Guest post: Natashya Wilson of Harlequin Teen

Unless you've been living in a cave with no books, you know that paranormal romance has really taken off in the teen market. Of course, what every librarian knows is that romance has been popular with teens since the dawn of time. Every librarian also knows the Harlequin brand, even if he or she doesn't read or buy romance. So when I read articles like this one in USA Today, my personal reaction was, "Harlequin is doing teen books? Excellent." I may not know my romance as well as others, but I did know that Harlequin would take the genre seriously and I was very interested to see what they would come up with.

Normally, I never turn my blog over to guest posters, but it's a little different when that guest is Natashya Wilson, senior editor at Harlequin TEEN. I asked her to talk about some of the questions that librarians are frequently asked about YA romance and new series: What's the content like? What's the audience? What are the imprint's plans for the future? Here is her post. It's long, but worth reading.

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Sex, Language and Harlequin TEEN

by Natashya Wilson, senior editor

Harlequin has a new YA imprint, Harlequin TEEN! we announced. And people speculated---what would it be like? Sweet romances? Steamy, sexy teen reads? Would adults buy a YA with the Harlequin name on it for their teens? Would teens pick up something from Harlequin? We at Harlequin TEEN are betting yes, and I would like to tell you more about the type of content you’ll find in our books.

Harlequin TEEN is a single title imprint focused on delivering a variety of entertaining, commercial reads targeted at teen girls, ages 13-18. Because it is not a series in the sense of our traditional romance series, we do not have specific guidelines about sexual and language content, and those elements vary from book to book and author to author. However, we are not seeking shocking, graphic reads, and you’ll find the content of our titles very much in line with many other popular single-title YA releases in the market today.

The majority of our list is relatively “clean,” as in sex and swear-word free. However, we do have the occasional title that includes or mentions sex and/or might contain a few swear words. If a story does include sex, it must be a natural part of plot and character development, not gratuitous, and not described in graphic detail. “Bad” language may appear when using a euphemism or alternate word would sound unnatural or out of character. We don’t seek out books that include profanity or sex, but if it works in context, we won’t insist an author take it out, either. Our goal is to deliver authentic, satisfying stories about memorable characters and situations. Just like most other mainstream YA publishers.

So what are our books about? My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent (August 2009) features a heroine who discovers she is a banshee. Intertwined by Gena Showalter (September 2009) features a teen hero with four souls trapped in his body. Elphame’s Choice by P. C. Cast (October 2009), a reprint of our 2004 Luna title, features a goddess-blessed heroine destined to leave her home and save a banished people. Elphame does include a sex scene, but it is a natural part of the plot and character progression and the book would be less without it.

Our 2010 lineup includes a girl who discovers she is half-faery, a police chief’s daughter on the trail of a mysterious graffiti artist, and a teen dating expert who gives her peers advice through her Web site. We’ve got a loner-turned-rebel-leader fighting for justice in a future world, more Soul Screamers banshees, a teen witch, the next Intertwined novel, and ghosts. And more! And sex and profanity are almost entirely absent.

The name Harlequin has become synonymous with romance, and we’re aware that many people (including many who have never read a Harlequin!) have preconceived ideas about what a “Harlequin” is. Unfortunately, those who aren’t familiar with our series tend to assume they are all about sex and titillation—I assure you, they are not. We’re proud of the power of our name, and decided to use it for Harlequin TEEN despite the potential challenge of getting past those preconceptions. We are certain our YA editorial will speak for itself, and will soon be as accepted as titles from any other publishing house in the general marketplace.

While all of our titles currently do include romances or romantic elements, all have a wider scope than a traditional relationship-driven plot. As with all books Harlequin publishes, it is important to Harlequin TEEN to publish books that will surprise and delight readers, stories that will resonate and be remembered after the covers are closed.So what about sex and language in YA novels? What do you think is acceptable, how do you gauge the appropriateness of a read for your purposes? How can we at Harlequin TEEN best inform you about the content of our books? We want to hear from you! And we hope to see you at the next stop on our blog tour, In Bed with Books on 8/19!

