And to help gauge their students’ reading comprehension, teachers have drafted roughly 200,000 interactive quizzes, which have been taken by children more than 35 million times.ĭonahue says there aren’t any plans to begin charging educators and schools for access to Epic. Within the Epic platform, teachers have curated more than two million of their own content collections on topics including coding, ocean animals, and Native American history. So it’s been a perfect fit in that respect.” “Teachers are really active on social media and are also dying for resources in the classroom, and they care about reading and learning through great books. “Since we made it available to teachers, it’s been word-of-mouth growth,” Donahue says. So far, Donahue says, Epic is “very happy” with how the free access to schools option has worked out, noting that it has helped more people to learn about the platform. To date, 91% of elementary schools in the U.S. The platform usage breaks down as a total of 1.7 million paying subscribers since 2014, at $7.99 a month, and more than 1 million teachers who access Epic in the classroom, where it is available free of charge. “We don’t just go for size we care about the quality and the appropriateness of the books.” An advisory board of publishing and literary experts, educators, librarians, and parents helps develop the collection, providing content intended for readers ages up to 12. “We’re very careful to curate our library,” Donahue says. These materials represent partnerships with 250 publishers, including HarperCollins, Macmillan, Sesame Workshop, and a host of independents. Currently, Epic boasts 35,000 books, audiobooks, and videos in its library, up from 14,000 items in 2016. In addition to the rise in revenue and number of readers, the breadth of Epic’s digital offerings has grown. I think that makes it quite a bit different from what other people are doing.” And just the experience of the app itself is unique and playful and fun. “Kids are really in control of the experience so they can choose what they like to read and it’s personalized to them. “What makes us special, I think, is the size and quality of our library of real children’s literature, real books,” he says. “We look at our competition more as the distractions that kids have from other digital entertainment experiences, such as computers, smartphones, tablets, or any other apps or services they’re presented with.”ĭonahue points out several features that distinguish Epic in the marketplace. “When we think about competitors, we don’t see any specific companies doing what we’re doing,” he says. LeVar Burton’s Kids Skybrary), Donahue believes Epic stands alone in its mission. Though success stories exist in the world of online subscription services for digital reading content-Scribd, for one-and a few children’s-only content platforms are available (e.g. Beyond that, we also have advertising requirements.” In all, he adds, the goal is “to continue to grow the service and do what we’re doing, and just do it even better and reach more families and teachers and kids.”Įpic’s upward trend continues to be somewhat of an anomaly when it comes to e-book sales, which overall have been in decline for the past several years, according to numbers provided by the Association of American Publishers and other industry reporting sources. We need more engineers, more marketing people, and of course we’re developing the technology itself. Donahue outlined some of the allocations: “It takes a large team and a lot of financing to do what we’re doing. The recent infusion of $30 million, led by Evolution Media, a global media and entertainment investment firm backed by Creative Artists Agency and TPG Growth, brings the amount of funding Epic has obtained since 2014 to more than $50 million, all of which is being used to fuel the company’s growth.
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