here to see the full list of books in our newly expanded subscription collection.

Click here to see the details of the subscription offer and to place your order (if you’re so inclined).

We’re working hard on making the service even better for you as well as adding even more books. We appreciate all your suggestions and comments – keep ‘em coming and enjoy all the new books.

Exactly one year ago, Adrian and I were married here in Seattle

There were a lot of different things that made that day so special: the setting (we were tucked away in the beautiful Dunn Gardens), the surprise Lion Dance that kicked off our reception, the unique cake centerpieces at each table… I even designed a seating chart that was “font-coded!” But one of the most special additions (and definitely the geekiest!) was the wonderful wedding present my two co-founders made for my big day, Thrilled for You Wedding Video Guestbook.

Of course, I am a little biased because a) it was my own wedding and b) this is my company’s product, but I really loved having this alternative to a physical guestbook. Even though we hired an awesome professional videographer to film the entire day, there’s still something really intimate about capturing video messages from our closest friends and family. Our guests left a few really funny and deeply personal messages, not the kind of thing that I can imagine them saying to a stranger aiming a video camera at them. And although our wedding was small by today’s standards, we still felt like we didn’t get the chance to properly visit with each and every guest. The guestbook video messages captured behind-the-scene footage that gave us a sense for how much fun people were having at the wedding.

So as Adrian and I celebrate our anniversary tonight, we’ll be watching all our guestbook videos from last year. We’re even going to make it a tradition to do so every anniversary.

Thank you Walter and Hillel for the best wedding gift ever. And Happy Anniversary, to both the Thrilled for You Video Guestbook and to my truly amazing husband, Adrian.

P.S. Our awesome videographer incorporated the Thrilled for You clips into our official wedding video, but he also put together a little sample of some of the more comical messages :

Here’s this week’s question… do we have a new free book for you to read to your kids or grandkids? What a silly question. Of course we do!

As parents and grandparents I think we’re always asking ourselves if we’re doing as good a job as we can. We all know that reading to our children yields nothing but positive results for our kids and our relationship with them. Here at A Story Before Bed, we hope that recording those sessions only adds to the positivity. We love when you buy new books to record, but ultimately the more books you record for your kids, the happier we are. To that end, we’re always looking for new books for you to add to your collection at little to no cost.

Thanks to MCM (he’s so cool he’s got one of those one word names… and unlike Cher or Sting, his is all caps and has NO vowels!!!) over at 1889 Books as of now we’re proud to offer you Xander and the Wind completely free of charge to record up on A Story Before Bed.

MCM let me pick which of his several excellent titles we could offer for free and I knew immediately that Xander and the Wind was the one. I don’t know if it’s the adorable illustrations, the stubbornness of the lead character, or just the idea that Xander has decided to battle with something as large as the wind that gives this book a special place in my heart. (I suppose my friends and family might argue that I am similarly stubborn. Psychoanalysis aside, it’s a really fun book… and yours now for free.

Once you’ve had a chance to record it and share it with your little ones, definitely let me know what you think.

And if you like Xander and the Wind, make sure to check out MCM’s other titles including: Panda Apples, Pig and the Box, The Crow Who Could Fly,Percy’s Perch, and Maggie’s Cello. I recommend the bunch.

Hope everyone has a lovely week. We’re working on lots of new goodies for you.

I’m one of the lucky few people to have a female co-founder of a tech startup. And I have long known that working with senior women can often be a significantly more valuable experience than the traditional sausage fest. (Yes… I just said “sausage fest”.) It’s not that women are inherently better or worse… it’s that diversity and a balanced set of skills and styles help make teams stronger. Given that tech is still pretty much a boys club, and that in recent years the number of women going into engineering is going in the wrong direction, I’ve often thought about what can be done to fix this problem.

There are all sorts of points at which one could intervene to start correcting this, and when I had a big team at a big company, finding qualified women for leadership positions was the single most effective thing I could do. But now that I’m at a startup maybe there are other things I could do. I know my female co-founder is doing her part by providing incredible leadership both private and public here at JFM.

After some thought, I realized that I do have an opportunity to make a small impact — I have a seven year old daughter. She loves googling and YouTube, and she likes videogames and art and fashion. I did what any parent would do in my situation… I signed her up for a week of tech summer camp. Anything from videogame programming, to Lego robots, and (her choice) computer animation.

But who knew, as I drove her to camp the other morning, distracted and stressing the whole time about how much work I had ahead of me that day, that I would have the opportunity to rise slightly above my normal parenting muddle. My daughter started whining about how there would be no girls at computer camp, and the boys would make fun, and this wasn’t a girls’ activity. I started trying to reason with her. As many parents know… kids are often irrational. Cause… well… they’re kids. If they were completely rational, they’d be adults. Actually, they’d be better than adults, as most adults I know aren’t completely rational, especially me. Anyway… no amount of reason was working.

