Ripley

Ripley's Believe it or Not! has released a "container" app which works as a portal to the company's various publications and museums. If that sounds a bit dry—well, this is Ripley's, and the app (developed over the course of a year in partnership with Conjure) is anything but. Users are treated to photo galleries, Ripley's Twitter and Facebook feeds, museum information and (in the near future) downloadable magazines and cartoons. The core of the app's appeal, however, is an Image Recognition (IR) feature dubbed oddSCAN, which Ripley's intends to incorporate into all of its products.

Want some sass with that app? You should, if you want to get noticed in the increasingly crowded app marketplace, where your app needs to be clever, engaging and useful to pique a potential user's interest. Book Business toiled away in the app mines and unearthed these gems in which publishers do creative, fun or powerful things with book apps to really hook audiences.

As demonstrated by the winners of this year's Gold Ink Awards, pride in book production is alive and well in 2010.

When the “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” series decided to go global with its newest edition, “The Remarkable … Revealed,” the company took a chance by tweaking the typical foreign publishing model. Rather than licensing full publishing rights, as many publishers do, Ripley chose to handle printing and work directly with foreign distributors. “We’re finding that, with licensing, [foreign publishers] don’t [always] have the commitment we do,” says Norm Deska, executive vice president of intellectual property, Ripley Entertainment. “We’re looking to better establish our brand with a high-quality annual book, and the only way to do that was to do it ourselves.” Ripley, whose

Fans of the wacky and weird have been entertained by Ripley Entertainment Inc. for more than 85 years, and today the powerful brand is capitalizing on its considerable audience with another entry into its wildly successful book series, “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” The newest edition, “The Remarkable … Revealed,” which marks the fourth installment of the series, launched in August with help from a powerful publicity campaign leveraging the ever-popular Ripley’s brand. Probably best-known for its attractions and museums, Ripley’s currently operates 64 attractions in 11 countries. However, the company also owns businesses in hospitality, television and publishing. Much of Ripley’s revenue comes