A new tuxedo for the Penguin

Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe is one of Germany’s largest publishing group, part of Penguin Random House, the world’s leading publisher of consumer books. With over 2,500 new titles published annually and home to over 40 German publishing houses, the group is a driving force in the German-language publishing market. To keep pace with the scale and speed of today’s publishing industry, they completely reimagined their digital experience. The goal: a high-performance and editorially flexible platform that could handle vast amounts of content, enable effective team collaboration and approval workflows, and support reader expectations.

With a diverse portfolio and audiences, Penguin Random House Germany reimagined its digital operations, moving beyond simple improvements to a complete reboot of its editorial infrastructure. The vision was clear: build a scalable, modular content platform that could support real-time publishing, localized personalization and deep integration with business systems like Salesforce CRM. 

Implemented by Arvato Systems and powered by CoreMedia, the new solution enables editors to create engaging landing pages with over 40 flexible content modules, being able to publish new landing pages without relying on development resources. Editorial teams can now react faster to market trends, enrich product pages and publish across multiple imprints with unprecedented ease.

In publishing, timing is everything. Bestseller status and pricing updates change daily, sometimes hourly. Therefore, Penguin Random House integrated a dedicated 24/7 data import service into its CoreMedia-based platform. 

This import engine ensures constant synchronization of product metadata, unique ISBNs, pricing, event information, affiliate links, labels like ‘coming soon’ or ‘bestseller’, and more across various backend systems. Any change is reflected instantly on the site. Even category structures are dynamically updated. Whether it’s a new trend, a seasonal theme, or an author overview pages, the system ensures that books are automatically surfaced in the right context, helping readers discover relevant content faster. 

The system supports both automated data feeds and editorial overrides, so content can be customized at any level without compromising consistency or speed. This balance of automation and editorial control means Penguin Random House can confidently deliver fresh, relevant content to its readers at the pace the market demands.

To build lasting relationships with readers, Penguin Random House Germany needed more than great content. It also needed intuitive functionalities and smart engagement. 

With CoreMedia acting as the central integration hub, user interactions like follows, publication bookmarks and newsletter sign-ups are captured and routed directly into the organization’s CRM. This allows for precise audience segmentation and ensures that notifications and campaigns are relevant, timely and tailored to user interests. 

The result is a platform that delivers content and builds meaningful connections between readers and their favorite authors.

Penguin Random House transformed a complex content structure into a more intuitive user experience. It mapped the extensive taxonomy to a lean, intuitive CoreMedia-based hierarchy. This streamlined taxonomy powers clear, user-friendly category pages, helping readers quickly find what they’re looking for, whether it’s graphic novels, biographies, or non-fiction titles. 

The platform enables rich enrichment of structured content. Editorial teams can add information such as awards, author bios, external content like YouTube videos and related events like book presentations directly to titles and categories. Any content module can be linked to dynamic pages like autors, products or categories, allowing editors to create rich, interconnected experiences based on reusable content assets that bring content to life and support personalized recommendations.  

At the same time, editors retain full flexibility to adjust content categories and refine navigation as the catalog evolves.

With a large share of traffic coming from mobile users, Penguin Random House Germany prioritized mobile performance from the start. Pages were tested on real devices and in low-bandwidth environments, not just emulators, to ensure reliable performance under real-life conditions. 

The platform maintains high performance even during unexpected traffic spikes. For example, when controversial titles by public figures like Volodymyr Zelenskyy or Prince Harry attract large volumes of (often unverified) visitors. No matter where or how it’s accessed, the system delivers a seamless and resilient user experience. 

With its new digital experience platform, Penguin Random House Germany has created a solid foundation for publishing at scale. 

Built on CoreMedia’s powerful capabilities and implemented by Arvato Systems, the solution delivers performance, editorial flexibility and deep integration with backend systems. It empowers editors, connects readers and keeps pace with the speed of storytelling.