Penguin and digital agency Dare have produced a new iPhone and iPad app for Stephen Fry’s autobiography but in keeping with one of the most internet-savvy of celebrities, this is no ordinary book app. Described as a “bold and beautiful, innovative and thoroughly fun way to explore The Fry Chronicles”, the MyFry app allows you to read the book in a non-linear fashion, dipping in and out of content that you want to read through a smart use of content-tagging and visualisation to create a ‘visual index’.

With increasing numbers of people consuming long-form content via screens, publishers have been rushing to create applications to capitalise on the opportunity, and the number of books available on the iTunes App Store passed the number of games for the first time back in March this year.

The MyFry app costs £7.99, is being promoted through Stephen Fry’s website and blog, and will inevitably be popular with his legions of online followers. With this innovative and highly visual way of allowing readers to interact with the content, it’s clear that publishers see the future in experimenting not only with content format but form. It will be interesting to see how many follow Penguin’s example.

Neil Perkin is the founder of Only Dead Fish, and you can read his blog here, and follow him on twitter.