About our guest reviews: 

We offer consultation with our Editor, Carisa Kluver, directly for new book app projects. This does not include expediting a review, advertising or other promotions on our network of sites. This service is intended to be a resource for app developers to get feedback privately about their project and brand, as well as to help developers plan for future trends in the market.

Consultation packages:

Basic Plan - $175

Includes a detailed written report, based on the content creator or developer's questions, ideas and plans. We will do up to 2 hours of research & write a response for up to 10-12 questions about any part of your project. This package also includes up to two detailed email conversations, to clarify any of the report, as necessary. This plan does not include any personal phone or video consultation.*

Premium Plan - $250

Includes everything in the "Basic Plan". In addition, after the report, you will get up to 2 hours of video or phone consultaion to ask any questions and clarify a market or development plan. With this plan, we also provide a full written report to summarize the consultation.*

Beta Testing - $150 to $350

Includes 2-6 hours of testing your kids book app & a written report detailing areas of strengths and any needs for improvement. Up to two detailed email or phone conversations are included for any follow up questions, including marketing suggestions.*

*Additional consultation can be purchased by the hour, on a case-by-case basis, depending on availablity, including phone, video chat or email assistance, for an additional $50/hour.

All consultation is separate from our review and advertising services. If we review an app that has used any of our beta testing or consultation services, we will disclose this at the end of the review.

Our Story:

Digital-Storytime.com was founded in December 2010 by a husband and wife development team. Marc Kluver was a computer engineer who decided to teach himself Android & iOS app programming as well as web design after a career in various programming jobs. Carisa Kluver had been a school counselor, health educator and researcher in child & maternal health prior to starting this project. In addition to this site, they have developed several apps, including "Dash & Ditto's Playground" for iPhone. For more information about their other projects see: catglo.com

As parents themselves, Carisa & Marc wanted to create a site that would help other parents and educators find out more about picture book apps for iPad. Detailed ratings and information are included for every app reviewed. Since they have a bookish young child, the couple shares almost all of the books reviewed with their son, who is currently in Kindergarten.

In addition to this site, Carisa also maintains a blog called “The Digital Media Diet” that covers topics about digital media, kids & technology. It includes over a dozen unique top 10 lists of recommended iPad books as well as articles about app development, marketing apps and other topics related to the digital publishing industry. See the blog for a list of resources for parents, recommended app review sites and industry resources on the right side-bar.

Popular posts include, "How will iPad picture books affect young reader’s literacy?", "The Changing Face of Children’s Books – New Challenges, New Opportunities", "An Adventure Worth Having: Self-Publishing Your Children’s Book as an App" and "iPad Best of the Best – 25 Essential Children’s Book Apps".

About the reviews:

Each review is written by Carisa herself and takes a great deal of time. As a result, the site cannot review all submissions, meaning the site does trend toward apps with reviews over 3.5+ stars overall. Only book apps available as iOS Universal or iPad apps are currently considered for review. Most of the apps reviewed, although not all, fall into the iTunes category of “Books” in the AppStore. Apps based on print titles and those with a text story will also be considered when published under other categories. 

To request a review on this site, fill out this form.

For a detailed description of our star ratings, please see: 

A Star-Studded Rating System – Behind the Scenes at Digital-Storytime.com

This site brought to you by: 

This site was developed by Catglo in co-operation with Zendiv. Catglo sepcializes in software development for mobile and web platforms. Catglo is responsible for the backend functionality of the site. Zendiv specialiszes in graphic design for both web sites and mobile apps. Zendiv is responsible for the look and feel of our software. If you are intrested in getting a high quality app or website designed and written by our team fill out our contact form and we will get back to you.

To contact us click here.

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Purchase ads directly through our site, or through BuySellAds.com:

Ads via BuySellAds.com are purchased separately for each of the websites above. All long sidebar, masthead and footer ads must be purchased via BuySellAds.com.

Ads purchased directly through our site will run on all three (3) websites simultaneously. Only basic ads (200x125 Sidebar) are available directly, for $50/month.

Basic ads (200 x 125) show on the side bar of all pages within the site and at the bottom of each review page. Ads rotate every time the page is visited or refreshed, allowing for maximum exposure. Multiple ads that share a single ad slot rotate within the slot. Currently, all basic ads must be 200 pixels x 125 pixels. Formats accepted include JPG, GIF & PNG with a maximum file size of 50KB. Light animation is acceptable on case by case basis.

