Artwork Tracker v1.1 update now available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch

Jan 25

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The Artwork Tracker v1.1 update is now available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Artwork Tracker

In addition to fixes for some annoying bugs, this update adds a bunch of new features:

  • New field for clients (client type)

  • Two new fields for submissions (exhibited and submission type)

  • New reserved state for submission status
  • Larger artwork thumbnails for iPhone/iPod

  • Artist name displayed for each artwork

  • Added settings option to sort artwork by artist name

  • Artwork status icons
  • Larger notes fields on iPad

  • Larger field size for new medium entry

  • Artist name picker

If you like what you see, please spare a moment to rate or review the app on the App Store. Every review helps! And if you know of any publications or web sites for artists, art dealers, or collectors that might be interested in reviewing the app, let me know. Thus far Artwork Tracker hasn’t had any media coverage to speak of.

I’d like to thank all the artists and collectors who are using the app and have provided some great comments and suggestions. Your feedback is much appreciated!

You can learn more about Artwork Tracker at my website or on the Artwork Tracker Facebook group.

Thoughts on the Mac App Store

Jan 6

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If you follow me on Twitter, or you’re a fan of Story Tracker on Facebook, you’ve already seen the news: Story Tracker will be coming to the Mac App Store in 2011!

With the grand opening of the Mac App Store today, I thought it was a good time to jump aboard and sign up for the Mac Developer Program. If you’ve had a chance to play with the Mac App Store already, you’re probably wondering what took me so long and why Story Tracker isn’t online today? Ever since Story Tracker launched in August 2009 I’ve had people wondering if or when there was a Mac version coming. I would’ve loved to have a Mac version available on day one, but alas, I was busy working on my second iOS app, Artwork Tracker. I’m really pleased with how that turned out, and I look forward to bringing it to the Mac App Store too, if there’s sufficient interest.

I’ll also admit I’ve been taking a wait-and-see attitude about this whole thing. In the past I’ve toyed with the idea of working on Mac apps, but I wasn’t particularly looking forward to putting together an e-commerce system for my site, handling software licensing, implementing an update system, and all of the other nuts and bolts that go into selling software online. It’s a lot of effort, and quite frankly I would rather focus on creating more iOS apps. Until now.

Like many other developers, I had a sneaking suspicion that Apple would someday introduce an App Store for the Mac. This was confirmed with their announcement last October. The Mac App Store platform mostly eliminates the aforementioned concerns, and will no doubt prove to attract a lot more attention than a lone developer’s website buried amidst the clutter of the web. Of course there are downsides: Apple’s 30% cut, no paid updates, no user information, and tremendous downward pressure on pricing, among others. I suspect developers already used to the way the iOS App Store works will be more pleased with this new platform than long-time Mac developers. Having said that, a central platform for discovering new Mac apps also creates a much larger market for your typical independent developer, and brings with it the possibility for greater exposure and an order of magnitude increase in sales.

Now that I’ve had a chance to play with the new Mac App Store and download some apps, I’m convinced that it’s time to begin work on bringing Story Tracker to the Mac. The whole experience of purchasing and installing apps is now as simple and painless as on the iOS App Store. I look forward to developing for this exciting new platform in 2011.

Looking back at 2010

Dec 31

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Less than 2 hours until 2011 – it must be time for a year-end retrospective!

If there’s one word I could use to sum up 2010, it would be “busy”. I racked up a huge amount of overtime at the day job this year, and on top of that, I spent many hundreds of hours working on my iOS apps and updates. It wasn’t all work, though. I still managed to attend most of the local Bonsai meetings during the year, along with 3 Bonsai workshops. We also had a great time on our epic road trip to South Dakota.

