After launching a self-publishing platform this summer, e-book retailer Kobo has enlarged its publishing portfolio again after agreeing to acquire Aquafadas, a digital publishing platform that allows publishers to easily and economically build multimedia apps for children’s books, comics, magazines, and newspapers without using a programmer. The e-tailer also announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair that Writing Life, is self-publishing platform will increase its royalty by 10% to any writer signing on between now and December and is expanding the number of languages the service will support.

The e-book retailer is also continuing to sign deals with physical bookstore retailers, signing a deal with New Zealand retailers Booksellers NZ and The Paper Plus Group that will allow Kobo to sell their e-book devices in more than 300 stores in New Zealand. The deal follows on the heels of a deal this summer with the American Booksellers Association that will allow for Kobo to provide support to physical retailers looking to sell e-books and its e-reading devices.

Aquafadas is a French digital publishing platform with about 50 employees in France and office in New York. The service offers a suite of authoring tools that allow publishers to easily produce apps for books and magazines as well as provide a digital newsstand or bookstore to offer multiple titles or serials. Aquafadas tools are designed to make it relatively easy to create read aloud digital kids books and games as well as interactive comics and graphic novels. The platform offers analytical tools to provide feedback and is free to use until content is ready to published

Aquafadas CEO Claudia Zimmer, said “Publishers who use the Acquafadas Publishing System will benefit from an easy, scalable, solution that will provide access to a new distribution channel in addition to other channels.”

In addition, Kobo’s self-publishing platform Writing Life, which offers writers a 70% royalty if their e-books are less than $12.99 is increasing the royalty by 10% between now and the end of the year. The service will also support German, French, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch, as well as English, with more languages support planned.

Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis said the Aquafadas acquisition was, “very exciting,” and said, “this transaction will greatly strengthen both Kobo’s and Aquafadas position in our current markets and allow us to quickly accelerate the growth of our self-publishing channel and with the Aquafadas Digital Publishing system, and be able to extend the right tools to publishers to enable the easy production of rich media.”