Publishing House Goes Mobile
HarperCollins takes their romance division through a digital transformation with a mobile app.
The challenge.
With over 6.7 million books sold, Harlequin, the romance-focused division of HarperCollins, is one of Canada’s most recognized brands. Based in Toronto, Harlequin is committed to creating entertaining and enriching experiences for their readers. Since the incursion of the mobile age and its accompanying digital transformation of all content, they recognized the need to extend that experience to new platforms. Harlequin saw that although their readers weren’t always inclined to carry a novel around, they were increasingly carrying mobile devices, challenging Harlequin to deliver content in new and engaging ways.
digital product strategy. mobile apps. web development.
The solution.
Harlequin publishes over 100 titles per month in print and digital formats. To meet the needs of Harlequin’s readers, Iversoft developed Book Breaks, a free mobile application where readers can explore Harlequin’s Online Reads content and search by length of time to read, author, and mood. The app goes beyond what eReaders and eBooks offer, empowering users to search and save stories on-the-go, get chapter updates daily or weekly, and share favourites with friends. Users get custom recommendations based on their preferences so readers can find the perfect story for any day.
In addition to increasing their ability to publish more titles, the Books Breaks app has proven to be a powerful engagement tool, allowing Harlequin to connect to readers daily, reach new audiences, and stay front of mind as the go-to brand for romance. By building the mobile app with insightful analytics, data capture, and reporting functions, Iversoft has provided Harlequin with valuable information on which themes, topics, titles, and authors are resonating with specific demographics. In order to give Harlequin’s marketing team independence, Iversoft developed a CMS that tied into Harlequin’s database, for easy content management in the backend.
The results.
Eleanor Elliott
Senior Director, Digital Capabilities
“One of the challenges we faced was keeping up with the pace of platform developments in multiple operating systems. We didn’t have the expertise or bandwidth to anticipate what the required changes might be in the app to ensure compatibility with new devices and operating system versions. Having Iversoft monitor all the changes coming from both iOS and Android, and proactively addressing those issues and releasing new app builds accordingly has ensured that our app is always up-to-date and operates well for our customers.”
