HCI Rolls Out New Guides for Teens
By Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 1/10/2008
When Michele Matrisciani, HCI’s editorial director, decided she’d like to publish a series of advice books for teens, she didn’t have to search very far to find an author. HCI managing editor Carol Rosenberg took the idea and ran with it—ran home with it, in fact. Brainstorming with her book designer husband, Gary Rosenberg, and then 21-year-old son, Justin, she came up with ideas for 24 potential books over a single weekend and soon signed a contract to write four titles with her husband. The first installment of The Jon & Jayne Doe series, Jon & Jayne’s Guide to Making Friends & “Getting” the Guy (or Girl) is due out next month with a 25,000-copy first printing. Jon & Jayne’s Guide to Throwing, Going to, and “Surviving” Parties will follow in May.
The books’ covers promise “advice & more from your average but xtraordinary friends.” That advice comes from both the Rosenbergs, who write in the voices of fictional teens, as well as from 12 real-life teenagers, who share their personal experiences. The initial source for the teen contributors was the karate school where Carol, Gary and Justin have taken lessons for years. They had met a number of young students there, and their instructor’s teenage daughter put them in touch with others, creating a rich networking base. They also tapped a school psychologist, Antonietta Tarnell, to provide commentary for the first four Jon & Jayne books.
Carol Rosenberg says that her son inspired the pseudonymous author credit. “When I told Justin I was trying to come up with an idea for a teen advice series, he said what he would like to have read as a teenager was a book by an average teenager, and he felt that the names Jon and Jayne Doe represented just that,” she recalls. Justin, now 23, also guided the choice of subjects to be covered by the series’ books, which, in a play on words, are called “issues,” referring to the publisher’s hope that the books will be published quarterly as well as to the topics tackled. “When we ran ideas by our son, he sometimes shook his head ‘no’ and we kept throwing out subjects until we got a nod—and a smile,” Rosenberg says.
An integral part of the new series is its interactive component. The publisher is creating a dedicated Web site where readers can use keywords found in the books to solve puzzles, access additional information and share their own experiences and concerns. “We want kids to know that we speak in their language and that we are listening to them,” Matrisciani says. “All of the content in the books has been vetted and approved by teens of both genders. We hope that teens’ responses on the Web site will feed the editorial content of the series as it goes on.”
And what distinguishes this series from other advice books for teens on bookstore shelves? Matrisciani praises the series’ “anything but preachy or prescriptive self-help nature.” Also key, Rosenberg adds, is its appeal to both girls and boys, driven by the dual, distinct voices of Jon and Jayne and the additional input from the co-ed group of actual teens. The author notes that she and her husband have tried to ensure that the banter between Jon and Jayne rings true: “If Jayne brings up something that seems to be a ‘girly’ thing, Jon calls her on it. As long as he is protesting that, guys will get it.”
HCI’s admirable track record in the nonfiction teen market, most notably its various Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soulbooks, which have sold some 15.5 million copies since 1997, shows that the company “gets it” as well. Matrisciani calls the new series “a natural extension” for HCI. “Both The Jon & Jayne Doe Series and the Chicken Soup books offer first-person accounts from kids, but the new series launches us into the interactive world, which is what this audience today wants.”
Not surprisingly, much of the publisher’s marketing efforts are Web-oriented. A theme song and music video are in the works and will appear on HCI’s Web site, the series’ Web site, its MySpace page and, Rosenberg hopes, eventually on YouTube as well. Other promotional plans include writing contests in schools, an author tour in the southeast starting in late February, featuring Carol and Gary Rosenberg and several teens, and online advertising.
The series will continue with Jon & Jayne’s Guide to Getting Through School (Mostly Intact), scheduled for August, and Jon & Jayne’s Guide to Teen “Flings” (’n Other Guy/Girl Things), due next fall. Beyond that, Carol Rosenberg foresees a long life for Jon and Jayne. “We certainly have enough ideas to fill books for several more years,” she says. “And who knows? Perhaps this could go on forever. Or at least until Jon and Jayne get married.”
