Tips, News and Updates From our Co-founders

Happy New Year to all our Writers in the English language!

Happy New Year to all our writers, authors, teachers, illustrators and readers! Thank you for using the world’s simplest free platform for creating interactive e-books! Let me know if there is anything we can help with. [email protected] 

Happy New Year to our Bulgarian Writers!

Честита Нова година на всички наши български писатели, автори, учители, илюстратори и читатели! Благодарим ви, че използвате най-простата безплатна в света платформа
за създаване на интерактивни електронни книги! Кажете ми, ако има нещо, с което можем да помогнем.

Happy New Year to our Ukranian Writers!

З новим роком усіх наших письменників, авторів, викладачів, ілюстраторів та читачів! Дякуємо за використання найпростішої у світі безкоштовної платформи для створення інтерактивних електронних книг! Повідомте мене, якщо ми можемо чимсь допомогти.

Happy New Year to our Writers in Hebrew!

שנה טובה לכל הכותבים, הסופרים, המורים, המאיישים והקוראים שלנו! תודה על השימוש בפלטפורמה החינמית הפשוטה ביותר בעולם ליצירת
ספרים אלקטרוניים אינטראקטיביים! ספרו לנו אם יש משהו שנוכל לעזור בו.

Happy New Year to our Writers in Arabic!

عام جديد سعيد لجميع الكتاب والمؤلفين والمعلمين والمصممين والقراء لدينا! شكرًا لك على استخدام أبسط منصة مجانية في العالم لإنشاء كتب إلكترونية تفاعلية! اسمحوا لي أن أعرف إذا كان هناك أي شيء يمكننا المساعدة فيه.

Happy New Year to our Italian Writers!

Buon anno a tutti i nostri scrittori, autori, insegnanti, illustratori e lettori! Grazie per aver utilizzato la piattaforma gratuita più semplice al mondo per la creazione di e-book interattivi! Fammi sapere se c’è qualcosa in cui possiamo aiutarti.

Happy New Year to our Turkish Writers!

Tüm  yazarlarımız, öğretmenlerimiz, aydınlarımız ve okuyucularımıza Mutlu Yıllar! Etkileşimli e-kitap oluşturmak için dünyanın en basit ücretsiz platformunu kullandığınız için teşekkür ederiz! Yardımcı olabileceğimiz bir şey varsa bana bildirin.

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Thank you Video: A great tip for our Authors: 

Dec. 23rd, 2020

Make a short video (ten or fifteen seconds) thanking your readers for viewing your book. Upload it on Youtube or Vimeo. You can then embed it on the front or back page of your e-books here on our platform. Here is one I prepared – it takes less than a minute. It personalizes your e-books and makes them come alive. Give it a try and let me know!

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Our Upcoming Zoom Get Together –  Ourboox Co-founders Meet our Community 

On Thursday, January 7th, 2021, we will have our next Zoom event! Get to know the Ourboox co-founders Ran and Mel, other members of our team, and most importantly one another! This is a great opportunity for us to meet you, our community, hear about your suggestions and chart our future course together.  

Join us directly via Zoom: Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/94991189077

Date: Thursday, January 7th, 2021. Time:  15:00 London, 10:00 New York ,  17:00 Tel Aviv

New: Ourboox Premium is only $1.99 a Month! There are many reasons why you should join now and many more benefits on the way. This is an offer that won’t last long so please join now!

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Benefits of Ourboox Premium

Hello everyone! Here are some of the benefits of joining our brand new Ourboox Premium. More exciting options are on the way!

  1. With Ourboox Premium you can receive donations for your writing and even sell your books. Details are here.

  2. Ourboox Premium gives you your own author homepage which is easy to maintain and beats having to operate your own website. Save hundreds of dollars a year for only $1.99 a month! Check mine out here!

  3. Ourboox Premium authors can add active hyperlinks in their books.

  4. Ourboox Premium authors can make their books private and share the url with a private group.

  5. Books by Ourboox Premium authors are advertising-free.

  6. NEW! Book views are visible on all your books and updated daily!

  7. Ourboox Premium Members contribute to maintaining and developing the website.

So come and join our premium group now when the price is so low and more and more features are being added monthly.

