I'm sure like many digital enthusiasts I have been spending much time recently reading/playing/hell just absorbing the brilliant children's app by William Joyce, a well-known illustrator and animator who has worked for Pixar, Dreamworks, Disney, and the New Yorker.

Released a month ago, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is currently the second most popular paid app - the only book app in the top 40  - and is the top paid for book app.  According to a tweet put out by the company that made it, Moonbot Studios, the app has just gone viral, after a steady string of stellar reviews: "Today shall go on the record as EPIC! A. Our lil buddy @MorrisLessmore had a big day!"

Ironically, Morris Lessmore is a story of people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favour. But publishers might fret that book apps such as this are doing them no favours at all: since they are bolder and better put together than most of the apps coming out of traditional publishers.

There are more ironies for publishers to enjoy too. The app tells the tale of a downtrodden bookworm who finds refuge in a house full of animated books. MoonBat calls it a "reinvention of digital storytelling", in it you can repair books, tumble through a storm, learn the piano and even get lost in a book flying through a magical world of words, giving you a dynamic journey through the story.

The app was based on an equally slick animated video. You'd expect that to be good, given the source. But irritatingly, the text is also a winner. Kirkus Reviews wrote this about it: "Though the app's text is all original (the short film features no dialogue or voice over, only music), it sparkles."

Reviews have used phrases such a "game-changer" that "will have readers rethinking their engagement with the device as a storytelling machine". The New York Times wrote that it could imagine "future books of this type with alternative narratives tailored to different age groups". MSNBC called it simply "the most stunning iPad app so far".

A parallel can be drawn between this and the blog I wrote earlier in the week about the rise of indie publishing (once called self-publishing). In the connected age there is a creative pulse that is giving life to new forms of books and new ways of getting them to content devourers: rather like how the camcorder and YouTube unleashed a wave of budding film-makers on an unsuspecting audience, and led to films such as "The Blair Witch Project" beating the big guys at their own game.

MoonBot calls itself a collective of outstanding individual talents that will sometimes create books. As I mentioned earlier in the week, indies will always rise, bring something out that is new and original and then fade somewhat into the background—"Blair Witch" director Daniel Myrick's last film was "The Objective", which made $93 on its opening weekend, his co-director Eduardo Sánchez's career has been equally shallow.

The worry for publishers its that they simply can't compete with this kind of initiative that is done ostensibly as a creative exercise rather than one that must feed the bottom line. But they could begin by aping MoonBot in its approach, if not its budget. I wonder, for instance, if there is a publisher in the land who yet thinks in the same platform-neutral way about their business as MoonBot does: it could be a book, it could be someting else entirely . . .

I expect to see plenty of articles written about how this spells the death of book publishing, again. But Morris Lessmore is a beacon for anyone interested in how to develop the creative word on a screen - and that includes most publishers I know.

Intriguingly, MoonBot Books says that a picture book version of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is in development. Less really is more in this world.