Big News in Illustration at PC!
Last year, Jenny Lam of Jackson Fish Market commissioned the Portfolio Center illustrators to create children’s books for an exciting project she and her partners were developing, A Story Before Bed. The students were assigned stories to illustrate, which would be published alongside the work of seasoned professionals. In all, PC students produced 10 of the 55 books currently available. Congratulations to the following PC folks on their beautiful published books: Danielle Wilcox, Forrest Hill, Ivy McLeod, Dante DeStefano, Patrick Allison, Katie Grosskopf, Nofio Pecoraro, Liz Haywood, Erica Stammers, and Jason Hawkins. And a special thanks to Department Head of Illustration Lindy Burnett for her expert guidance, encouragement, and support.
The website has finally launched, and we wanted to share the announcement Jackson Fish Market just released:
A few years ago, Hillel tried videotaping his parents reading stories to his young kids. His parents live on the east coast and he wanted his west coast children to have bedtime stories from their grandparents, even when they were far away. The effort was cumbersome, and the results were not great.
For most of the past year, we’ve been working on creating a website that makes this process dead simple, and creates beautiful results: A Story Before Bed.
Anyone with a webcam and a web browser can choose a book from our library of licensed and digitized high quality children’s books, record themselves reading that book, and share it with a special child in their lives. We’ve also worked closely with our three launch publishing partners - Immedium, Charlesbridge Publishing, and Bubblegum Books to create a launch library of over 50 books. These publishers recognized the potential of our new marketplace for personalized digital versions of their content. This new marketplace will not only bring them additional revenue, but reinforce the existing market for physical copies of their books. No other genre of books lends itself to this type of digital personalization. We’re working to expand our library - rapidly.
A Story Before Bed is for parents away on business, remote grandparents, split families, military parents stationed away from their children, and even parents just going out for the night. Military parents can sign up for our special mailing list offering free recordings and discounts for men and women in the United States armed forces stationed away from their children. And everyone can follow us on Twitter for deals, sales, and new book announcements.
We’re currently offering recordings at a special introductory price of $6.99 per recording.
We hope you enjoy the site. We know there’s nothing else like it on the web. We’d love to hear your feedback. We intend to make it even better over the coming months and years. Thanks!
Hillel, Jenny, and Walter Founders of Jackson Fish Market