Digital-Storytime.com - The Best Children's iPad Book App Reviews

EdApps4Sale.com - Handpicked Price Drops & FREE Daily Deals on Kids Apps

DigitalMediaDiet.com - A blog about kid lit, app development, parenting and technology.

Information on our sites' traffic, CTR, etc. are available upon request. All advertising must be pre-paid via paypal. We have a limited number of large ads so please plan ahead.

To get more information or sign up for a direct ad account: 

http://digital-storytime.com/contact.php

All ads must be pre-approved (in most cases, approval will happen within 24 hours of uploading a new ad).

We accept ads for family-friendly products, including kid & family-friendly apps.

However, we do not accept ads for book apps pending review. Once an app has been approved for review on our site, meaning it will qualify for at least a 3.5 overall rating, it can be included in our ads even if the review has not yet been published.

If you would like a book app reviewed on this site, buying ad space is not a way to get a good or speedy review. We recommend waiting until after your book app has been reviewed to place an ad for that app. All advertising is separate from our review process and has NO influence on the content of our reviews.

Ad policy as of: February 17, 2013

Disclosure Policy

The United States Federal Trade Commission requires that we disclose any relationship that we have with the App Developers we review.  We have developed a policy at Digital-Storytime.com that we hope is easy to understand.

Our Policy:

1. We are never paid to give a positive review of any product. Like most review sites, we do accept complimentary copies of the book apps we review. We also have a priority service for developers who want to time the publication of their reviews, for a fee. These reviews are expedited but still adhere to the same standards for objectivity. We will indicate at the end of priority reviews when a developer has paid to expedite it.
2. All our reviews are based on our experience and evaluation of the individual books themselves. As a result, the views and opinions expressed here are purely ours. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the company that developed it.
3. Our site was designed and created by a husband-wife team that also collaborates on app development. Should we ever promote one of our own products, we promise to disclose that fact in the review or description. Currently, we do not produce any iPad book apps and therefore do not review our own apps.
4. We promote family-friendly developers, in part because we believe that families care about who they are buying products from, especially for their children. Because it matters to us, as parents, we take into consideration what we can find out about the companies, developers, authors and illustrators of the books we review.  
   
5. We are members of Moms With Apps, a group of individual, independent, family-friendly developers who share best practices on making and marketing mobile apps. This does not affect the content of our reviews, but it may get an otherwise obscure title by a small developer reviewed sooner.
6. Due to the large number of requests we get for reviews, we often screen out many book apps that would not get at least a 3.5 on our overall scale, which is why so few books in our database score lower.
7. We sell advertising space, including ads to the companies that develop book apps. These ads do not influence the content of our reviews. 
8. We also have advertising on our site through ad services. For these ads, we have no direct relationship with our advertisers, nor do we endorse their products beyond approving their ads as appropriate content to be seen on our family-friendly site.
9. Any promotions we give away to readers from app developers are offered as a service to our readers and in no way influence the content of our reviews. Our 'daily deals' are promotions by developers available to the general public. Prices in iTunes change frequently and cannot be guaranteed in anyway.
10. Purchases made through iTunes links on our site include our 'linkshare' affiliate account information, giving our site a tiny commission on each paid transaction. This does not change the price in any way for consumers.

If you want more information contact us using our contact form.

This policy was established September 24, 2012.

On average, fewer than 10% of submissions are reviewed, but we download & preview everything sent through our review request form. We also recommend a number of other review sites developers may want to contact that we find reputable. We repost reviews from many of these sites, which gives developers another opportunity to be covered by Digital-Storytime.

There is no fee for our regular review service but timing of publication can be up to a year after submission. We do have two paid options for expedited reviews. Because we want to cover a wide variety of titles for our readers, paid services are limited to no more than 20% of our total content, meaning this service is not always available. Paid priority services do not impact the content of the review OR ensure a good review.

Basic: $75  [Brief written review, published within 10 business days]

Premium: $150 [Full Review with all the trimmings, published within 10 business days]

While we wish we could review all the book app requests we receive, we are a small family-run website and are unable to review all submissions. We appreciate your understanding and patience.

If you have any questions about this process please let us know at feedback@digital-storytime.com or use our comment form: http://digital-storytime.com/contact.php. We also run the blog, The Digital Media Diet. Check out our guest posts by developers about 'lessons learned' for strategies to market apps & more.

Thank you again for your time and interest in Digital-Storytime.com!