Apple Certificates for Submitting Apps to Apple Store

Even software developers have a difficult time preparing an app for the Apple Store.  If you are a writer, photographer, business owner, etc. who wants to use ibuildapp.com for creating your app, read on. When it comes to the publishing part and submission to Google Play and the Apple Store, if you're not an experienced Apple software developer, it's best to pay to have ibuildapp submit your app for you. My husband with 40 years of experience in the software field as coder, consultant, senior project leader, had to go through numerous hoops, especially for submission of my audiobook, "Live from Milwaukee, It's Tuesday Night," to the Apple Store. The costs keep changing at ibuildapp and if you're paying for a monthly plan, be sure you're charging a fee for your app that correclates to your projected sales OR give only a portion of your app for free and hope you have enough customers who will upgrade to the paid version.    

New App To Be Released Soon

Since we've had over 5900 downloads of "The Perfect Husband App", we decided to go ahead and combine my audio essays, short story, and one-minute "dollop-a-day" features into an audio app.  I'm using ibuildapp again, and after reacquainting myself with the in's and out's of one of my favorite do-it-yourself online software programs, I am ready to launch "Live, From Milwaukee, It's Tuesday Night".  My husband, Mike, the software engineer and technical support for our company, Language Rocks, uses his developer's certificate AND his expertise to help me upload the app to the Google Play store and to iTunes.  I've decided to charge a small fee for this app, so we'll see how that goes. Wish us luck.

Ibuildapp is a bit glitch-y to use, but they do have a help desk with online chatting available during certain hours along with email support.  I have posted and will continue to post little hints I've found useful.  One hint, before I close tonight, is to be aware, when using ibuildapp that the widgets are tied to the "manage content" functionality.  You can turn off a widget that you don't want by going all the way back up to the place you added your button images and then clicking on the "tab" button.  There you will see an "on-off" switch for your widget. 

More later and please don't hesitate to add your comments or questions.  Cheers, Billie

Multi-Media Ebook and App Disappointment



Let's back-up a bit. The real reason I started to publish "The Perfect Husband App" was to try the new software at ibuildapp.com in order to convert my children's narrated ebook, "Lucky, the Left-Pawed Puppy" as a narrated app.  After struggling with the audio, I went back to interactbuilder.com which I had been trying to use about a year ago.  That lets a user create really great looking mobile apps, but there is quite a cost involved. PLUS, I myself, find that software hard to use.  I then tried talespring.com last to use their software, and that has possibilities except I don't have a MAC and while I can create in that platform, I can't test it out to make corrections, etc.  To use Apple's iBuild Author software which creates multi-media books, one would need a MAC 10.7 (LIon) or beter which retails at about $999. Bookbaby.com, the company with which I have published "Lucky..." for Kindle, Nook, etc. is not doing narrated apps at the moment.  I contacted B-interacktive in Germany and they seemed interested in exploring whether they would create an app for me, but I haven't heard back from them.  I tried Desktop Author's epagewiz which creates page-turning ebooks like my narrated, page-turning online ebook at www.leftpawedpuppy.com, but when your app then goes into the Desktop Author ebook store and when you download apps you have to use their app reader to run the software and finding a book app with Desktop Author app is a nightmare.  So you might be able to see why I'm frustrated and disappointed.

All the forums keep saying getting a multi-media book made is "on the cutting edge."  I say, "It's NOT on the cutting edge because software engineers are doing it throughout the world as evidenced by the narrated children's apps that are out there.

My conclusion is this:  There seems to be a big problem with integrating audio with images for apps.  Somehow, some software coders who have figured it out are doing it and are charging a large sum for having accomplished this.  Here's my prediction - whoever comes up with a Do-It-Yourself piece of software that allows authors like me to integrate narration with images will have a multi-million dollar company.  I wish my software husband could do it for me, but apparently you need C++ or Objective C or some other C thing to do it!  With 12 computer languages in my guy's brilliant head, and more than 40 years of programming under his belt, he's not inclined to tackle any more languages.  Who can blame him?  Not me, but we do need a software hero to come swooping down and let creative children authors go to town.  We'd pay!  Because as a group, we may be a little cash poor, I'd say $150 for such software would be tolerable.  If there are any super-heroes out there who can create this wysiwyg, diy software for multi-media ebooks, show forth thyself!

Update for Ibuildapp Previous Blog Posting

Dear Fellow Novice App Builders with ibuldapp,

Previously, I had talked about not being able to insert an image and type over it in the software for ibuildapp.com and that is true as I understand the software as it works on this date in September of 2012.  What I was aiming for was a screen that looked like this:

Quite a daunting task this would be to create 20 images like the one to the right for each of entry in  "The Perfect Husband App". 

