Getting the book onto the thing you read on
Children’s ebooks come in two quite different shapes. Here is which you get and why.
Two kinds of file
Picture and board books are fixed-layout EPUB. The words sit exactly where the illustrator put them, because in a picture book the position of the text on the spread is part of the joke. They look right on a tablet, are cramped on a phone, and are larger files — 20 to 80 MB.
First readers, chapter books and middle grade are reflowable EPUB. Text rewraps to any screen and your child can make it bigger, which matters enormously for a struggling reader. A few megabytes at most.
iPhone
tablet
What we hold to
Thirteen of the twenty come with a read-aloud recording as a separate audio file, free with the book. Useful in the car, and useful for a child who wants the story a fourth time when you have run out of voice.
Why there is no DRM
DRM ties a file to a shop account. When the shop changes its rules, the book stops opening — and that has happened, repeatedly, to people who paid.
Instead your name goes on the title page. It costs you nothing and the book opens on anything.
Sharing
Send it to a cousin, a grandparent, a childminder. That is lending a book and we are not going to chase you. Uploading it to a file-sharing site takes money from an illustrator, and we will ask for it to come down.
Accessibility
Reflowable books have proper heading structure and work with screen readers. On request, and at no charge, we will send any book in a dyslexia-friendly typeface, at large print size, or as plain text. No diagnosis needed — just ask.
Refunds
At checkout you confirm you want the files immediately, which ends the 14-day cancellation right. So we cannot refund a change of mind once a file is downloaded. Read the sample first — every book has one.
If a file is broken, incomplete or not the book described, we refund in full and do not ask you to prove it.