I pulled into the parking lot at the camp, stopped the car, and turned around to face her. I said: “Honey… do you want to be the kind of person who does what they want, or do you want to be the kind of person who doesn’t do what they want because they’re afraid of what other people will think.” I held my breath for what seemed like an eternity until she calmed down, lowered her head, and semi-mumbled in just above a whisper: “I want to be the kind of person who does what they want.”

Whew!

I said: “Great. Then let’s get to it.”

I don’t know what I would have done if she’d given me a different answer.

These movie-like parenting moments happen almost never (at least for me). So this one was particularly satisfying as not only did I feel good about our discussion, but I thought that maybe I was making the smallest of dents in the broader problem of making the tech industry a place where larger numbers of intelligent women leaders want to be.

Hey A Story Before Bed pals (is ‘pals’ too familiar? maybe I should stick with ‘fans’)… what’s that sound? It’s the sound of 19 new books arriving in our bookstore for you to enjoy. Thunk! (Now imagine that sound 18 more times.)

Almost anyone who’s now 30 or older the will immediately recognize the Junior Elf brand of children’s books. Originally an offshoot of Rand McNally (yep, the folks who make the maps), they’ve been around for over 50 years and collectively sold over 100 million copies. More recently, the Junior Elf brand was brought back to life by the Toon Studio of Beverly Hills which is focused on revitalizing the classics and developing brand new titles in the same mold. These books, modern and vintage, are lovingly illustrated easily accesible children’s books that build on fairy tales both old and new.

And here’s the most amazing part… these books are not yet available again in print or digital formats. The only place to get the print editions has been for as much as $60 a pop on eBay (for the ones still in excellent condition), and for digital editions you were essentially out of luck… up until now of course. The first batch of vintage and updated digital Junior Elf books is available for the first time in decades on A Story Before Bed… and nowhere else. I think that’s pretty cool!

Let’s start with the classics, shall we? Each of them has been digitally remastered. The colors positively pop!

In addition to the vintage editions, there are new versions with updated illustrations as well as entirely new stories featuring recognizable classic characters (like the Tooth Fairy and Tinkerbell). Check them out:

There are also plenty of nursery rhymes to go around:

Cars and trucks are ever popular subjects for books, especially among boys. Among their new books there’s an entire series featuring cars as the characters. Contemporary illustration will make these popular with those kids that love vehicles.

For those who are keeping score at home, we now have 166 books available in our catalog for you to read, record, and enjoy. Thanks to everyone at Toon Studio for making their debut here on A Story Before Bed. We’re thrilled to be the first (and currently only) place you can get these books.

Enjoy the week everyone.

When you run a business, you try to keep things steady and predictable. It makes life easier when things happen at a regular and predictable pace. This is true both in terms of the internals of the business and the externals, including things like how often we have new books for you. But in reality, while new books come to us regularly, they do so at their own pace. Sometimes a drip drop, and sometimes a torrential rain. At least for a little while, rainy season has begun. The season starts today with a huge “shipment” of new books – 23 new ones to be exact – from our good friends at Charlesbridge Publishing.

Megan from Charlesbridge Publishing is one of our earliest supporters here at A Story Before Bed. She’s as well as her colleague Connie are responsible for continually delivering incredible content for our customers. What you don’t know is that Megan and Connie are also an absolute pleasure to work with. As I’m sure you know, in life you run into all kinds of people, we’re lucky that people who get excited about our service are generally sweethearts, but not all of them have to deal with our constant requests (for new books, tweaking formats to make them easier to import into our site, contract updates, etc.). And despite all our requests, Megan and Connie from Charlesbridge are constantly positive and super helpful. Thanks guys.

Now onto the books they (and all the people who help make these books – the rest of the folks at Charlesbridge, the authors, the illustrators, etc.) worked so hard to put in front of you. Did I mention there are 23 of them??? (Our partner Walter hates it when I overuse punctuation, so please know that the extra question marks are there to tweak Walter.)

There are so many I don’t know where to start, but here are some highlights… The Ace Lacewing Series, three detective stories where the stars are bugs.Aggie the Brave, another Aggie the dog book for our collection. Stuart Murphy’s collection of four books with things to teach us including one of my favorite book titles - Emma’s Friendwich. The beautifully illustrated Sitka Rose, and Brave Donatella and the Jasmine Thief. And cool new nature books including Turtle Turtle Watch Out, and Meet the Howlers (coincidentally the name of my new favorite Fox sitcom). And then there’s my vote for most adorable books of the bunch - Boo Cow, and Piggies in the Pumpkin Patch. See… there are pigs in a pumpkin patch. It doesn’t get much cuter than that.

And of course, the ever prolific Iza Trapani has provided us with a whole bunch of excellent renditions of classics including the richly illustrated Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Check out that sparkly night sky – beautiful!

