Press
Interview with Ren Hui
1. How do you do Mr Ren.May I ask what you’ve been busy with lately?
Ellabook continues to work with quality copyright, and is preparing for the next round of financing. To date, Ellabook already has abundant copyright resources and quality IPs, and has already signed close to 100 publishing entities, including Shanghai Animation Film Studio, Oxford University Press, Mattel, PPW, Hachette-Phoenix, Les Editions Fei, New Oriental and dozens of other renowned copyright entities. We have brought in PAW Patrol, The Smurfs, Thomas, Barbie, Black Cat Detective and many other top IP resources. Ellabook has completed four rounds of financing to date, raising more than RMB100 million in total. We plan to launch Series B funding, the proceeds of which will be primarily applied to product promotion, talent recruitment and copyright partnership.
2. What is Ellabook’s positioning? What is your greatest advantage when compared to similar platforms or products in the market?
Ellabook is positioned as a children’s digital reading platform. Ellabook is the first animation book reading platform and animation book engine architect in the world. Compared to similar platforms or products in the market, Ellabook’s greatest advantage is that it not merely provides a new generation interactive animation book reading service that integrates animation, gaming, sound effects, interactive and other experiences, it also provides animation book production and distribution services for picture book authors and publishers.
Animation book is a brand new product form that bridges print books and cartoons, and combines pictures, sound, text and every symbol so that each word can make a sound. At the same time, the dialog of each character and role is uniquely crafted and designed, so that when a child clicks it, he or she is not merely reading a book, but “enters” a book. Compared to print books, the content of animation books originate from the former. Animation books also retain the concept of books, including the reading form of turning pages. The biggest difference is that animation books causes interaction between humans and books. The reader may only obtain much of the content when he or she clicks it him(her)self or by other forms of interaction, thus greatly increasing the level of entertainment and interaction in terms of reading.
3. In what areas are your partnership with traditional publishing reflected?
Based on the principle of mutual benefit, the partnership between Ellabook and publishers is primarily reflected in three models: 1) book mandates - after Ellabook pays a certain amount of copyright fee, it develops its own sales; 2) open its animation book technology to publishers - upon completion of production, sales are made on the “Ellabook” platform; and 3) publishers pay Ellabook a certain amount of technical production fee and sells the animation book resources on their own.
At this time, Ellabook and traditional publishers most often adopt the first partnership model. Meanwhile, Ellabook’s exclusive proprietary content development and production engine - “Ella make-a-book” - has standardized the forms of animation and interaction so that the process of producing an animation book is as simple as producing PPT. This significantly reduces the production cost and cycle of animation books. Currently, this is only limited to the production of animation books based on internally acquired IPs. In the future, it will be opened to publishers and picture book authors.
4. What was the biggest challenge you encountered when working on the animation book development engine and digital reading platform?
Ellabook has created a new ebook reading model. As a brand new product category, the biggest challenge Ellabook currently faces is how to create user awareness so that more parents will find out about this new model, and accept and love it.
5. Gaming has significantly consumed the limited spare time children have these days. What do you think is the future trend of digital reading for children?
All along, children in China spend less time reading than on cartoons and games in their daily lives. The onset of animation books creates a brand new reading experience for children. “Animation book”, an original product creation of click-and-read technology, is a medium between books and cartoons. It has both animation and sound effect; interactive and gaming functions have also been added. It has seen significant breakthroughs in making reading fun. Therefore, once “Ellabook” made its debut, it immediately became the darling of millions of children. It made capturing the attention of children from comics and games, which are of low “nutrition”, a possibility.
6. Has Ellabook developed according to your expectations? What is the company’s next development strategy?
In line with expectations. To date, Ellabook has already launched Ellabook APP, a product aimed at family users, and Ella Animation Book Library, which is aimed at preschool education entities. Ellabook will also release two new products this year. One is “Ella Home”, an APP developed for preschoolers, which monitors the reading progress of children online. The other is “Ella English”, a customized graded English reading APP that intelligently matches the books to be read based on an assessment of the child’s English standards.
Our goal is to become the world’s largest interactive digital reading platform for children, and offer the most advanced digital reading service to the hundreds of millions of children around the world, becoming the requisite reading tool of every child in the world as they grow and develop.
Ren Hui will be speaking at the StoryDrive conference in Beijing (28 May - 1 June 2018).
