Penguin Young Readers young adult imprint, Razorbill, has been taking on some interesting experimental projects in the world of interactive e-reading and the end result has been highly engaging and innovative digital content. With its latest project, Razorbill has expanded on the Vampire Academy and Bloodlines worlds built by bestselling author Richelle Mead in order to give her fans a social reading experience based on the characters and story lines they’ve enjoyed from the start.

“This is a very different project,” explains Ben Schrank, president and publisher of Razorbill, in an interview with GoodeReader. “We built this app to have a place where all the fans can get together and talk about the books. It’s a stand-alone platform where the readers can interact.”

Inside The World of Richelle Mead app, readers can connect with each other and the author, while sharing their favorite moments through in-app comments and posting these updates to their social media accounts. They will be able to discover behind-the-scenes content from the author herself and learn untold back story about the characters from all of her series. It will also provide photos, illustrations and videos from the author throughout each eBook in the library. Perhaps most interestingly, games have been developed to help fans learn how the different series are actually intertwined between the books and the characters.

“Part of the thing is it shows you people who are involved in it all around the world. She has a huge international fan base and we really wanted to pay attention to that. It’s a really rich app that we feel like is in the moment to give everyone an opportunity to use this material. The more people who come to it, the more we’ll develop for those fans.”

While the app is currently designed for iOS, Schrank did suggest that it could be developed for other device platforms if the fan base is there. The launch of The World of Richelle Mead app is slated for Friday, March 2.