First not-happy-ending experience

So it just has happened. Till now I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly and seamlessly every hire and outsource went, everybody communicated, was on time and the overall impression was more than good. Recently I contacted The Lamb Studios / India for our next picture book called 'Falling Leaves and the Foolish Brothers'. They replied to one of my public job hires on Elance earlier this year and I didn't use them that time but remembered them and when a story which seemed to resonated with one of their styles, I got in touch with them.

In the beginning everything went smoothly, they were happy to do the job, they preferred to be paid afterward via PayPal skipping the Elance part (10% rebate), and they sent first sketches quickly and even a color study, I really liked their work. They had slightly longer response than I had experienced before but you think, they are half a world away, it takes time (I know...). After a month into the job - and by that time the job was supposed to be done - they stopped responding. I sent a message calling for some response, some explanation or at least an announcement they quit every week for four weeks, and then I gave up. In the end, I didn't loose any money, I just really liked their pictures which were perfectly in synch with the hilarious story. Take a look for yourself...

Mike Rides His Bike to School

Okay, so it's publishing Friday here at Okenko Books. But don't be fooled I don't have to do it now and manually. Fortunately, my beloved developer Laku made everything so nice and easy for me that I just have to any time produce the final format of our new book, in a book-creator he wrote for me too, and then it goes automatically live on the day I stated. It's so nice to have working tools, and of course a relationship too.

Today we present you with a cute story about one boy's ordinary adventures on his way to school. Mike Rides His Bike to School (by Julie Musil and Julia Tiller) is about children's never ending curiosity, budding responsibility and their urgent sociability. The story is accompanied by beautiful whimsical illustrations by Canadian illustrator Julia Tiller, which remind me of my childhood's Czech illustrator and film maker Jiri Trnka. You can look forward to see another book with her pictures later this year which are even crazier and more colorful.

Andie Plays Pretend - another picture book in the Okenko Books collection

So this is how our home screen looks now in Okenko Books Reader on an Android phone. You can see all four thumbnails of our so far published picture books. Today we published a new cute book 'Andie Plays Pretend' about the most serious business kids do - play pretend game. See the description and more at our website.

We also released an updated version 2.0 of our reader, sporting tabs 'Current Books' and 'Coming Soon' so that our readers can look forward to another adventure coming in two weeks to Okenko Books. Within the update, we also made some enhancement in downloading the books. And for more clarity, our free book 'Lindy Lee' is now marked with a 'Free' badge. Hope these changes will make our app even easier to use.

The next book on our publishing plan is 'Mike Rides His Bike to School' by Julie Musil and illustrated by young talented artist Julia Tiller. It is surprising how many things you can learn while going to school, you just need to look around and ask questions, just like Mike.