And you may ask yourself, well, how did it get there?

Via Roger Williams at the Publish or Perish Literary Agency, here's an article that I found very interesting: The secrets of the Amazon bestseller list. If you wonder how an author's online presence affects book sales (or not), and how important is the Kindle to the bestseller list (or not), check this out.

The article opens:

It's almost a philosophical riddle: Do sales drive the best-seller list, or do best-sellers get all the sales because buyers see them on the list?

As much as we'd like to believe that the crowd picks the best books, a strong presence in retail locations -- front-of-store positioning and tempting discounts -- still counts a great deal in determining how well a title sells.

One of the hardest things for me to reconcile lately is switching my brain from libraryland to retail in terms of how books get into the hands of readers, and seeing that bestsellers are often made, not born. Libraries are unique in that their collections rely heavily on peer reviews of books. I keep forgetting, after my years of library work, that not everyone in the world reads Kirkus, PW, or Booklist to make their buying decisions. This isn't a bad thing; it's just the nature of the beast. Librarians buy books for libraries in much different ways than retail consumers buy books for their personal collections. The question of bestsellers is very chicken-and-egg, and it's one that I think librarians can benefit from understanding. Amazon itself is also a different entity with different buying rules than brick-and-mortar chains. Anyway, read it. It's full of answers to (some of) the questions that keep me up at night.

Avoiding kids' writing scams

Back in this post, I talked about one of my favorite blogs, Writer Beware. The part of me that loves crime shows also loves the coverage Writer Beware offers of publishing scams. "Agents" who run off with people's money. "Traditional" publishers who charge for their services. Publishers who will publish your book for free, honest, but want you to buy a ridiculous number of your own book, or spend money for their editing services. Publishing as an industry is not the most transparent thing out there, and there are crooks who take advantage of this. As you'll learn while reading Writer Beware, there are many shady publishing practices that don't LOOK shady at first glance but turn out to be no good when you scratch the surface.

One of these no-good schemes was recently profiled in the Guardian: Nothing to write home about. The short version of the story goes something like this: 10-year-old girl finds out via mail that her writing has been chosen for publication in a book! Girl's mom finds out that most everyone else in her daughter's class got the same letter and in fact, the company publishes between 60 and 80 percent of everything it receives. The company encourages parents to spend insane amounts of money on the book in which their child's writing appears, a book that will never appear in libraries or bookstores. But isn't it worth spending the money just to see that child's writing in print?

No. It really isn't. Because it's pretty much a scam. Even though it will cost the child nothing to have her writing appear in this book, that the writing appears at all is essentially meaningless. The publisher is willing to take but not give money, and they're certainly not willing to edit and/or help the child improve her writing. The parents would be better off going to some place like Lulu.com, a reputable vanity press that doesn't try to disguise itself as anything else, and getting a book of their child's writing. At least that way they'd know all the costs up front and no fake certificates of meritorious writing are involved. It's important to note, too, that this "Your poetry/story is going to be published in this book you can pay an exorbitant amount of money for!" is not a new thing. I remember a girl in my seventh-grade writing class that also got her poem "published." When she read her poem out loud to the class, all I could think was, "That poem isn't very good." Clearly, I was destined to review for Kirkus from a very young age. My early career path as a critic aside, I always had the thought that there was something going on other than the oh-so-great quality of her poem. When I grew up and learned the basics of how writing gets published, I was able to confirm my 'tween inklings.

With the pressure parents feel to raise "perfect" children, it's easy for them to get caught up in the idea that their kids will grow up to be the next J.K. Rowling. Indeed, the Guardian article addresses "pester power" that fuels publishing scams like this one. And from what I see around the internet, growing up does not necessarily mean that everyone who wants to write learns that all publishers are created equal.

If you like Writer Beware (and why wouldn't you?), I definitely recommend reading the archives of Miss Snark's blog. From Miss Snark, I learned two of the most important tenets of publishing: 1. Money should always flow in the direction of the writer and 2. Good writing trumps all.