Whew… that’s a lot of new books. Thanks to all the authors and illustrators and the folks at Charlesbridge for sending us so many great books!

And like I said, while the sun is out in force here in Seattle, on A Story Before Bed it’s raining – raining books. Look out next week for even more books coming your way. (And don’t forget the freebies while they last - Itsy Bitsy Spider and Jabberwocky still there if you haven’t recorded them yet.) Happy reading.

Hey there fans of A Story Before Bed (and I count myself among you …

Wow wow wow it is hot. Seriously hot. Taking the kids out last night for frozen yogurt only provided temporary relief. Seattle is very muggy. They say the weekend will bring relief. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

But heat does not stop us here at A Story Before Bed from bringing you new books… and we know you love the free variety, so let’s dive in. (And if you like what you see below… please forward this mail to friends and family.)

You’re all likely familiar with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. He also wrote perhaps one of the greatest English language nonsense poems of all time in Jabberwocky. Illustrated like a cross between Where the Wild Things Are and The Lord of the Rings, this rendition of the poem is distinctive and different. And the best part is it’s fun to read to kids of any age cause nobody has to know what any of it really means. OK… that’s perhaps the second best part. The best part of this is that for a limited time, Jabberwocky is completely free for you to record. Enjoy!

And if Jabberwocky didn’t sate your appetite for reading to your kids and grandkids, check out these other titles from our library. Our publishers will thank you for recording them (as will we).

As I’ve promised, we aren’t resting with our current collection of books. We are working with children’s book creators everywhere to give you new children’s books that will delight your family. And to be honest, we love finding them and helping them come into being. In the next couple of weeks we’ll be adding more books to our collection including this brand new title that’s exclusive to A Story Before Bed. It’s an updated version of Snow White called Snow White in the City. Here’s the cover:

Isn’t she gorgeous? We love her hair!

Many of you may not be aware that we have a subscription offering… click to see the details here. One annual fee gets you unlimited recording of 15 books from our collection. I’m happy to announce to all of you that Snow White in the City as well as several other books we’re releasing soon will be automatically included in the subscription. So if you already subscribed, you’ll be getting more books to record without paying another dime. And if you haven’t subscribed yet… what are you waiting for?

Hope everyone has a great weekend… enjoy the new freebie and we’ll get back to work on Monday finding more books for you to record for your kids.

Hey everyone. Hope you’ve all had a nice week.

The last two notes have rivaled a PhD thesis in terms of length so I’m going to keep it short and sweet for everyone this week. As promised, A-Z at the Earth Museum is no longer free. But, we’re not stingy here at A Story Before Bed and love giving out free books and getting everyone more experience using the service. We also know that a lot of books are recorded for really young children. We have a new free book that is really for older kids (7 and older, or a grown-up 6?) and it’s a classic – The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe. (In fact, since it’s free, why not consider recording yourself reading it to another adult. Grownups like to be read to as well.)

The illustrations are original and distinct. The illustrator, Roee Kedem, is a Doctor living in New York City. He works the ten final days of every month at an emergency room doing 12 hour shifts. And then the rest of his time is spent drawing and painting in his studio. An actual physician-artist. And he chose to illustrate Poe’s classic with ball point pen. Seriously. Ball point pen. Check it out:

One note: we know sometimes the text on the books can be a little smaller than might be comfortable to read. Each of the major operating systems has a magnifier tool you can use to boost up the size of whatever you’re looking at on screen. Here are instructions for each system: MacOS, Windows 7, and Windows XP. And cause we know that most of the books everyone records are featured on the front page, here are some books you may find interesting from the stacks in back. Click to preview:

Enjoy your weekend everyone. Don’t forget to give me a call at 1-888-947-8679 if you need any help, and of course… happy reading.

Hey there A Story Before Bed fans (I think we might need a shorter name for this group. Story Fans? ASBBers? My BFFs? Hmmm… I’m taking suggestions):

My name is Hillel, and I’m one of the founders and owners of A Story Before Bed. Last week I talked to you about how much I enjoy answering our customer support line (1-888-947-8679 in case you have a question – it rings my personal cell phone). I realized that this week it might be good to tell you about some of the lessons I’ve learned from talking to those of you that have called. My guess is that for every one of you that has called, there are a bunch of you who have the same problem but haven’t had time to get in touch. I’ll focus on one topic today and then introduce some new books. (Everyone loves new books!)

When you run a website, you get statistics on how it’s being used. We’ve noticed that once you folks get your camera and microphone configured, you almost always finish your recordings. But we’ve also noticed that a significant portion of the attempts to record a book never get the camera and microphone set up properly. We have two guesses as to what’s actually happening:

1) you started to try and record a book and only then realized that you’d need a webcam to do it. (I’ve done this myself, so I get it.)
2) you tried to configure your webcam and microphone and couldn’t get it to work.