The Ourboox Team

P.S. Ideas? Questions? Just let us know.

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The Joy of Writing Children’s Books , a  new exclusive course offered to our writing community!

Many of us have dreamed of writing our own picture books for children. With the advent of Ourboox, it is now easier than ever. So why not join us and make your books come true?

In his hands-on workshop, “The Joy of Writing Children’s Books“, Dr. Mel Rosenberg, Ourboox co-founder, shares his unique and tested approach to writing children’s books for fun and fulfillment. Participants create their own page-flipping picture books, starting with the very first lesson! By the end of the ten-week course, participants have mastered the basic skills of writing picture books for children. They can publish their own stories online and can print digital copies to share with friends and family. The best books will be featured on Ourboox! Details are here.  Short explanatory video here. You are welcome to contact Dr. Rosenberg directly with any questions or suggestions .

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Article: Why do we write for kids?

Why do we invest so much time, effort, resources, and angst, as if obsessed with this “childish” preoccupation? After all, the large majority of us do not make money writing for children (and many of us lose money). So what’s it all about?

I posted this question to the members of the KidLit411 group on Facebook, hoping for a couple of responses. Instead the question was addressed by some forty writers, often citing more than one factor. The reason most frequently mentioned was the hope of having a positive general influence and being a source of inspiration (12). Eight authors cited the laughter, fun and enthusiasm inherent in writing for children. Six commented on the opportunity that children’s books provide them to write about specific causes and topics such as protecting animals, explaining death, sharing the joy of reading and cultural awareness. Five authors write because the words, characters and ideas pop into their head, prompting them to put pen to paper. Authors cited the maintaining the connection with kids (5) and holding on to their own childhood (3). Three loved the esthetics and visual experience. Three others viewed writing for children as an extension of their educational careers. The prospect of making money was mentioned by three respondents. Three authors talked about leaving a legacy. Two writers mentioned healing. Individual comments included love of writing per se, the love of children, writing as a gift, writing as a thought-provoking process, writing to preserve memories, originality and the fun of collaboration.

This is not a representative survey, but it does provide a glimpse into the hearts of authors who write for kids. And if you didn’t answer the original post, no problem. You’re welcome to chime in below.

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Our First Zoom Get Together – Meet Ourboox Co-founders and Writers

On July 15th we had our first Zoom event! Get to know the Ourboox co-founders Ran and Mel, other members of our team, and most importantly one another! We  explained how Ourboox came to be, answered questions. Writers talked about their books and their experiences using the platform.  Sign up here

Or just join directly via Zoom:  https://zoom.us/j/94771549192

Date: May 15th Time:  15:00 London, 10:00 New York ,  17:00 Tel Aviv

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Happy St. George’s Day!

To all our friends celebrating in Bulgaria and elsewhere, we wish you a very happy and healthy holiday! This book is very popular today, we hope you enjoy it!

Thank you Valentina! for the lovely and popular book!

We are Growing!

Dear authors, readers, illustrators and friends of Ourboox. This week has been the busiest for us in our six-year history. More and more wonderful people are choosing our free platform to create amazing books in many languages. This week Ourboox welcomed over 500 new book creations every day! We also have well over ten thousand readers each day. During the past two days 400 of our books have been read ten times or more. We are averaging over 25,000 page views a day! In order to allow hundreds of people to use Ourboox at the same time, and to create hundreds of thousands of new books, we have increased our server size by a factor of four, and will continue to welcome new and old writers and readers. Please share any questions, comments, suggestions (and we love compliments too!) by writing me .

How can you help us make books come true? Share your books and those of others (and like them too!). Tell people about our free website and its advantages. Create great content! Join our Facebook group. Like our Facebook page. But most of all, practice social distancing and stay safe!