People I want to be when I grow up

Publishers Weekly has a nice writeup about Wendy Lamb in today's Talkback: A Fifth Anniversary for Wendy Lamb Books. What I find most heartening is that the success of WLB shows that there is a flourishing market for literary YA. Congratulations, Wendy, and may you have many more anniversaries.

Big news in small packages

Books, Bits, and Bytes has a very useful YA Lit 2.0 presentation to check out.

Karen Cushman made "Corpus Bones!" the coolest non-four-letter curse ever, and she has shared this announcement:

...at long last the arrival of karencushman.com.

Yes, I am moving into the 21st century but I am only going as a tourist.

Karen, welcome to 21st-century reader's advisory and book discussion. You are always welcome, and we're happy to get you a cup of tea (or coffee, or whatever your preferred drink is).

As we welcome Karen to the online childrens/YA literature fold, we say goodbye (mostly) to someone else. When I was new to the NYC area and networking to learn more about my colleagues (and hoping that my publishing colleagues might fix me up with a galley or two), I had the pleasure of meeting Mimi Kayden of HarperCollins Children's Books. She has now announced her retirement, and all of us remember how she made our careers better by simply doing her job. Thank you for everything you've done for the librarian community, Mimi, and I hope your retirement is full of sunny beaches, fruity drinks, and cabana boys.

On the reading front, check out this NYTimes piece on Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, a sleeper realistic fiction hit that didn't get the press it deserved in the wake of OMGVAMPIRES: A Story of a Teenager's Suicide Quietly Becomes a Best Seller.

Because my sister loves me very much, she bought me this t-shirt for my birthday.

The Eleventh Stack blog of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh has an entry this week on one of my favorite topics: great YA books for adult readers. See it here: Books Beyond the Ages.

HarperCollins has launched a new blog aimed at librarians: Library Love Fest

Scholastic: Not selling compulsion

Like many others in the children's and YA lit blogging world, I've been following the Scholastic Is Evil For Selling Non-Book Items Via School Book Fairs headlines for a few days. Samples:

-Scholastic Accused of Misusing Book Clubs from the New York Times, with discussion at LISNews
-Scholastic Sales Pitch Draws Criticism from the Boston Globe
-Scholastic Called Out for Selling Games in Schools from Kotaku
-Is Scholastic Abusing its Power Over Kids? from WRAL (Raleigh, Durham, Fayetteville NC)

All of these make me ask a few questions, like:

Who just figured this out NOW? Hasn't Scholastic been selling non-book items in schools through its book fairs and clubs for years? I seem to remember buying my fair share of stickers from Scholastic book clubs when I was a kid.

If Scholastic is going to be accused of "abusing its power over kids," can someone tell me how much power they have, exactly?

Are publishers supposed to function at a higher moral standard than, say, toy or food companies? I have a long rant about this that doesn't really belong here, but the short, applicable version goes something like this: Scholastic is a for-profit company. Their job, above all other things, is to make money. Their job is not to act as parents or teachers or librarians. Their job is to put out products that people want to buy, which for them includes books and book tie-in products. If they don't make money, the company closes down. Publishing is a business. Children's book writers, editors, marketers, etc., are not saints, nor are they terrible people for coming up with good marketing ideas, which includes tie-in items.

Maybe I'm just as worthy of accusation of encouraging commercialism towards children as Scholastic is, but I think there are many worse things Scholastic could do than sell tie-in items for books. No one is ever forced to buy anything from these book fairs. Yes, they're fun and yes, I like a good sparkly pen and matching diary just as much as the next person, but no one has to buy anything despite the tempting layouts. Speaking from a fandom perspective, tie-in items are a darn lot of fun and encourage a level of fandom participation. Yes, younger readers can participate in fandom. What I know about child psychology can fit in...well, in something very small, but I would think there'd be some kind of learning or thought development going on when tangible book-related items are present. Or maybe that's just because I always wanted the boots and glove and cloak the girls found in What the Witch Left. And video games? Kids have always loved playing video games, and libraries are using them to encourage new types of literacy and library participation. Selling tie-in video games through book fairs is, frankly, really smart marketing. If books alone cannot make enough money for the book fairs to survive, then it's time to get creative.