Either one is a ‘show-stopper’. I get it. The solution to the first one of course is to get a webcam. I realize this is not a small investment. I’m on the lookout for special deals on webcams for our customers. Once I find one, I promise to share. As for the second one, it can be complex. However, if you don’t mind, I’m glad to try and help you figure out how to get your webcam working. As usual, my suggestion is to call our customer support line and I’ll do my best to walk you through the problem (1-888-947-8679 or just e-mail me at hillel@jacksonfish.com). I spoke with a very nice customer the other day from a ferry (seriously, I was on a ferry between Seattle and one of the nearby islands). She had both of the problems. She didn’t have a working webcam so she bought a new one. And once she got her new one, she couldn’t get it to work. She was on WindowsXP and we figured out the problem and now she’s happily recording stories.

Now on to fun stuff… new books! Let me tell you about Chronicle Books. Specifically Sarah and Laura at Chronicle Books. Sarah does the deals, and Laura gets us the electronic versions of the books. I spent months bugging Sarah to let us sell Chronicle’s books on our site. You need to understand, Chronicle makes absolutely beautiful children’s books. Simple, refined, I’d even say elegant. Some beautiful examples include the whole Little Pea series (Little Pea, Little Oink, and Little Hoot) from the super talented Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Jen Corace. The illustrations are simple and lively and perfectly support the main concept. A vegetable that has to eat its dessert. A piggy that has to be messy. And an Owl who isn’t allowed to go to sleep. Essentially every argument you have with your kid turned upside down. You can instantly relate to the stories as can your little one (and even your not so little one). And like the best learning opportunities they educate with a healthy does of humor, in this case the absurdity that being messy or eating dessert or not having a bedtime are mandatory.

You can see from the Little Pea series why I spent so much time bugging Sarah. And lucky for us, she took time out of her busy schedule and became a fan of A Story Before Bed. That brings us to Laura. Laura’s responsible for getting us the books in digital form. And this is harder than you might imagine as publishers across the globe (especially publishers of children’s books) are just starting to find venues for their books in the digital realm. (Realm sounds a little too regal… I’ll try using a different word next time. I swear I’m not wearing ermine robes… and if I did, they’d be synthetic of course!) Anyway, it’s hard work getting the books all ready for us to publish, so we’re deeply grateful for her efforts. Lucky for all of us, she’s spent a bunch of time helping us get some new books onto A Story Before Bed… specifically the Mr. Magee series – not to be confused with Mr. Magoo (Mr. Magee wears glasses but can actually see.). Mr. Magee is sort of an outdoorsy guy. He and his dog Dee have all sorts of outdoor adventures where they inevitably get into trouble (and of course get out of said trouble). The text is reminiscent of Seussian ryhming and the illustrations positively POP! In the two installments that we’re adding to our store Mar. Magee is at the ocean – Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee, and he’s going camping – A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee. (Laura’s hard at work getting us installment #3 where Mr. Magee goes skiing, but that’s not quite ready. Hang tight.)

Everyone likes free. What’s not to like. Last week we made A-Z at the Earth Museum available for free in addition to the perennial Itsy Bitsy Spider. And tons of you recorded it. However, there are still some of you who haven’t done it yet. So we’re going to leave it up for free over the weekend. If enough of you record it for free, then we’ll put up another book for free next week. I promise! So get busy recording the freebies. And remember, just because one parent or grandparent has recorded a book doesn’t mean you can’t keep taking advantage of the free books. Maybe grandpa read it already, but wouldn’t a recording done by grandma also be nice for your virtual shelf? And with the price of Itsy Bitsy Spider and A-Z at the Earth Museum at zero, it’s hard to argue. (OK, maybe it’s not that hard to argue, but hopefully you get my point.) The more response we get to our free books, the more time we’ll spend trying to arrange new freebies for everyone. Jenny’s busy working on a whole slew of new books right now. I’m sure some of them would be perfect for your collection.

I hope you have a great weekend. And while we love it when you use A Story Before Bed, if the weather is nice, you should probably spend some time outside. Maybe take the laptop outside and record in the backyard. I bet it will make for a well lit recording.

Some books to browse (i.e. the ones mentioned above)…

• Record ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider‘ for FREE.
• Record ‘A-Z at the Earth Musuem‘ for FREE.
• Record ‘Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee‘.
• Record ‘A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee‘.
• Record ‘Little Pea‘.
• Record ‘Little Oink‘.
• Record ‘Little Hoot‘.
• For extra children’s book goodness see which books are included in our value packed subscription offer. (It turns out that I love using the phrase ‘value packed’. And if you’re wondering what ‘value packed’ means, how about two bucks a book?)

And finally, as I believe most kids (at least in North America) are done with school this week, enjoy the kickoff of summer vacation everyone. Also, Jenny and Walter say hi!