Up until last year the primary focus of the blog was my fiction writing. For 2010 this took a back seat to writing and marketing apps. Among the usual app announcements, I wrote two well-received posts documenting my experiences with the App Store, specifically the performance of Story Tracker and all the gory details that went along with it. Since moving the blog from Livejournal to my own site, I’ve been able to move the Twitter updates off to a sidebar instead of having them clutter the blog itself. I’m still a regular on Twitter, mostly following other iOS developers and writers. You can look me up at @andrewnicolle.

My general “write more” goal for 2010 didn’t turn out exactly how I’d expected. Instead of referring to words of fiction, it actually turned out to be C and Objective-C code 😉 The only activity related to fiction writing I undertook in 2010 was to keep a collaborative tale doing the rounds of various writing markets. This is one of my earlier pieces, written together with another member of the CriticalMS writing group several years ago. While it hasn’t sold yet, I think we both still believe in it and hold out hope it’ll find a nice home someday. This tale is a blend of historical fiction and Egyptian mythology with a twist of weird fantasy, similar in tone to much of Lovecraft’s work. If anyone knows of any good horror markets, let me know!

As with last year, my reading was pretty much confined to comics and graphic novels. I would’ve loved to get stuck into the growing pile of Stephen King, Jay Lake, Joe Hill, and Charles Stross novels, but alas, I couldn’t spare the time. Here’s my fairly sparse 2010 reading list:

App Savvy: Turning Ideas into iPad & iPhone Apps Customers Really Want
Axe Cop, Vol 1
The Business of iPhone App Development: Making and Marketing Apps that Succeed
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear
Invincible Ultimate Collection, Vol 2
Ultimate Spider-Man, HC Vol 1
Y The Last Man, HC Vol 2

On my commutes and workouts I mostly listen to podcasts, with the following being my staples: Comic Geek Speak, Just Bill’s Comic DrawerBox, and the Comic Book page podcasts (The Mayo Report and Spotlight episodes).

No year-end blog entry would be complete without some stats:

2010 Stats:

New apps released: 1
App updates released: 10 (includes Lite and Paid versions)
2010 Word count: 0
Stories written: 0
Total submissions: 2
Total acceptances: 0
Total rejections: 3
Waiting for response: 0
Books read: 7
Comics read: 160

Probably my greatest accomplishment for 2010 was the release of my second iOS app, Artwork Tracker. I was looking for what I hoped would be a quick project following on from Story Tracker, and creating a similar app for artists sounded like a good idea. I would leverage the Story Tracker code-base, changing fields to be more applicable to artists and adding the ability to store images in the database. Well, it turned out to be a lot more complicated than I’d expected, taking 4 months and well over 300 hours of effort from conception to release on the App Store. Much to my surprise, the app was approved by Apple a mere week after submission, hitting the App Store on December 16th. I was pleased the final development crunch paid off, and I was able to get the app online before Christmas. I’m not yet sure if I’ll put together a numbers post for Artwork Tracker, but I’ll say that so far its performance has been similar to how Story Tracker did soon after launch, despite putting tonnes of extra effort into marketing this time around. On the plus side, Story Tracker is still selling a handful of copies a week after all this time. I might actually recoup my development costs in 2011!

Throughout 2010 I continued to attend the monthly meetings of the Midwest Bonsai Society, along with the shows they run at the Chicago Botanic Garden. This year I visited 4 Bonsai shows, three of which were at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and one at Morton Arboretum. I also attended 3 workshops (Natal Plum, Japanese White Pine, San Jose Juniper), along with a show critique by Bonsai master, Michael Hagedorn. This year I added a bunch of other new trees to my growing collection, including a Trident Maple, Willow Leaf Ficus, Fukien Tea, and a Dawn Redwood. I’ve learned a lot more about Bonsai this year, especially about styling and jinning, and I’m looking forward to building on my newfound knowledge in 2011.

