SCBA Tackles Marketing for YA Market
This story originally appeared in Children's Bookshelf on October 26, 2006 Sign up now!
by Bridget Kinsella, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 10/26/2006
Getting teens to show up at bookstores for author events—that is, when the YA author is anyone but Meg Cabot—can be a challenge. But the panelists addressing this topic at the recent Southern California Booksellers Association conference agreed that the Internet is the way to reach the target audience, and a little bribery goes a long way.
"They love free stuff and anything that is the inside scoop. They thrive on that," said Cindy Tamasi at HarperCollins, which just launched a "Fan Lit" element on the HarperTeen site that has teens across the country writing and judging the chapters of a book in progress in an American Idol-like enterprise.
Back in August, Harper solicited entries from Meg Cabot fans to become "Mega Readers," a select group of 500 kids who get to see new chapters and covers and get extra email from Cabot. "HarperTeen as a whole is a way to keep them in the loop, and then there are extensions within HarperTeen like Fan Lit and Mega Readers," Tamasi explained.
Jennifer Laughran, founder of the Not Your Mother's Book Club event series at Books Inc., demonstrated the NYMBC MySpace page and blog that provide teens with something beyond the bookstore event. A lot of the YA authors who have participated in the NYMBC series also have their own MySpace pages and blogs, Laughran said.
"I had a MySpace page before I knew what it was," said panelist Cecil Castellucci, author of The Queen of Cool (Candlewick), as well as rock musician and employee at Skylight Books in Los Angeles. "When my book came out some of the kids started listing me as their friends, and when I went to Birmingham, Alabama—where I know no one—three kids showed up. Otherwise, I would have just been there signing stock."
Amanda Barillas, a bookseller at Vroman's, shared how her store worked with the local school in Pasadena to create a Teacher's Night, where kids earned extra credit by attending an event with Stephenie Meyer for Twilight (Little, Brown). "We actually had one boy I think his mother made him come, but he said he'd read the book," said Barillas. Vroman's "blew out" promotions on MySpace," she explained, and 250 people came to the event.
Getting boys interested in bookstore events is always a challenge, but Barillas said Vroman's makes sure that the staff picks come from "Steve" in this category and not her, a girl.
"Boys are just as excited when they are forced to sit down and meet the author," Laughran said. "It's just getting them into the bookstores that is hard." Books Inc. had a recent high school event in the Bay Area with Patricia McCormick for Sold, a book about Nepalese girls being forced into prostitution. "These kids don't even know where Nepal is, but afterwards I saw basketball players reading the book in the hall, because they met the author."
