Madefire Launches Cutting-Edge Visual Books Platform ‘Motion Book Publisher’

 

Leading Comics and Manga Publishers, IDW and Kodansha, embrace Madefire’s best-in-class technology.

 

San Francisco, CA, (June 26, 2015) — Madefire set a new standard in digital comics and books with the launch of the Madefire app and Motion Book format. The award-winning Madefire app is the #1 featured and best-rated App in Apple's App Store Books category. Today Madefire announced the launch of Motion Book Publisher - the cutting-edge publishing platform that enables publishers to build their own storefront, apps and books across multiple platforms and products.
 

The move to eBook formats has been fraught with complexity and a broken end-user experience. Motion Book Publisher allows publishers to master one library and deliver it to multiple platforms and formats. The result is a benchmark end-user experience that takes full advantage of a digital-first approach and ensures libraries are future-proofed for any screen.

Last week top publisher IDW announced the move of their IDW Comics app and digital library to Motion Book Publisher. IDW migrated 3,500 digital books across to their own Motion Book Cloud, allowing them to manage their own IDW Premier app as well as world-class individual apps for IDW’s premier brands including; Star Trek, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the newly added My Little Pony Comics app.

"Madefire is enabling us to make unique changes in the way we deliver content and build a relationship directly with our readers cross-platform. At IDW we pride ourselves on the quality of our books, Motion Book Publisher underpins that with a best-in-class user experience" Said Jeff Webber, IDW's VP of Digital Publishing & Business development.

Also joining IDW is Kodansha Advanced Media, the new U.S.-based digital arm of the world’s leading publisher of manga, Kodansha. Alvin Lu, KAM’s General Manager, added, “Reading manga on mobile through Madefire couldn’t be easier, and it’s backed by the assurance of an established, robust platform. It was natural to partner with Motion Book Publisher for the unique ‘Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches’ app we’re releasing to celebrate creator Miki Yoshikawa’s appearance at this year’s Anime Expo.”

Motion Book Publisher is designed for the digital distribution of all types of visual books; including comics, graphic novels, children’s books, manga and illustrated books. Motion Book Publisher enables publishers to manage digital book creation and ingestion, it also provides storefront and book series management, pricing including in-app purchase or subscription, as well as merchandising. Motion Book Publisher provides the publisher with one central Motion Book Cloud of digital books mastered in high resolution for delivery into multiple resolutions and file types including ePub, PDF, Flash, Video and Motion Book formats. In terms of distribution Motion Book Publisher takes full advantage of digital platforms with native readers for iOS, Android, Windows and web browsers. Motion Book Publisher is also the first books platform to publish to television via Android TV (includes Sharp, Sony and Philips TVs) with further gaming console and headset partnerships due to be announced later this year.

"Motion Book Publisher enables publishers to manage the relationship to their fans, to control their revenues and build their brand. There is a lot of complexity in the digital landscape that we've simplified. We're also entering a new era where taking a digital-first approach enables a far greater audience reach from phone to headset. It’s a new chapter in reading!" Ben Wolstenholme CEO & Co-founder, Madefire.

"In the move to digital people expect a digital-first experience - something native to the fast-moving world we live in. We've built the Motion Book Publisher platform from first-hand experience of creating the award-winning Madefire App, alongside input from over 40 publishers, and literally thousands of creators." Eugene Walden CTO & Co-founder, Madefire

About Madefire
Founded in 2011 by Ben Wolstenholme, Liam Sharp and Eugene Walden, Madefire is a media and technology company, and creator of the award-winning Madefire App. Madefire also provides creators and publishers the cutting-edge publishing platform, 'Motion Book Publisher', which enables a digital-first approach to publishing cross-platform in multiple formats. Madefire is backed by Toni Schneider (Former CEO Wordpress) at True Ventures, as well as Bill Woodward (Former Chairman and co-founder Macromedia) with angel investors including Sina Tamaddon, former Senior Vice President of Applications for Apple Inc. The Board of Advisors also includes Mike McCue, CEO and co-founder of Flipboard; Dave Gibbons, co-creator of Watchmen, the bestselling graphic novel of all time; and Bill Sienkiewicz, widely recognized as one of the greatest innovators of sequential art.

About Motion Book Publisher
Motion Book Publisher is a browser-based publishing platform created by Madefire Inc. Motion Book Publisher is designed for all types of visual books; including comics, graphic novels, children’s books, manga and illustrated books. Motion Book Publisher takes the complexity out of digital publishing by enabling Publishers and Creators to master their digital library once and distribute across multiple platforms and file formats. The unique SaaS (Software as a Service) model enables Publishers to pay a flat-rate monthly for the platform and build relationships with their audience directly, controlling their digital revenues and brand. Built from the same platform as Madefire's award winning app, Motion Book Publisher takes a digital-first approach that enables a benchmark end-user experience from phone through to tablet, television and headset - resulting in a future-proofed digital library.

Madefire’s partners and clients include:
DeviantART, Microsoft, TNT, Stan Lee/POW Entertainment, IDW, Kodansha.