While travel wasn’t quite so extensive this year, we still managed a decent number of road trips and saw plenty of cool sights. We had the usual trips to Michigan throughout the year, but our big summer trip this year was to South Dakota. We had a fantastic time! We spent a few days driving there, staying at a cabin upon our arrival. We visited a bunch of places I’ve been wanting to see for years, including Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Deadwood, and the Badlands. Not to mention all the great places I never even knew existed. We even made the pilgrimage to Douglas, Wyoming; the birthplace of that great American mythological creature, the Jackalope. This summer we also had one of my sisters and her family stay with us for the first time. Seeing my little nephew and visiting the air show in Oshkosh were definite highlights.

With 2011 inching ever closer, I’d like to announce one firm resolution for the New Year: finally catch up on our massive photo backlog! Incredibly, I’m still over a year behind sorting and uploading family photos. This weekend I face the daunting task of working my way through the 1500+ photos from our trip to Australia last year. Once I get over that hump, it shouldn’t be quite as painful, with the possible exception of Bonsai show and South Dakota photos. Thankfully I’m current with our home movies 🙂

For 2011 I’d like to get back into my regular workout habit, having abandoned it for much of this year in favour of more hours in front of a computer. I don’t think it’s wise to sacrifice my health for the sake of work.

Not sure on our travel plans next year, but it’d be nice if we could take another road trip somewhere, possibly out to Maine, or maybe Washington D.C.? Hopefully no major household appliances will die in 2011…

I’m not planning any firm writing goals, but it’d be cool to write a few short stories and send out some of my inventory again. And as usual, I want to read more.

As for my app plans for 2011, they’re still up in the air. I’ll be working on some updates for Artwork Tracker and Story Tracker, but haven’t yet decided whether to throw my hat into Mac development, or stick with iOS apps for now. The launch of the Mac App Store on January 6th makes Mac application development a tempting proposition!

Best wishes to everyone for 2011. May you have a happy and productive New Year!

Introducing Artwork Tracker

Dec 16

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Artwork Tracker is now available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Artwork Tracker

I’ve been hard at work over the past 4 months working on my second iOS app, Artwork Tracker. I thought it would be a simple task to build upon the Story Tracker codebase. It ended up being a good deal more complex than anticipated.

In case you’re not familiar with it, Story Tracker is a submission tracking tool for writers. This app allows the writer to keep track of all their story, market and submission data while on the go. My goal with Artwork Tracker was to do the same thing for artists and art collectors, but this time with a more visual approach. Not only does Artwork Tracker keep track of art details, clients, and submission data, but it also stores full-screen artwork. The artwork is captured either via the device camera, or from the photo library. It’s stored internally in high resolution, scaled up or down when displayed depending upon the capabilities of your device. Artwork Tracker takes full advantage of Retina and iPad displays, but also works great on previous generations of hardware with iOS 3.1 or higher.

The Artwork Tracker database itself is portable between your various devices, so you can back it up to your computer over a local WiFi network from either an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, and restore it onto another Apple device. You can also import or export data without modifying the existing data on your device.

The main tab of the app displays thumbnail images for each work of art, either in table form or in a scrollable grid. This makes it easier to locate an item in your collection visually, or based on the title. The Artwork Tracker user interface has been customized extensively, ranging from the distinctive navigation and tab bars, down to minor details like the buttons and table section headings. Besides providing a fancier, more polished appearance, I hope these customizations improve the user experience and enable artists and collectors to showcase their artwork within the app.

I was hoping to release Artwork Tracker in time for Christmas, and today those hard-working folks at Apple obliged. I’m truly impressed with their turnaround time at one of the busiest times of the year. Let’s hope they get plenty of rest during their holiday break!

You can find more details on the main page of my website or on the Artwork Tracker Facebook group. If you’re not entirely convinced Artwork Tracker will work for you, there’s even a free Lite version you can try out. This version is limited to 5 artworks, 5 clients and 5 submissions, and only supports backup and export over WiFi. Otherwise it’s identical to the full version.

I hope both artists and collectors alike find Artwork Tracker useful, and I welcome any feature suggestions and comments you may have.

