JacketFlap on the Rise
By Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 2/14/2008
A writer in search of a publisher, an illustrator looking to showcase artwork, or a librarian interested in browsing authors’ blogs have good reason to log onto an increasingly popular Web site. Less than two years after its launch, JacketFlap.com, a social networking Web site for those involved in the world of children’s books, receives some 200,000 visits each month. More than 1,600 published authors and illustrators have created member profiles on the site, which also includes profiles established by publishers, booksellers, librarians and agents. In addition to offering online chatting opportunities—the site offers a “Blog Reader” that aggregates posts from more than 650 children’s book-related blogs—JacketFlap also features a searchable database of almost 900,000 children’s books, 200,000 published individuals and 20,000 publishers.
JacketFlap was founded in March 2006 by Tracy Grand, a Los Angeles resident with a self-described “passion for children’s publishing,” who in 1994 founded Word of Net, a developer of Internet marketing research and measurement tools. Grand initially conceived of JacketFlap as a site for aspiring writers and illustrators searching for information about publishers and how to contact them. “I soon realized that there was a real need for online networking in the children’s and YA book community and for a central information resource,” Grand says. JacketFlap quickly became a social networking site, she adds, giving writers and illustrators “the opportunity to promote their work and publishers a chance to promote their authors’ books.”
The site, whose team includes one other full-time staffer and three part-time programmers, has experienced impressive growth recently: the number of monthly visits to JacketFlap has doubled in the past five months, and 100 published authors created new member profiles during the last week of January alone. A recent addition to the site’s content is “Joe Hemingmouse,” a weekly cartoon by Peter Hannan (author of HarperCollins’s Super Goofballs series), which chronicles a writer’s life through the experiences of a spirited mouse.
Though Grand attributes the site’s success largely to word-of-mouth, a recent e-mail marketing campaign, in which JacketFlap’s published members e-mailed their publicists to introduce them to the site, brought responses from individuals at 89 publishing houses inquiring how they can use the site to promote their books and authors.
JacketFlap also offers banner advertising on the site and has just launched a “viral book marketing program,” in which Grand’s team builds widgets (small displays that change each time the page is reloaded) for publishers that feature images and descriptions of their books. The widgets are displayed on the site and can be installed on external blogs and Web sites as well. They also contain links that let viewers learn more about each book, discuss it with others or purchase it. “Our first widget was to promote The Cybils book awards and it has been installed on over 100 Web sites,” says Grand. “We are now talking to a number of publishers about participating in the widget program. Kane/Miller is our first paying customer in this program.”
Sondra Santos LaBrie, Kane/Miller’s marketing manager, views JacketFlap as “an ideal place for our company to feature its books.” Kane/Miller has a publisher profile on the site and LaBrie and publisher Kira Lynn also have individual member profiles. LaBrie, who estimates that she visits JacketFlap an average of three times a week, describes the site as “a great networking site for people in the industry and a source of information on publishers and their books. It’s also a good way to access kidlit blogs in one place as opposed to searching out each blog separately.”
Author Cynthia Leitich Smith, whose most recent book, Tantalize, was published by Candlewick last year, notes that the readership of her own children’s literature blog, Cynsations, “has grown steadily” since she joined JacketFlap. She calls the site “our place on the Web—a social-professional network in which youth literature writers, illustrators, teachers, librarians, publishers and publicists can step out of our various boxes and interact. It facilitates greater understanding and camaraderie, inspires and educates newcomers and keeps us all up to date.”
Looking to the future, Grand hopes to further expand JacketFlap’s member base beyond its core group of authors and illustrators. “We are adding features to the site that are attracting other professionals in our growing community, including editors, publicists, agents and librarians,” she notes. “Our mission is to continue to find innovative new ways to promote children’s and YA books and connect the people who create them.”
