Hope you are safe and well. It's great coming back to publishing release notes after working in the dark for a few months straight.
Today we have a major release succeeding v1.6.9 that was released months back. In v1.7.0 we introduce two new game-changing products for your ebooks, as well as major enhancements at all levels. Our reader has a fresher look, with brand new icons. Yes, it is as good as it sounds!
Let's start with the two groundbreaking products.
In this release we introduce the beta launch of Kotobee's 5th product: Kotobee Mini-apps. This product allows you to extend your ebook's functionality witih apps running inside it. Mini-apps are similar to book widgets, except that they are opened from a dedicated panel independent of the book content.
With around 20 mini-apps in this first launch, and another 15 being tested, you are able to offer tremendous value to your users with both tools and content. All mini-apps are customizeable with your own data and styling, all done from within Kotobee Author. You can find all mini-apps available in the new Mini-apps tab in your book's customization. No more juggling around between different software!
Many of the mini-apps are free. However, the paid ones will follow an annual subscription model, with the option to subscribe to all mini-apps at an extremely reduced price. Please check the Kotobee Mini-apps page for pricing details.
Collect Payments For Your Books!
Our second massive news is that you can finally sell your ebooks from within our platform. Previously, the only way to sell book access was by integrating with solutions like WooCommerce or Shopify. Now the entire payment user experience can be done from within your library or cloud ebook, through a simple and intuitive interface.
Kotobee Author now shows you a new "Payments" section under your cloud ebook or library. There, you can manage pricing, payment methods, set custom payment instructions, and view order history. Your cloud ebook or library now has new email templates that you can set for payment orders to your users among other things. It also has new analytic properties to see how your sales are trending.
This is just the start, with more payment features and gateways coming in our pipeline such as discount coupons, refund management, bundled product pricing, and more. That said, you still have the option of selling your ebooks through third-party integrations like WooCommerce and Shopify.
Kotobee payments are currently supported for Web only, with desktop and mobile (in-app purchases) support coming soon.
Freehand Notes and Drawings
A long-awaited feature is the ability to add freehand notes or drawing to the ebook pages. We're happy to announce that this feature is now available in v1.7.0.
Freehand notes and drawings can be enabled from the Reading options when customizing your ebook in Kotobee Author. A requirement of this tool is that the page (or chapter) be a fixed-layout, in order for drawings to overlay specific positions of text. Here are some options that are available for you in this tool:
- Brush color
- Brush thickness
- Line smoothness
- Eraser tool
- Undo/redo/clear
FusionAuth Single Sign-On
We have added an additional single sign-on provider: FusionAuth. This provider is similar to Auth0 but much more affordable with some additional flexibility. It is really suitable if you are a small or medium scaled business.
For more information read: Enable Single Sign-On with FusionAuth.
Library Book Thumbs Customization
Your library book thumbnails can now be customized further with a dropdown shadow, custom alignment, and adding the author and/or publisher underneath the book title. This can be done from the new Book Thumbs tab in the library's customization section.
Additionally, the book name can now be as long as you want, and it would not be trimmed out like before.
Test Email Templates
When customizing email templates for your library or cloud ebook, you can now conveniently send yourself a test email directly from within Kotobee Author, to examine your template.
Jump To Page
For fixed-layout books, the page number is optionally displayed to your users from the Chapters panel. Clicking on that will allow the user to enter a page number to jump to. This option can be set from the Reading tab in the book's customization.
Customization Enhancements
A few user experience enhancements have been made in Kotobee Author's customization page. You can now pin any tab to maximize its visibility on the screen. Additionally, toggle switches are now used instead of toggle buttons.
You can download this version and others from: https://www.kotobee.com/products/author/versions.
If you have any feedback from your experience with any of these new features, we'd love to hear it. Send to us at support@kotobee.com or even reach us through the Live Chat on our website.
Best of luck, and as always, stay safe!