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Story Tracker v1.7 update now available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch

Sep 21

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The Story Tracker v1.7 update is now available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Story Tracker

This update includes updated graphics for Retina displays and fixes a crash seen on the iPad when scrolling and rotating the device simultaneously on the submission screen. Note that this update requires iOS3.0 or higher!

You can learn more about Story Tracker at my website or on the Story Tracker Facebook group.

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Story Tracker – A Year on the App Store

Aug 18

Posted by Andrew in apps | 5 Comments

Six months ago I put up a post looking back at the performance of my app, Story Tracker, over its first six months on the App Store. Story Tracker is a submission tracking tool for writers, available in both paid and Lite versions. If you missed the post back then, you might like to take a look. It’s full of gory details, including a fair amount of depth about my promotion and marketing efforts.

The First Year

Rather than keep you in suspense for the remainder of this post, let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Here’s how Story Tracker did in its first full year on the App Store:

As you can see, there were some interesting things going on over the past six months, but we’ll take a closer look at those in a moment. During its first year, Story Tracker made $1562 with 331 sales. At the time of my previous post it was looking like sales would steadily decline to nothing, although I still held out hope that I could reverse the trend. Flash forward six months and we see that I did manage to pull a small rabbit out of my hat, with sales actually increasing to an overall average of $4 a day versus the $3 a day I was making before. Not a huge jump, but you can clearly see the upward trend on the revenue graph above.

Now, on to the Lite version. Here’s how that did in just under a year:

Story Tracker Lite sold a total of 3174 copies, which will probably roll over to 3200 to close out its first year. You can’t beat free! You’ll note the spike on this graph is even more pronounced. Unless you’ve been living in a cave over the past six months, you can probably guess what happened then!

Enter, the iPad!

In the closing paragraphs of my six months post I mentioned I had begun working on the iPad version of Story Tracker. Well, naturally I left it to the last minute and didn’t do any substantial work on the iPad update until just over a week before the iPad launch date in the US on April 3, 2010. After burning the midnight oil, I was able to complete the update in time and the Universal version 1.5 of Story Tracker hit the App Store with days to spare. For awhile there I didn’t think I’d make it in time due to a baffling rotation bug I wasn’t able to figure out until I’d had a decent night’s rest.

Since the graphs above look a little busy, let’s zoom in on the past six months, continuing on from where my earlier post left off:

Sales since the launch of the Wi-Fi iPad have been markedly higher than they were at the beginning of the year, and have only now just begun to taper off. The graph shows a decent sales spike around May 2nd, with further peaks on May 18th, July 17th and elsewhere. The May 2nd spike can be attributed directly to the launch of the iPad 3G on April 30th in the US. In comparison, the iPhone 4 launch on June 24th barely registers, although it has probably helped maintain sales volume since then.

If we take a closer look at the performance of the Lite version over the past six months, we can see the iPad launch had an even more substantial effect:

Downloads shot above the noise soon after the launch, peaking at 46 downloads on April 10th. A second peak followed on April 30th (iPad 3G launch day) with 53 downloads. During this time Story Tracker Lite was in the Free iPad Productivity app charts, reaching #24 on April 9th. Even after it dropped out of the charts, the average daily sales volume is still higher than it was before the iPad arrived on the scene.

App Updates

Over the past six months I’ve released two updates to Story Tracker. The first I’ve already mentioned above. The second and most recent update landed on June 27th, and it includes quite possibly the most requested feature since the app launched last August: the ability to export and import CSV files for use with desktop spreadsheet applications like Excel or Numbers. This is a handy addition to the database transfer over WiFi feature, finally allowing writers to unlock all the story, market and submission data they’ve accumulated on their devices. Since I started working on the update after the iPhone 4 and iOS4 announcements, this update also includes support for iOS4 multitasking and a high-res icon for the Retina display. All of the text and the built-in web browser appears much sharper on the iPhone 4, with no additional effort required on my part.