r u thr gd? its me max

Today's Publishers Weekly online had a fun little editorial by Max Leone, 13, of New Jersey: read this b4 u publish

I found parts of it very clever:

Finally, here is what I consider the cardinal rule of writing for young adults: Do Not Underestimate Your Audience. They actually know a lot about what's going on in politics. They will get most of the jokes you expect them not to. They have a much higher tolerance for horror and action than most adults.

(The only problem with this statement was that Max then went on to say that most of what he reads isn't aimed at a YA audience in the first place, making me wonder why PW picked him to talk about writing and marketing books for YA boys.)

Other parts I found downright laughable:

“Methinks”? “Doth”? Really? So we are constantly ridiculed for “lol,” while these offenses go unnoticed? To all writers of books aimed at teenage boys, I beg you: please use only modern language, no matter what time period or universe your book takes place in.

(Methinks Max needs to read Octavian Nothing, or perhaps learn a little about the evolution of the English language.)

Regardless of what I felt, it's always nice to see a teen speak passionately and articulately about reading. I don't think this piece defines what really does or doesn't make a YA book sell and garner readers and fab reviews, but it does touch on some important points.

A night without Twilight

In life and literature, there are always what-ifs.

What if there had been no Harry Potter?

What if Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging hadn't been published until 2008?

What if Judy Blume or Robert Cormier had never written YA books?

The New York Observer posed a sort-of question for the YA literature times in their article Everything's Pietschy At Lean and Mean Little, Brown. What if Little, Brown had become part of Bertelsmann and absorbed by Random House Children's Books, and what if Megan Tingley had never been able to buy Twilight? Life's too short and there are too many books to sit around and ponder this at any great length, but I can't imagine what the YA landscape would look like if Megan Tingley Books had been assimilated by Random. I think the world of the people at Random (hi, Adrienne! hi, Tracy!) and I don't think the YA lit world would be a bad place if the merger had happened, per se, I just wonder how it would have been different. For all the sense I make.

I'm okay, you're okay, unless you write YA

Today's (er, tomorrow's) New York Times Book Review includes a seriously great article by Margo Rabb, who wrote one of my favorite books of 2007, Cures for Heartbreak: I'm Y.A., and I'm O.K. It's Rabb's account of how she sold Cures for Heartbreak to Random House Children's Books, and the stigma attached to YA literature, not just by readers and the general adult reading public, but by the publishing industry. It's a fascinating look not at what makes a book YA or adult (that's an entire three-volume set in itself), but how a book that sits on the blurry line between YA and adult is marketed. Much of it is left up to publishing houses which...well, I can't blame them. It's their product and therefore their job to decide how to market it best. Publishing houses' decisions aside, it's fascinating and a little revolting to read how not just Rabb but other writers of YA are thought of as lesser beings. Their YA books are not mentioned if they write adult books after YA. Someday this Pain will be Useful to You will be marketed as adult when it comes out in paperback, because Peter Cameron wished it so. Rabb chronicles the stories of other writers whose books they thought were adult but were marketed as YA. Some have embraced this. Others, less so.

That this rift exists in the publishing world is no surprise to me. Writers of literary fiction look down on YA. Many adults who don't know anything about YA look down on YA, too. That's old news. What seems new to me is YA authors looking down on each other. The line about Peter Cameron sparked it, but it made me think of an event I went to a while ago at which James Lecesne spoke on a panel with Eve Ensler and Michael Cunningham, where the three talked about their books and plays. In a very small nutshell, James Lecesne made sure to distinguish himself from the "other" writers of YA, the ones who wrote the dreadlit, the romances, and most especially, Gossip Girl. It was very clear to me as Lecense talked that he had little if any familiarity with the offerings of the YA genre, and although his YA book was great, and so was Sherman Alexie's, maybe, it was important that the audience (who looked to be mostly college-age, maybe a little older) not look down on him for writing YA. He wasn't one of those writers. I thought this was rather tacky of Lecesne to do. Toni Morrison can't ask to be shelved in a different part of a bookstore than Danielle Steel, so James Lecesne doesn't get to ask to be shelved in a different part of a bookstore than the Clique series.

