Penguin launches True Stories website

31 July 2013 Books+Publishing

Penguin Australia has launched a new website for ‘immersive reading experiences based on real life Australian stories’, called True Stories.

The site launched this week with an ‘online portrait’ of Father Bob Maguire, to promote the print and ebook editions of Father Bob: Larrikin Priest by Sue Williams (Michael Joseph). The site features text, photographs and audio and video content, as well as links to Father Bob’s Twitter account.

Penguin marketing and digital director Sally Bateman told Books+Publishing that Penguin hopes to add more stories from Penguin’s publishing program to the True Stories site over coming months and said she expects the site to evolve as Penguin gets ‘a sense of how readers are responding’.

‘We’re always interested in exploring new ways to engage readers and bring new readers to our books,’ said Bateman of the concept behind the True Stories site. For Father Bob, Bateman said that Penguin wanted to create ‘a living, breathing, interactive portrait’. ‘The depth of Father Bob’s story enabled us to take advantage of video and audio interviews, archival imagery and interactive maps to build layers of the narrative out into a unique online reading experience—creating something that’s completely immersive for audiences,’ said Bateman.

The True Stories concept was created by Penguin’s in-house digital team, led by creative director Kylie Robertson, who worked with Williams to create the Father Bob interactive story.

For more information, visit the True Stories site here.

Category: Local news