By popular demand I added a new Downloads section to my site, which includes downloadable Story Tracker market databases. These can be imported into the Story Tracker database on your device. This should save some typing. As of this post I have databases of professional science fiction and fantasy markets available.

The most recent update was approved the day after the iPhone 4 launch. While I didn’t notice any substantial sales spike, I do think it adds a lot of value to the app and helps maintain sales volume.

Pricing, Marketing & Promotion

I covered my various marketing efforts fairly extensively in my earlier post, so I won’t rehash them again here. However, I do have a few updates and observations from the past six months.

My marketing for Story Tracker hasn’t changed much. I’ve continued to post news about updates to my blog, Twitter, the Facebook fan page, and various online writing forums. I haven’t revisited my paid advertising experiment and don’t plan to. It simply isn’t cost effective for a low revenue niche app like mine. There is one highlight on the promotional front, though – the first Story Tracker review on an app review site! On July 21st, app advice published a short review in their round-up of useful apps for writers. I was pleased to see it, considering the general dearth of Story Tracker reviews outside the App Store.

Earlier in the year while investigating other marketing avenues, I came across Linkshare. Seasoned developers are probably nodding their heads at this point. Linkshare allows you to earn affiliate income as a percentage of sales made through iTunes. Whenever a link containing your affiliate code is clicked, 5% of the dollar amount of any purchases the user makes over a certain period (a few days, I think) on iTunes are credited to your account. This doesn’t just include apps, but also anything else available through iTunes, including iBooks, movies, and music. I’ve made less than $10 through affiliate links so far this year, but I’ve heard some app developers make a decent side income from Linkshare. If you’re a developer who hasn’t yet updated links to your app via Linkshare, you’re leaving money on the table!

With the greater feature set in the past few updates, I was able to increase the price of the app without adversely affecting sales. Sales had dropped off a cliff last November, forcing me to lower the price substantially and making me question whether it was still worthwhile continuing development on the app. I’m glad I persisted! After several pricing changes, I’ve come to the conclusion that $6.99 is a fair price for Story Tracker. As you’ll see in a moment, there are some caveats.

Dollars and Sense

While the numbers show Story Tracker has made over $1500 so far, I’ve actually only seen about half that. Overseas sales make up a non-trivial percentage of the total, and since none of the regions outside the US has sales exceeding $150 yet (the minimum to trigger payment for a region), I imagine it’ll be quite awhile before those funds arrive.

This has been an expensive year for app developers, at least as far as Apple product launches are concerned. Not only did they refresh their iPhone line with the iPhone 4, but they also unleashed the iPad on a mostly unsuspecting public. They also released iOS 4 which addressed many of the past criticisms of the platform. All of which means developers need to purchase more test devices to ensure their apps work well on the new platforms.

I’d already budgeted for a new iPhone, since my 2-year AT&T contract was due to expire this year and I’d again become eligible for a subsidized phone. What I hadn’t counted on was the iPad! Initially I’d planned to hold off on buying one until next year, but with finances looking up this year and my Twitter feed full of gushing praise for the device, I caved in over the iPad 3G launch weekend. And then I had to order one online and wait two weeks due to shortages. After that I’d learned my lesson and pre-ordered the iPhone 4 the day they went on sale.

With the above purchases and the addition of an iPod touch 3rd gen included (to test iOS4 before the iPhone 4 release), total expenses for development of Story Tracker come to around $4600 so far. While I did pretty much everything myself, I’m still a long way from break-even. Having said that, these costs can be amortized over multiple apps, and it should be possible to recoup them within another year or so. I didn’t track development time precisely, but I estimate the total at around 500 hours to develop the initial version and the subsequent six updates. Developing apps is certainly more time consuming than it may appear, but it sure beats sitting on the couch and watching Lost!

In my six month post I mentioned that while Story Tracker was not a financial success, it still succeeded from the standpoint of learning how to develop an iPhone app from scratch and launch it on the App Store. I think that’s still the case!

