The courting of teen readers continues with the announcement of two new partnerships that will produce a book club and a book publishing program aimed at the highly coveted teen market. Both deals pair a popular teen magazine with a more traditional book industry entity.
Book-of-the-Month Club, long rumored to be designing a club for teens, will team with pop-culture phenomenon Teen People magazine to launch the Teen People Book Club. The club's debut catalogue is dated March 2000 and mails February 15. TPBC will offer more than 100 titles per month as selected by TPBC editors and a group of teens from around the country known as the Review Crew. The catalogue includes fiction and nonfiction, incorporating titles from both adult and teen lists. And avoiding the problems of book clubs of old, TPBC members will receive only the books they have specifically ordered.
Plugging in to the steady stream of teen Internet traffic, TPBC will be supported by a Web site, where visitors will find teen book reviews, profiles of the Review Crew, chats and live events featuring special guests. Both Teen People and BOMC are under the Time Warner Inc. corporate umbrella.
Fellow teen magazine powerhouse Seventeen, published by Primedia Inc., will join forces with HarperCollins and Parachute Publishing to produce a line of paperback fiction and nonfiction books for teens. Parachute will develop titles in close conjunction with Seventeen editorial, creative and marketing staff; HarperCollins will publish the books. How to Be Gorgeous, a book of beauty advice and information, and The Boyfriend Clinic, based on the Seventeen advice column, are the nonfiction titles making their debut this September. September also marks the premiere of the fiction series Turning Seventeen, which will focus on the experiences of four friends.
A six-figure marketing plan is behind the launch and includes cross-promotion with Seventeen.