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Hello to our Growing Ourboox Community

April 15th

Today we celebrate our authors, readers and teachers from BULGARIA! Yesterday we reached 25,000 page views, thanks to you! I’ve prepared a Step-by-step guide to publishing on Ourboox in Bulgarian – Please check it out here and let me know if the translation (thanks to Google) makes sense. In the meantime Благодаря  – Blagodarya !!!!!! And here is yet another great instruction book in pdf format. 

Of course Ourboox welcomes your fine content in any language! And to those of you who want to teach your kids (and yourselves) the differences between bacteria and viruses, I’ve prepared something cute right here.

Stay well and safe everyone!

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Dear Authors, Illustrators, Readers, Friends,

April 14th

Yesterday I glanced at our analytics and almost one hundred people (!) were on the site at the same time, writing e-books, reading e-books, creating content and value for our community and the world. Congratulations!  Almost half of our activity yesterday (20,000 page views in all) came from the Ukraine. So we say to you,  “Нашим українським друзям, Ми використовуємо Ourboox!  Покрокові інструкції – Створення книги на Ourboox – Українська версія.  We are working on the Ukranian translation of the English  step-by-step instruction guide. In the meantime, you can check it out the translation here.

We will continue to translate instructions into our most popular languages – if you wish to help, just let us know.

Topic and Ideas for your Amazing Book

We hope you are staying safe and well! We are hosting over 200 new books a day, some are read thousands of times – and we love it! Here are ten ideas which will help give you ideas and topics for writing your e-book. If you have more suggestions, feel free to contact us at [email protected]

  1. Your favorite trip – find a dozen of the finest photos from a recent trip (jpeg or png) and create a page-flipping book in word and pictures. Embed Google Maps of the places you visited. And don’t forget – this all will pass, and someday soon we will be able to travel again.
  2. Perhaps you have poems and stories gathering dust in your desk or on your desktop. Isn’t now the best time to share them with the world? I promise you, we will love them all.
  3. Are you a collector? Ribbons, match boxes, cars, dolls, embroideries? Now is the time to take pictures of your collections and share your hobby with the world.
  4. Do you have memories that you want to keep for yourself? Photos that you want to preserve? You can create a book, keep it private and share with those you love.
  5. Ourboox loves recipe books, especially ones with pictures of your delicious desserts.
  6. How about your own drawings, paintings, illustrations? Ourboox is a great place to create a portfolio of your artwork.
  7. Write about a special occasion in your life.
  8. Have you read a great book lately? Watched an awesome movie? Write a review. We love them.
  9. Can you teach us a skill? Share tips, insights? Ourboox is the place.
  10. There are many reasons to write a book, especially these days. But this last reason is the best of all. Connect with your muse, your creative spirit, the child in you, the dreamer in you. Use our free platform to fly. Write because writing is engaging, fun, liberating. We are waiting.

The Ourboox Team

P.S. Ideas? Questions? Just let us know.

 

Our commitment to you

The world has changed so much in these few weeks. Loss of dear family and friends, illness, economic hardship, and physical separation. But over the internet, we have become closer than ever. After all, no matter where we live, what language we speak, our nationality and beliefs, we are all part of the human species and we must survive and persevere as one. Perhaps Ourboox cannot help save lives. But it can help us share, think, create, communicate, educate and put our energies to positive use. Six years ago Ourboox made it easy and free for people to share their thoughts, vision and experiences in ebook format. It was important then, now it is more important than ever. We are asking our community to continue to publish content – ebooks that inspire, engage, teach, comfort, connect. Rather than watch endless tv programs, rather than raiding the refrigerator, let’s spend more time writing. Storytelling is what makes us who we are. Share some tips and insights. Write with your family, about your family. Share recipes, memories, hopes, dreams. If not now, when? We will continue to support our free platform, our authors, or community, we will be here for you, to answer questions, to feature outstanding content, and to think together how we can continue to improve the website we built to connect people.

Wishing you health and safety in these difficult times,

The Ourboox Team

P.S. Ideas? Questions? Just let us know [email protected]