Random House Children's New Teen Website

PRESS RELEASE 

5th September 2012 Random House Children’s Publishers launches new teen website TotallyRandom

TotallyRandom books, a new website aimed at teen and YA readers, launches today by Random House Children’s Publishers (RHCP). Over the past 3 years RHCP has built an active teen community via Facebook and teen mailing lists and the new site provides a platform to grow this community, connecting readers from some of RHCP’s most successful teen brands including Lauren Kate, Christopher Paolini and Malorie Blackman, and introducing them to up and coming teen and YA authors.

The design and content of the site has been shaped by two surveys run by the Consumer Insight team using the RHCP teen mailing list. From the surveys, RHCP now has a group of over 200 TotallyRandom VIPs who receive exclusive previews. A key element of the site is discoverability – the second survey was entirely focused on how teenagers talk about books. RHCP are using the most popular terms that teens used as signposts across the site which will help users to engage with and discover books relevant to them. The site was designed and built in-house by Simon Wilkes in the group digital team.

The site launches with a feature on Jenny Downham before the forthcoming release of the Now is Good film adaptation of her YA novel, Before I Die.

Suzanne Riley, Digital Marketing Manager, comments ‘The launch of our new TotallyRandom books website gives us a fantastic hub to connect and build our existing teen and YA book-loving communities that already exist on social media. It will allow us to introduce fans of existing YA brands to new authors, as well as featuring exclusive and user-generated content. The design and functionality of TotallyRandom has been shaped by consumer insight work with a teen reader panel, which we hope will lead to strong levels of engagement and discoverability across the site. We are now exploring opportunities to work with partner sites to engage new readers, and we will continue to shape content and features based on regular feedback from our users.’

http://www.totallyrandombooks.co.uk

For further information please contact: Lauren Bennett Tel 020 8231 6439 / Email lbennett@randomhouse.co.uk