HC Signs Tina Wells for Tween Book Series

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 2/20/2008 9:35:00 AM

HarperCollins has signed Buzz Marketing Group founder, Tina Wells, to create a book series aimed at tween girls. The series, to be dubbed Mackenzie Blue, after its title character, will follow the travails of a group of friends at a posh boarding school. And, adding a new element to the deal, the series will include a number of corporate plugs; already lined up are deals with "an international recording company" and "a Fortune 500 marketing firm."

The deal, which was negotiated by Kate Jackson, senior v-p, associate publisher and editor-in-chief of HarperCollins Children's Books with ICM's Kate Lee and attorney Andre Des Rochers, was for world rights. According to an announcement from the publisher, Wells, who founded Buzz at 16 and has built a business out of marketing products to the tween demographic, was inspired to do the series to create a positive role model for girls. The books, as Harper's release explained, will therefore be "an upbeat break from mean-girl culture."

In a piece in yesterday's New York Times, reporter Motoko Rich compared the new series to Running Press's 2006 YA novel Cathy's Book, which drew fire from authors and watchdog groups over product placements it contained. The plugs in the book, for Revlon products, have been removed from the paperback edition. Speaking to the Times about the fervor over Cathy's Book, HC Children's Books publisher Susan Katz told the paper she thinks audiences will have a different reaction to Mackenzie Blue because the series speaks to the omnipresence of corporate advertising in content geared to tweens. “If you look at Web sites, general media or television, corporate sponsorship or some sort of advertising is totally embedded in the world that tweens live in,” Katz said, adding that, in this way, the product plugs in MacKenzie Blue will create "another opportunity for authenticity.”