Authors of the world, please. Embrace YA. I know YA lit gets smaller print runs, is less profitable, is appealing to a smaller audience. And I can sympathize with this. After all, I've got bills to pay, too. But writing YA doesn't make you lesser. YA is a place where books that could not thrive in the adult world can become bestsellers. YA is the place to experiment with genre and structure. We welcome all kinds of neat books in YA that probably wouldn't make it too far published as adult. I've found that teens, and adult readers who love teen books, are often open-minded and willing to try experimental books and genre fiction. Best of all? They don't care what other people think. To the open-minded reader, a good story is a good story regardless of who it's written for. What makes for a good story? That's another post altogether.

More and more adults are picking up YA books. This is something Ilene Lefkowitz and I addressed in our "Crash Course in YA Lit for Adult Services Librarians" program we gave in May at NJLA. It's up to us librarians to match the right book to the right reader regardless of age range, but it's up to the writers to embrace the genre and learn to love the YA label. I for one am insanely happy about all these books that were intended for adults getting a YA label. It means more offerings for older teens. It's new perspectives. It's books that maybe, just maybe, parents and teens can agree on. We can have endless debates on what makes a book YA or adult. I have my own theories, which fit most books marketed as YA but not all. Regardless of what my theories do or don't fit, one cannot deny that the quality of YA is only going up, and while acceptance of the genre is an uphill battle for librarians and booksellers who love YA to fight, I think it's one well worth fighting.

It's true: Some people just don't get it.

I love Editorial Anonymous, the blog of a children's book editor. Yesterday's post on answering the question of "Who is your book for?" led to some fascinating comments, one of which made my head spin so much that I had to respond to it here.

Direct link to the comment is here: What an idiot.

First, this: I'm not yet published, but I have 2 books done and 1 almost done in a series. Not a normal series because the main characters get older in each book.

That's called a bildungsroman, and it's not uncommon, definitely not since Harry Potter. It is neither normal nor abnormal to have the characters get older in each book. It does not make you edgy to age your characters, it just means you chose a different form for your series. The Pendragon and Uglies books do this.

Second: I know exactly the type of reader these are for. I knew that before I wrote any of books. I wrote for the age of the reader for the book. Adults won't get some of it because I didn't write it for them.

OH NO YOU DIDN'T!!!

Knowing the type of reader your book is for is great. It helps us purchasers and reader's advisers immensely if you can say something like, "My book is for teens who love historical romance." If you knew it before you wrote your books, okay, I can't argue, because you're the writer and not me, and if that helped you focus the book more power to you. But don't you DARE say that "adults won't get it because you didn't write it for them." Here's the major problem I have with writers who write children's books with that attitude:

Who do you think is going to buy, publish, publicize, review and sell your book?

Here's a hint: It's not children.

I am forever sick of being told that I don't "get" a teen book because I'm an adult. First, didn't an adult WRITE this book? Second, I think that a reader "getting" a book depends much more on the writer than on the reader. It's the writer's job to convey his or her ideas in a fashion that will make it clear to the reader what's going on. If a writer writes a book that no adult will understand, how will an adult literary agent sell that book to a publisher? How will an adult editor edit? How will adults in the publicity department get copies out to adult reviewers who write for review publications read by adults? I am curious as to how this anonymous commenter thinks the book will ever reach any kind of an audience if adults can't read it and sell it to child readers. Unless, of course, s/he envisions some kind of wunderkind Utopia over at 1745 Broadway, filled with the most brilliant minds under the age of 18.