 So, if you're asking, why don't you just use a background color and insert a small image with your text, you would be about 1000 miles ahead of me.  So that just occured to me this morning, and if it hadn't occured to you, you might try this for your "quotation" app or other interesting "ibuildapp app."  The image on the right is the labor-intensive way of creating a colorful page in ibuildapp.

 

In the "Let's eat out tonight"  screen to the left,  just one image imbedded on a page with color.  It certainly cuts down on hours of work, and I think if I intersperse these pages with the other more "beautiful" screens, it will satisfy the customers. 

And by the way, speaking of customers, don't be disappointed if you have NONE.  Unless you have an "Angry Birds" app or a boat-load of money, promoting your creation for thousands of downloads will be difficult.  After I finish pretty-ing-up my app this weekend, I'm going to create a facebook business page for it and take out a facebook ad.  We'll see where that goes. 

By the way, if you are kind of heart, I sure could use some positive reviews of my app at the googleplay.com store.  Search for it with the "the" as in "The Perfect Husband App" or just click here.  It's only a 99 cents.

Cheerio for now.  Let me hear from you.  This is all very exciting, albeit a tad frustrating, but onward we go. 

From Ebook to App with Ibuildapp.com

This Novice's "Work-around" the Ibuildapp Software

Dear Fellow Self-Published Authors,

Either we're very ADHD or just quite forward-looking.  Let's assume the latter.  So I'm not satisfied that  "Lucky, the Left-Pawed Puppy" is published on Kindle, Nook, and whatever other e-reader platform is out there.  I want the NARRATED version published as I published it on my website  (www.leftpawedpuppy.com). However, that narrated version is an .exe file and can't be uploaded to Kindle, etc.  So I sell it from my casually visited website.  Ugh!  All that work! 

So on my way to trying to get audio embedded in "Lucky..." my thoughts turned to app development, and I turned to ibuildapp.com.  Not being able to figure out the audio embedding here, I decided to go ahead with a simpler app which I am presently calling, "The Perfect Husband App" which is essentially a "cheat sheet" for husbands who want to say the words their wives actually want to hear.That app is up in googleplay.com,  ("Available now for only 99 cents!" tee-hee ) BUT I'm working to make it prettier.  If you happen to find it and download it for your Android, be assured that within the week, the changes that will pretty-it-up will be automatically inserted in your app. (You can see what I mean if you click on the last item in the list - "OUR Words for YOU! That's the one pretty page that I hope to duplicate for the rest of the perfect husband list.) 

If you're struggling to get your ebook into an app, you MIGHT try this software.  However, there are a few important points to keep in mind:

1. If you have a book that you wish to make into an app, you'll want to choose the Ebook template at ibuildapp.com, preferably ebook2, which has chapter capability. (You'll struggle with the other templates if you don't choose an ebook format).

2. Don't worry that the simulator doesn't show your total chapter line; it will wrap your text around to a second line in the real app.3.  If you are having trouble with some of the features in ibuildapp, try a different browser.  I was having difficulty with Google Chrome and switched to Firefox successfully last week.  Then today, I wasn't able to insert a picture when working in Firefox and switched back to the Google Chrome browser and that worked better today. 4. Keep in mind that the software for ibuildapp is continually updated because there are features that need to be added to make this software more appealing. It seems to be somewhat in a Beta stage at the moment.  If you build your app and finally are able to upload it to googleplay.com for sale, you might be a little disappointed with the generic-looking quality of your app.  In order to "pretty up" your work, assuming that you've conquered using this software, several tips may help:  a.   If you want a pretty background for your chapters (let's say you're publishing a book of quotations), you will not be able to upload an image and then type text over it with ibuildapp. Therefore, you'll need to create an image with text on it with your graphics program.  Creating that image can be a tedious process, but it is worth it.  What size of an image should you use?   I've experimented for hours and it appears to me that 300 x 410 works best for portrait.  When the mobile device is turned for landscape, the user has to scroll down.  Because the ibuildapp software doesn't allow expansion of your image for landscape, you'll probably have to decide which view you prefer if you go the add-image route. I decided to create the image that looks best in portrait.  If the user chooses to view in landscape, he or she will have to scroll down to see the total image.

     b. When inserting your image in the "content" section, be sure to CENTER your picture.  That way the 300 x 410 images will be centered on the portrait screen of your app. and on the landscape view as well.

     c. You can add a background color for your landscape view since the image of 300 x 410 will not fill that screen.  It's putsy, but you insert this into the html code
<div style="background-color: rgb(89, 135, 206); text-align: center;">
Those rgb colors are for the blue I wanted.  If you want black, for example, you'd change those numbers to: 0,0,0.  Otherwise, forget the background color for now and wait until the software of ibuildapp catches up to your creative desires.

  Best of luck, my fellow authors!  You're on a noble, albeit arduous, journey.