For $25, consumers can add a custom dedication to the book and upload a personal photo to the front of the book. The book is then printed on-demand as a laminated hardcover and shipped. Amazon sells an un-customized version of The Poky Little Puppy for $4.99.

This is the first time SharedBook, which launched in 2002, has partnered with a traditional book publisher. Its other partners include AllRecipes.com, DNC Parks & Resorts (Yosemite National Park), FuneralNet, Little League International and Regent Seven Seas Cruises, all of which offer their customers ways to make books using their content. SharedBook CEO Caroline Vanderlip said Random House plans to add additional titles and customization elements later this year. It launched the partnership with Poky because the book is celebrating its 65th anniversary.   

“This is a great opportunity for Simon & Schuster’s teen authors to come together and not only cross-promote their works to get the widest exposure possible, but also to give all of their fans an incredible online event that promotes reading and offers a behind-the-scenes look into what it’s like to be an author,” said Rick Richter, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, in a statement.

The idea originated about a year ago at a digital marketing committee within S&S. “We saw that when we did online marketing to teens they were really responding,” says Mary McAveney, v-p of marketing at S&S Children’s. “We were doing it in a targeted way—with Scott Westerfeld, the Private series [by Kate Brian], Ellen Hopkins, Holly Black. When teens were able to connect with these authors and spread the word, we really were able to get the word out about their properties.”    

Author Ashley Rhodes Courter, with Diane Sawyer, after her Good Morning America appearance.

According to Jaime Feldman, associate publicist at Simon & Schuster, which released the book under its Atheneum imprint on January 8, Three Little Words surged from #11,666 on Amazon.com’s sales rankings before Courter’s January 15 GMA appearance, to the top 150 by that afternoon, besides moving to the top spot on Amazon’s “Movers & Shakers” bestseller list. During that same 24-hour period, Three Little Words moved up from #16,487 on Barnes&Noble.com to #42. Three Little Words, which had a 50,000-copy first printing, has gone back to press twice in the past week, though the publisher declined to disclose the current in-print total.

Three Little Words "is striking a chord with readers,” Feldman says. “Ashley’s story is one that can be understood and valued by a child or teen reader, as well as adult readers,” she adds, pointing out that parents can empathize with Courter’s adoptive parents, who adopted her when she was 12 years old.   

This year also marks the 40th anniversary of King’s death; this August, a statue of King will be unveiled on the National Mall in Washington, the first to honor an African-American. Pinkney had these anniversaries and this occasion in mind when she approached Farris about the book a year ago. “I thought, ‘You know, there’s never been a book about the March on Washington, and that speech that changed all of us,’ ” the editor recalls. “What was it like for Martin Luther King Jr.’s sister to see her younger brother delivering this speech that changed the world?” Pinkney told Farris that she would love her to write about her and her family’s experiences that day, and Farris agreed. “It was that simple,” Pinkney says. “I get goosebumps when I think about it.”   

Months ahead of its pub date, Little Brother and its author have been attracting attention—particularly on the Web. Neil Gaiman posted a lengthy, praise-filled entry about the book on his blog, and Gawker Media’s science fiction blog included the book in a round-up of 10 anticipated books for 2008. And for the second year in a row, Forbes magazine included Doctorow (no relation to author E.L. Doctorow) on its Web Celeb 25 list, which gathers the Internet’s most influential figures in a given year.

Doctorow’s book, while immersed in hacker and tech culture, is largely politically driven. This is not unexpected from someone who has been active in the Internet for many years, and someone who has a history of activism (Doctorow was twice arrested for civil disobedience before he turned 18).

Nielsen Hayden, senior editor and manager of SF at Tor, knows Doctorow from science fiction chat circles in the 1990s; since then, the author has been an advocate for digital rights, having served as European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation for four years, and he currently co-edits Boing Boing, the fifth most popular blog on the Internet, according to Technorati, a blog search engine.