MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
June 18 – June 25, 2009 Edition
Penguin Launches Its Own
Book Entertainment Channel
NEW YORK,NY/Authorlink News/06/16/09–Penguin Group (USA) has launched its own online network called "From the Publisher's Office," with three channels featuring nine series of book entertainment for adults, young adults and children, it was announced by Penguin Group (USA) President Susan Petersen Kennedy. The network will feature several episodic online series, including "YA Central," "Project Paranormal," "Penguin Storytime" and "Tarcher Talks," and audio series such as "Penguin Classics On Air," "Penguin Business Thought Leaders" and "A Cup of Poetry." All of the programming is original and customized for a wide range of audiences, and new episodes will be produced each publishing season. The network is now live on the Penguin Group (USA) website at http://www.penguin.com/thepublishersoffice
Mrs. Kennedy said, "Reaching readers everywhere and providing them with books they want to read is really important to us. We want to make it easy, convenient and entertaining for readers to connect online with our authors and their books through original series. This online programming is meant to narrowcast the richness of our content from across the house."
The "From the Publisher's Office" network also enables viewers to e-mail and share episodes within each series via a number of online and social networking applications, including Digg, Twitter, Delicious and Technorati, among others.
Most of the content for "From the Publisher's Office" is created, written, shot, edited and produced by more than 30 Penguin Group (USA) executives and department team members who are closest to the content, some having worked directly with the books.
David Shanks, Chief Executive Officer of Penguin Group (USA), composed and performed two original songs for "Penguin Storytime," which are featured in "The Screening Room." David's wife, Liz, and daughter, Jennifer, can be heard singing harmony on "Listen, Learn and Grow," the song that inspired the title of the read-aloud segment hosted by Liz Shanks, a former librarian. Liz was involved in every aspect of producing her segment, right down to scripting, the sets and book selections. In each read-aloud segment Liz visits a local elementary school and reads to a group of children, which gives online viewers a sense of being part of the reading experience. Liz has spent her career reading to groups of children and shares her favorite books, old and new, on this show. One of her missions was to have children rediscover classic books as if they're new again. In the debut episode of the segment, "Listen, Learn and Grow," which was filmed at P.S. 321 in Brooklyn, Mrs. Shanks read to second graders.
Penguin Group (USA) is the only leading consumer trade publisher to have an iPhone app which optimizes its consumer website for mobile devices. The Penguin iPhone app is available for free from the iTunes app store. A 1.1 release of the app, released in April 2009, features eCommerce (the ability, for U.S. users only, to buy print books directly from the iPhone) and expanded excerpt reader functionality, which includes portrait or landscape reading, automatic text reflow, five different font sizes, and page-turning animation.
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Penguin Group (USA) Inc. is the U.S. member of the internationally renowned Penguin Group. Penguin Group (USA) is one of the leading U.S. adult and children's trade book publishers, owning a wide range of imprints and trademarks, including Viking, G. P. Putnam's Sons, The Penguin Press, Riverhead Books, Dutton, Penguin Books, Berkley Books, Gotham Books, Portfolio, New American Library, Plume, Tarcher, Philomel, Grosset & Dunlap, Puffin, and Frederick Warne, among others. The Penguin Group (http://www.penguin.com) is part of Pearson plc, the international media company.