Back in mid-2009 when we were building A Story Before Bed a children’s books online service for its eventual launch in the fall of 2009 we had a talk about how to support our eventual customers. I remember reading a blog post (which I can’t find now – please post in the comments if you remember it) about how putting an 800 number on your website made people much more willing to give you their credit card numbers. We decided that having free 1-800 tech support for our site was going to be a differentiator for us. It’s not often you find a consumer website these days that provides that level of support. Typically if there even is a phone number it’s buried under layers and layers of FAQs, knowledge bases, and e-mail forms. It often seems like companies will do anything possible to avoid actually speaking to a customer. I’ve experienced this many times as a customer and I know how it makes me feel. Like crap. And yet, as a business owner, I read all this reluctance as an indicator of how costly and time consuming it is to provide person-to-person customer support. I was nervous.

At first I suggested that the 1-800 number would ring my cell phone. This wasn’t some altruistic desire to connect with customers, but me being cheap. My partner Walter laughed at me. He pointed out this would not be a good use of my time as we would no doubt be inundated by calls, and I had lots of other stuff to do. I was a little embarrassed, but he’s annoyingly right almost all of the time. I spent months looking for firms to which I could outsource our phone support. I finally found one in the Philippines. Our operator was very nice. She was dedicated to our product. And could chat with her over IM, even when she was on call (to which I could listen in on). Her attitude was just wonderful, but there was no way she could know the product the way I did. She also couldn’t know how much we cared about making our customers happy. One day I discussed with her when to give a refund. I told her we had a no questions asked 7 day refund policy. She asked what to do if the person wanted a refund on day 8? I told her to go ahead and give it anyway. There were a lot of situations like this that had to be spelled out. To the letter.

We launched, and she handled calls. She definitely did her best, and it was great to know that our customers had someone they could rely on. And while we didn’t have a huge number of customers, we woefully overestimated how many support calls they would generate. It’s not that our product was perfect. It definitely wasn’t. It’s just that while the 800 number may have made people feel comfortable using the site, for the most part, they didn’t use it. My rough calculations show about one support call out of every 100 registered users, if that. After a couple of months of paying an incredible amount of money to handle the handful of calls we decided to bail and go back to the original plan. We set up a new 800 number that rings straight to my cell phone. Caller ID lets me distinguish between my mom calling and a customer needing help. And now, every few days, I get a phone call from a customer who has a question about our service.

When I used to work at a large software company, I couldn’t imagine many jobs worse than being a tech support person. Perhaps it was my own interaction with support folks stuck supporting products they almost never had control over, and often didn’t have enough expertise in. Or maybe it was all the effort that companies make to avoid being on the phone with customers in the context of support that made me assume it’s something to be avoided. It turns out that answering our support calls has been an incredibly productive experience as well as potentially a profit center. When customers call, not only am I in a great position to help them as I understand the product inside and out, but their questions and feedback are essentially a free focus group. We always have a list of improvements we need to make to the product, but sometimes prioritizing can be a crapshoot. Vocal customers tell me quickly which work items need to move to the top of the list. I can only imagine how many customers of ours experience the same frustration as these callers but don’t bother picking up the phone. I think of our support callers as unelected representatives of our customer population. Each of them represents a non-trivial number of users who (understandably) didn’t have the time to call us.

Not only do I get great information that I can empathize with from these customers, but recently I’ve started finding out how effective our marketing is – “Do you mind me asking where you heard about A Story Before Bed?” and turning each support call into a gentle sales call – “Did you know about our subscription offer? It could save you a lot of money.” I realize these things may be obvious to many of you reading this post, but even if I understood them intellectually, I didn’t *really* understand them, at an emotional level. It’s still early, but it looks like answering calls may not only not be a drag on the bottom line, but a boost.

And while the frequency of calls is on the rise as our site gets more popular, for now, handling the calls isn’t just ‘not a problem’ it’s something I look forward to. It makes me understand why Craig’s (a.k.a. Craigslist Craig) main job is customer support. From my perspective, there’s no better way to understand what my customers are thinking. Analytics can tell me what they’re doing, but not why. When the calls are frequent enough to impact my other responsibilities, I honestly wonder which of my tasks I’ll delegate. More and more I think that someone else might be flying to New York to sign up new publishers, and I’ll stay focused on answering calls and e-mails.

A Story Before Bed. This is Hillel. How may I help you?

I’ve had this blog post kicking around for awhile. And now, since I’ve been recklessly pontificating about the definition of the term “software designer” I might as well give some background on what I think in detail.

If you’ve spent any time following Jackson Fish Market, you may have noticed that we’re somewhat unconventional as a startup. We haven’t taken any investment, we aren’t looking to flip, we have a female co-founder. The first two appear to be getting less rare, and the third, well, the tech industry still feels much like a boys club, But that’s a topic for another post. What’s interesting about our female co-founder is not her gender, but her role. Even rarer than a woman as a co-founder is a designer as a co-founder. If you’re a world famous designer like Philippe Starck, or if you’re running a creative agency, having a designer as a founder is common. But Jenny isn’t world famous (yet) and Jackson Fish Market isn’t a design firm, it’s a software startup.