I am not stupid and non-understanding of children because I am an adult, and if your book is written so adults "don't get it," that is your problem, not theirs.

Third: I am going to have a hard time "selling" this to a publisher. Of course.

Well, you said it, I didn't. But really, why do you think that is?

Probably my most beloved publishing blog of all time is the late, great, Miss Snark. Miss Snark wrote about the business of acquiring and selling fiction. No matter what questions most authors had about their books, one thing always seemed to be the theme: Good writing trumps all.

There are many YA books that are hard sells because they don't booktalk easily. Holes is one of them. The Book Thief, Impossible and everything John Green has ever written are prime examples of this. All of those books have one thing in common: The writing is absolutely stellar. None of these authors said that adults wouldn't understand books. They wrote the best story they could aimed at a YA audience. Publishing is a difficult industry to get into, yes, but in the end, it's all about how well you write. Good writing will be recognized by children and adults alike.

Also, why is "selling" in quotation marks? You sell a book. Period.

Interestingly, I have heard the "adults just don't get it" argument from an author who blogged about the reasons his book got a bad review in Kirkus.

Fourth, this gets my Ridiculous Line of the Day Award: I hated Harry Potter. She killed a teen aged boy and there was cruelty in the books.

J.K. Rowling killed someone? When? Why was she not sent to jail?

Ohhhh, because she killed a fictional character in one of the sharpest, most honest moments in the entire Harry Potter series. I will argue until the end of time that Cedric Diggory's death was an absolutely instrumental plot device, turning the entire series. And if it was wrong to kill Cedric Diggory, does this anonymous commenter also have it in for writers like Katherine Paterson, Jerry Spinelli, and E.B. White? How guilty can any of us feel about what we do to fictional characters?

And there was cruelty in the books! One would think that without J.K. Rowling all books for children would be perfectly safe stories of children frolicking in rainbows and playing with butterflies and puppies. Because there was never cruelty chronicled in children's books before Harry Potter, oh no.

Look, no one has to like the Harry Potter books. I certainly liked them but if someone gives them a chance and decides it's not for him, that's fine. To every reader his or her book. That's why libraries have thousands of books and trained reader's advisers. Feel free to hate the books because you thought Cedric Diggory should have lived, but don't hold Harry Potter to a different standard than the rest of the genre.

Librarians aren't going to buy your self-published book

and we don't like it when you cite Eragon as a reason why self-publishing is really the way to go.

I don't feel like talking about the Frank Cottrell Boyce "YA ghetto" wank, so here's something else that bothers me about books. Please note that small publishers are not a part of this entry. I am specifically talking about self-publishing and vanity presses where money flows from the writer to the publisher. There are many quality small publishers who produce books that librarians wish we knew more about.

In 100 words or fewer, here's how books are bought for libraries: Whoever does collection development for a given library reads a review in a professional journal. The review makes the librarian believe that the book is a good fit for the library/library system. The librarian usually buys the book through a company like Ingram, B&T or BWI because those companies give discounts and take returns. If a book is in demand but not available through one of the wholesalers, sometimes we'll buy it from Amazon. The books are shipped, cataloged, and shelved. Hooray!

This, in a nutshell, is why librarians don't buy self-published books.

1. They're not available for review. If someone comes into a library and wants a book removed from the shelves, a librarian's first line of defense is always the professional reviews that state why this particular book is a worthwhile buy. And due to the small print run of self-published books, we can't even give them to our colleagues to review.

2. They're expensive. We get no discount on them. If a book comes to us from B&T printed upside down with pages missing, we don't worry because we can return it and exchange it for a new one. Not always the case with self-published books.

3. They're not edited. Enough said.

4. Review copies are not available. Often, I'm happy to take a review copy in lieu of an actual review. But in the case of a self-published book, neither one is usually available.