What’s Next?

I’ve put Story Tracker development on the back burner for now, while I work on my next app. It’s not a game as I’d originally intended, but instead another productivity app. This time my focus is on artists and art collectors. There are a few hints about this new app in my previous post Attention, Artists!, but if you’d like to learn more, you might want to subscribe to my app newsletter. The newsletter form can be found in my previous post, or on the Contact section of my site. Stay tuned!

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Attention, Artists!

Aug 15

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In my previous post I briefly mentioned I’d begun work on a new iPhone / iPad app. It’ll be a Universal app, meaning it’ll work on any of your iDevices (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch) at no extra cost. I’ve since completed the design work and I’m presently knee-deep in code. This will be another productivity app, this time for artists and art collectors. At this time all I can say is that it’s not yet another painting app, or a gallery of fine art or photography. While I do enjoy such apps, I’ve decided to work on something different. I think this one will be quite unique 🙂

I’m hoping for a relatively short development cycle of a few months, although it’s possible the app won’t be ready for release until later this year. We’ll see how I go.

Rather than keep everyone in the dark about my new app until the day of release, I’ve decided to provide a proverbial ‘peek behind the curtain’ to whoever is interested. This will take the form of an email newsletter: the AndrewNicolle.com Apps Newsletter. Subscribers to the newsletter will be the first to see screenshots and other details about the new app, along with news about updates to my existing app, Story Tracker, and other new apps in development. Newsletter updates should be fairly infrequent, so there’s no need to worry about your Inbox being flooded with app news!

So if you’re a working artist, a collector of art, a Story Tracker user, or just plain curious, you can subscribe to my newsletter by filling out the following form. After clicking the Subscribe button you’ll receive an email requesting confirmation, to ensure you really did mean to subscribe.



Please Note: I won’t give away or sell your email address to anyone. Your email address will be used only for my app newsletter. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time. To unsubscribe from the mailing list, click here. Both the newsletter sign-up form and the unsubscribe link can also be found on the Contact page on my site.

I’m excited about working on this new app and providing a productivity tool that I genuinely believe will be useful for artists and art collectors alike. I look forward to keeping you updated as development progresses!

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Working on a new app

Aug 3

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Tonight I started some preliminary design work for app #2, which will be another productivity app. What little game development I’ve done so far this year is now on hold. I’ve been so busy lately with work and vacations that I haven’t had much of a chance to do any iPhone work, other than Story Tracker.

Later this month marks the 1-year anniversary of Story Tracker! Thereabouts I’m planning to revisit my earlier post on the app’s first six months with a post on its first full year in the App Store. Interesting graphs and numbers, as before 🙂

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Now available: Market databases for Story Tracker

Jul 22

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By popular demand, I’ve added a section to the site for downloadable Story Tracker market databases. These can be imported into your own Story Tracker database on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. First up: a small list of professional science fiction markets. Let me know what you think!

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Story Tracker v1.6 update now available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

Jun 27

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The Story Tracker v1.6 update is now available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Story Tracker

This update includes the much requested CSV export/import feature, allowing you to export/import your Story Tracker database (via WiFi) to and from desktop spreadsheet applications like Excel and Numbers. The app itself includes the template file you’ll need to format your database appropriately. With the arrival of the iPhone 4 last week, I’ve added iOS4 multitasking support and a high-res icon for the Retina display. All of the text and the built-in web browser appears much sharper with the iPhone 4. I’ve also improved the iPad interface and fixed some annoying bugs.

In case you missed my earlier entries, Story Tracker is a submission tracking tool for writers, available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. I’d been looking for such an app ever since I bought my iPhone, but alas, no one had written one, so I decided to fill the void myself 🙂 This is basically a carry-everywhere database for all the story submission data you may have scattered across miscellaneous spreadsheets, Word docs, or buried in notebooks.

You can find more details at my website or on the Story Tracker Facebook group.

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