There are two ways to understand why we have a designer as a co-founder. The first is to meet Jenny and see her work. The intelligence, talent, energy, creativity, and style that she brings to every piece of work we do should be obvious. But for a deeper discussion you must understand that there is an almost universal misunderstanding of the role of “design” and “designer” at a software firm. Once you understand what great designers really do, you’ll be wondering why you don’t have one as a co-founder. And then you’ll realize how few currently exist.

A true and talented software designer is like a singer/songwriter. The can both write the music and perform it with quality. A great singer will fail singing a badly crafted song. And a poor singer will fail singing even the most beautiful composition. In the case of software design, the song composition is the scenario definition, interaction design, and basic structure of the experience. The song performance is the top-most layer of the user interface, the combination of pixels, some as images, some as text, some animated, some aural (audio pixels?), that bring the experience to the users input mechanisms – sight, touch, sound (no smell and taste quite yet). And while it’s true that you can find a great singer and a great songwriter to partner to create magic, unless you’ve found a partnership of true equals, one side tends to dominate the other, to its detriment. There are certainly some popular music acts today that are created by a team with a performer out front and center. And yet, from my perspective, the vast bulk of genuine artists both craft and perform their art.

When it comes to software, our industry’s penchant for specialization is in full effect. The software designer’s role is divided across multiple people in an organization including the graphic designer, the information architect, the program manager, the usability engineer, the technical writer, the interaction designer, and in some cases the ethnographer or anthropologist. And that’s not to say that there aren’t some interesting talents and specialties in every single one of these roles. There are. But in a world where small teams make great things, in truth, one star software designer can handle pretty much all of these tasks, and the end result will likely be better. Less committee, more vision.

In most software companies that don’t have endless resources, the roles are divided into essentially two. The first role is what I’ll call “interaction designer” for shorthand which is basically everything above except for drawing the actual art that goes on the screen. The “graphic designer” is hired for the rest. And in almost every organization, the interaction designer is “on top”. They run the show. They get the credit. They get the paycheck. They’re in charge. In my opinion, this is backwards. I believe that most of the self-proclaimed “interaction designers” or “user experience architects” are a dime a dozen.

Here’s an observation that will offend many people. It is much easier for someone who’s intellectually curious with aesthetic skills, an eye for detail, some Photoshop chops, and a real sense of style to learn how to do interaction design, and understand how software works underneath the covers, than it is for a software person, (even an interaction focused software person) to learn how to do great aesthetics and presentation. To put it simply, becoming an interaction designer is really not that hard. I know.

If you ask me to create a true software designer from either a) a smart and talented graphic designer, or b) a smart and talented interaction designer, nine times out of ten I will start with the graphic designer because the interaction design skills are much easier to acquire. From my perspective, while there are some interaction designers out there who certainly add value, there are a lot more who are essentially valueless.

And in some perverse irony, it is often the people with the easily acquired skill who spend all their time acting like the graphic designers are a dime a dozen, and that the interaction design discipline is the serious one. I chalk this up to their insecurity. The graphic designers don’t go around shitting on interaction designers. They’re not threatened, and in fact, they often want to broaden their skills to include interaction design. And yet I’ve seen countless people referring to the role of creating the presentation layer as “applying lipstick” or something that can be added later. In fact the aesthetics need to come from a process where a true software designer is involved in crafting their vision from day one. Where a software designer is informed enough to help make technology choices give the experience they’re trying to create. Where a software designer is the person on the team who is ultimately responsible for having and executing on a vision for the kind of experience that the customer will encounter.

Not only should you have a true software designer in your organization, but the organization should be built to serve the needs of that person. I’m sure there are other ways to approach this problem. And there are certainly plenty of customers who don’t appear to notice quality when it comes to product design (note all the customers of General Motors and MySpace). But more and more I think people want to emulate VW and Apple. And I believe the only way to do this is to put a true software designer in charge.

Of course we’ve known that for some time, but now our local startup community concurs. Nominated last year but coming away winless, this year Jenny took home the prize. We spend the bulk of our time heads down trying to make great software. Ultimately, our customers loving our products is what we cherish the most. That said, getting recognition from your peers is a treat. Thanks Seattle 2.0 and the community of folks who voted for us.

Check out all the winners at TechFlash.

Update: In what has roundly been denounced as a “dick move” I tried to make a nuanced point about who was or wasn’t a software designer in my original post. Not only was I wrong that two of the other nominees were actually designers, but my attempt at nuance was i believe what the kids call “an epic fail”. Now in the worst tradition of dick moves, I’m removing all the original stuff and replacing it with this. I know I can’t unsay what I said, and I apologize that it came off as jerky. To the folks involved, I owe you coffee/lunch. And to everyone else, please don’t blame Jenny for my poor judgment.