Too many people, authors and librarians and parents of precocious teens, like to forget that Eragon is the exception, not the rule. Name three books that were self-published before they went on to be huge commercial successes. Bloggers who get book deals don't count; that's a different sort of beast. Publishers do not like to buy self-published works. Among other things, they send the message that your work wasn't good enough to get an agent in the first place. Self-publishing is not the way to subvert "the man" that's keeping writers down in the evil, evil publishing industry.

There is a place for self-publishing. If you want 100% control over the distribution of your book or if your book is meant for a very small niche audience, self-publishing is the way to go. A nonprofit group I used to work with used Lulu to publish a collection of papers from a conference it held. It was a collection of interest to a very small group, and publishing the papers through Lulu was the best option. Self-publishing is probably the best thing you can do if you want to write about your family history or a subject of local interest. Lulu.com and iUniverse are two vanity presses that are quite good at what they do and make no bones about their purpose. But despite these bonuses to self-publishing, your local librarian probably won't want your book.

Which is more important, professional reviews or teen reviews?

Anonymously, I take a lot of crap. You see, I am a member of one of the most hated groups in children's publishing: I review for Kirkus. As a reviewer for Kirkus, I have been told in indirect terms that I am a moron, that I didn't "get" the point of a book, that I am cruel and harsh and it doesn't matter what I think, anyway, because I'm just a dumb adult and the really important reviews come from teens.

I swear, if I see one more author blog about how it's teen reviews that really matter and professional reviews, especially from Kirkus, are of little consequence, I'm going to throw something. Here's why:

What librarians know very, very well and what too many authors seem to miss is the question of how those books get into teens' hands in the first place. If teens want books, they have three options, more or less: a brick-and-mortar bookstore, the library, or Amazon/other online retailer. Now, Amazon is a different sort of beast than a bookstore or library. They can and do carry just about everything, and a customer can decide if she wants to buy a book based not just on professional reviews, but user reviews as well. Of course, one has to wait until the book is widely available to get those reviews. The biggest difference between online retailers and concrete institutions is the amount of space available to house books. No bookstore or library has unlimited amounts of space or money to purchase books, and that's where professional reviews come in. Because I have never worked in a bookstore, I'll talk about the value of professional reviews to libraries, and how (or how not) teen reviews matter.

Like most librarians, I'm used to buying books for a collection on a tight budget. In order to make the most of what little money I have to spend, I cannot justify buying a book if I can't answer "Yes" to the question: Is this book going to circulate? The answer to that question is different for every book in every library. I know of libraries where Gossip Girl sits on the shelf and collects dust. In order to decide if a book sounds like a good fit for my collection, I have to read its reviews. I have decided not to buy more than one book based on its marginal reviews. Thing is, I can't wait for all those books to be out long enough to garner multiple customer reviews on Amazon. In order to keep patrons happy, I need to have the newest books on the shelf as close to their street date as possible. After all, that's only good customer service. If I'm getting information about books prior to their release, I want those reviews to come from people whose judgment I trust. Those people I trust would be my colleagues, fellow industry professionals who work with teens and can evaluate a book for quality and popularity. The short version: If a book doesn't get good reviews in the professional journals, its chances of actually making it into a teen's hands are decreased because a book with bad reviews where the author is not already a big name is less likely to be purchased for a library's shelf. So in this case, professional reviews matter way more than teen reviews. It's true that I've bought books with bad reviews because I knew they were going to be popular, but that has more to do with serving my library's population than who the important reviewers are.

Do adult reviewers read books differently than teens? Heck yeah. Does this mean their reviews count for less? NO. It's just a different perspective. Not all reviewers agree on all books. Look at reviews for books like Wicked Lovely and King Dork. To say those reviews are mixed among the professional journals is an understatement. In cases like these, I read as many reviews as possible and see if the book is a good fit for my population.

I don't think teen reviews of books are a bad thing. Far from it. Stellar reviews from teens means that a book is speaking to its intended audience. But authors, please do not discount the importance of reviews by us grownups. We're a big part of the reason you get teen reviews in the first place.