Check out Anita Hart’s awesome sketchnotes from my Web 2.0 Expo talk on aesthetics in software.

Thanks for taking such “expressive” notes Anita!

There are only a few hours to go to vote for Jenny as the best software product designer at the Seattle 2.0 Awards. If you’ve ever appreciated any of Jenny’s work (and that means anything created or designed by Jackson Fish Market, including this website) please vote now.

We love to point out companies that we admire and the just launched Sprout Robot is certainly in that category. They have an adorable design. They have a free useful service that tells you when to plant seeds in your garden depending on your area (and even points you to instructions on how to do it). And as for revenue, they’ll send you the seeds you need as part of one of three good/better/best packages so you have absolutely everything you need to plant your beautiful and delicious vegetable garden. Oh yeah, they’re a boostrap also. We’re big admirers.

Check them out at Sprout Robot.

Well, it’s taken over three years, but we’ve finally gotten around to actually mentioning on our website that you can hire us to help you design (and develop) the user interface, brand, and overall user experience for your website, iPhone app, iPad app, etc. It’s possible we were too busy designing software to put up the page, or that we’re just lazy. Probably a bit of both. Either way, those days are over. We now have a wordy treatise all about what you get when you hire Jackson Fish Market to do user experience design and development consulting.

If you’d just like the short version, here’s a video (which may also be fun to watch if you like seeing montages to instrumental rock music with lots of user interfaces in progress):

It’s a sampling of many of the projects we’ve built or helped to build over the last three years. If you’re interested in hiring us to help you design and build your software, feel free to get in touch.

We’ve been busy here on the Jackson Fish Market back lot shooting some new videos to help people understand and get excited about A Story Before Bed. The first is a 60 second commercial for the site.

The second is a little more in-depth look at the features of the site along with an example of a recorded story.

The best thing of course is that the actors work pretty cheap (as they’re JFM family members)! Happy watching. And please share them with your friends.

On the heels of adding over 25 books last week, we’re thrilled to add five more high quality children’s picture books to our growing catalog here on A Story Before Bed. Chronicle Books is well known for creating very high quality children’s picture books and the first five are no exceptions. Boomer Goes to School is about a dog going to a new school for the first time. And the price can’t be beat – only $6.99 compared to an MSRP of $14.95. Over 50% off! Absurdity reigns when the Chickens take charge in Chicken Scratches: Poultry Poetry and Rooster Rhymes. And finally, we’re proud to announce that the Little Pea series including Little Pea, Little Hoot, and Little Oink are all available immediately on A Story Before Bed. According to the New York Times, “Corace’s illustrations are more daring, throwing a wider color spectrum into the mix and showing a slight anime influence. The book feels familiar right away without losing its sense of surprise—such a pleasure to read that even ‘they owl lived happily ever after’ can be forgiven. More!”

The books normally sell for $11.99, which is already discounted from the MSRP of $14.99. And until the end of the day on Sunday, May 2, 2010, we’re discounting the entire Little Pea series to $9.99 – 33% off! (The sale is extended from our original deadline of Friday April 30th.) Welcome Chronicle Books to the A Story Before Bed family

We love making software with incredible attention to detail. I’m not saying we always succeed, but we certainly try. And there’s nothing we love better than using software made by people with the same values. When we needed an e-mail service awhile ago we ended up with some white label piece of crap whose name I don’t even remember. When we had enough suckage we went with MailChimp. Constant Contact seemed bigger, but MailChimp looked better. We chose it strictly based on the UI. And while it’s not perfect, it does have moments of perfection. And remember as you look at these, MailChimp is a colorful attractive thoroughly modern looking web app.

These retro loading screens are pure excellence. They were hard to capture, so the first one is mid-load, and the second is with the Strongbad option where he mumbles about how soothing green text is. Awesome.

Notice the ASCII banana.

We’re very excited to announce a whole slew of new books for A Story Before Bed. Many thanks to our existing publishing partners, especially Charlesbridge for contributing so many new books to keep you and your family entertained. And special thanks to two brand new publishing partners — Gingerbread House and 1889. Both are making high quality children’s picture books that we know you’ll love to read.

We’re especially happy to grow our library this week as this Friday marks the end of our special introductory pricing. Currently all books on the site are $6.99. That’s going to change as of tomorrow, April 23, 2010. So make sure to get in those last minute recordings.

Yesterday, March 31, 2010 at 5:53pm Cupertino time we were informed by Apple that that our brand new app – A Story Before Bed for iPad – was approved for launch and will be available for iPad customers at launch is available now!

YAY!

Back in November of 2009 we launched A Story Before Bed as the first and (still) only service that lets parents and grandparents record videos of themselves reading children’s picture books to their kids. As enjoyable as it has been for children to watch mom or grandpa read them a story on their computer, these cherished video memories can now also be played back over and over on the iPad.

In a recent keynote speech titled “The Future of Digital Distribution and Ebook Marketing” at the Tools of Change conference, Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media described A Story Before Bed as a “fabulous product”. He went on to say that “A Story Before Bed is a specialty retailer. But it’s a specialty retailer that has figured out something really unique about social media. That social media is literally part of the product. You basically buy this product to share with someone else. And that’s a really powerful insight.”

This first of its kind app in the world is totally free and comes bundled with a pre-recorded version of the classic story “The Frog Princess” at no cost. A Story Before Bed for iPad customers can record their own stories from our library of high quality Children’s books including classics such as: The Itsy Bitsy Spider, The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Brementown Musicians, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, Hush Little Baby, The Princess and the Pea, Hansel and Gretel, The Farmer in the Dell, as well as The 12 Days of Christmas and Jingle Bells for the holidays, and many many more. There will soon be over 100 quality children’s books in our library with more being added every single week from publishers such as Charlesbridge, Immedium, Bubblegum, Gingerbread House, and Chronicle Books.

Also, customers who record and purchase a story in the first 24 hours after downloading the app will get a coupon for a free recording of their choice from our collection of classics. That’s two stories for the price of one.

Since we first shipped A Story Before Bed in the fall of last year we’ve always known that the experience wouldn’t be complete until you could really curl up in bed while grandma or dad read you a story as you drift off to sleep. As much as we love our laptops, the iPad is the first real bedtime computer that makes the experience of A Story Before Bed shine.

Customers of other iDevices fear not, we’re very close to releasing a version of A Story Before Bed for iPhone 3GS and iPod touches as well. Grandpa will be able to read little Timmy a story while you’re waiting in line at the supermarket.

Everyone at Jackson Fish Market is excited to help preserve the memories of parents and grandparents reading to their children as well as kids reading to their families. We hope A Story Before Bed can help make great memories in the years to come.

This past weekend we exhibited our latest product, Thrilled for You Video Guestbook, at the Tacoma Wedding Expo. We got to meet hundreds of excited couples and show them the digital alternative to a traditional wedding guestbook. Much to our surprise and delight, the attendees and vendors voted Thrilled for You Video Guestbook Best New Product at the show. Thank you! We are humbled.

Chinese New Year falls on February 14th this year and to celebrate it, we are releasing a new book on A Story Before Bed. Check out Immedium’s Year of the Tiger by Oliver Chin and Justin Roth. While you’re there, you can also record other great chinese zodiac books: Year of the Dog, Year of the Ox, Year of the Pig, and Year of the Rat for that special youngster in your life.

Goong Hai Fat Choi from Jackson Fish Market!

Here at Jackson Fish Market, there aren’t many things that Jenny, Walter, and I love more than shipping new software. So today makes us very happy. Last July, our own Jenny Lam got married. While there was a professional photographer, several amateur photographers, and a professional videographer (all of whom did a great job), there was still an opportunity for a different kind of documentation – the personal wish for the new couple spoken straight into the camera. The tradition of having a guestbook for guests to sign has been around for sometime. Jenny brought this idea into the 21st century by having guests record personal video messages instead of asking them to sign a physical book.

Today we’re taking the software created expressly for Jenny’s wedding and shipping it to the rest of the world. Thrilled For You™ — Wedding Video Guestbook is a modern take on the traditional guestbook. Instead of signing a physical book, guests walk up to a kiosk running the Thrilled for You software, and record a video congratulations to the happy couple.

Each copy of Thrilled for You is customized just for your celebration with the names of the couple tying the knot, the date, and one of 21 custom backgrounds. There are enough for everyone to find something that fits with their wedding palette. The software runs silently and automatically as guests can record an unlimited number of warm, heartfelt, and often humorous congratulations messages. The videos produced can be uploaded to video sharing services such as YouTube and Vimeo and even incorporated into the official wedding video by the videographer hired for the event. (Videographers, photographers, and other wedding professionals should get in touch about special pricing packages for multiple wedding events.)

Here are four of the over twenty custom themes:

Thrilled for You runs on MacOS only. It requires either Leopard or Snow Leopard versions to operate. Your Macintosh computer will also need a webcam (either built-in or attached) to run the Thrilled for You software.

Thrilled for You costs $99. Go to the Thrilled for You — Wedding Video Guestbook website, choose “customize“, enter the names of the two people getting married, the date of the event, and choose a theme. We’ll send you a link to download your own customized version of Thrilled for You within 24 hours.

We hope you make Thrilled for You a part of your special day. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, don’t hesitate to let us know. We’re always looking to improve the experience so that on your wedding day, the only thing you have to worry about is having wonderful time. After your wedding day, we hope that Thrilled for You – Wedding Video Guestbook played a small but important role in making your memories come to life.

And of course, if you are getting married soon, congratulations on your upcoming nuptials. We are thrilled for you.