(Now, the author who complained that the reason Kirkus gave his book a bad review was because s/he was reviewing from a galley is another post altogether, starting with the fact that Kirkus's reviews have to be in 2 months prior to the street date of the book...)

The curious incident of the Borders.com algorithm in the morning

Borders, my favorite chain bookstore, finally has their website up and running. It doesn't just redirect to Amazon anymore. I figured I'd play with it this morning and see how I liked it. While doing so, I noticed something strange yet interesting.

There are two ways to browse teen books on Borders.com. Your first option is to do so from the "Books" tab on the front page. Click it, and then click "Teen" from the yellow menu at the left. When you do this, you get pretty much what one would expect from browsing teen books at Borders: Sarah Dessen, Laurie Halse Anderson, Gossip Girl, Ellen Hopkins, Scott Westerfeld, you get the picture. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The second way to browse teen books is to click the "Kids" tab from the front page and then click "Teens" under the "Age" heading on the yellow menu on the left. Contrary to what you might believe, or even what logic might dictate, this search does not bring up the same list of books you get by visiting the "Teens" link under "Books." The list of teen books you can browse via the "Kids" tab skews much younger and is heavy on fantasy and award winners. Right now, I'm looking at books like Hatchet, Princess Academy, Peter and the Starcatchers and The City of Ember.

I'm not sure why the two results are so different. Teens are teens regardless of how you get to the browsing lists, correct? I think what they're trying to do is show the books that might be the next step up after the 9-12 books in the link above the "Teens" link on the "Kids" page, but then why does it have the same label as the more mature teen books? If they want older and younger teen designations for their search results, why not just label the results that way? I'm opposed to labeling YA collections in libraries "older teen" and "younger teen," but this is something different.

Also, their front page currently shows a "Hawt series for teens" feature. Call me old and boring and geeky, but I can't help but snicker at those over the age of 14 who use "hawt" without a sense of irony.

Filed under: Thinks that keep me up at night

There was a discussion on Adbooks earlier today (or I guess by now it'd be yesterday...I think the last time I went to bed before midnight was sometime in 1989, and I had mono) about the publication history of the Twilight series.

I paraphrase from a post to the listserv: ARCs weren't printed of book 3 because someone with early access to book 2 posted spoilers and the author got upset.

If that's the case, will someone explain the following to me:

1. Where is the line drawn between "spoiler" and "review?" Sure, it's possible to post a simple list that says things like, "Snape kills Dumbledore. Harry starts dating Ginny," etc. But it's also possible to say these same things in an in-depth review, talking about Harry's growing sexuality and the way his whole view of trust gets turned around. And does it matter? Does context make a "spoiler" okay?

2. At least hundreds, but I'm betting it was closer to thousands, of ARCs of New Moon were printed and distributed in June at Book Expo America and ALA Annual that year. Did the author, if she knew she'd be upset about "spoilers" (if anyone can figure out how to write a review without at least some kind of spoiler, please tell me how to do it), put a note in the thousands of ARCs that said, "Hey, don't write about this, even though there are thousands of ARCs out there and the whole spoiler thing will just be a giant elephant in the living room during the five months that mark the beginning of the ARC release and the actual book release?" If not (and I'm guessing not, because there wasn't a note in any of the three ARCs of New Moon I got), then did anyone really think that thousands of people would keep silent about a highly anticipated book? I saw plenty of fans in line to get ARCs at BEA the year of New Moon's release. Would it have been okay if any of them posted these "spoilers," and not a librarian (as Meyer reported to an Arizona paper just prior to the release of Eclipse)? Are fans more entitled to information than industry professionals?

3. If thousands of copies of an ARC go out, and the author and the publisher know they go out, does anyone have a right to be upset when details of the book...to which thousands of people have access...are published online?

Now, answer that question and substitute any other author's name but J.K. Rowling's for Stephenie Meyer's. It doesn't work when you substitute James Patterson, or Holly Black, or Meg Cabot, or any other wildly successful YA author. All of those authors have ARCs printed of their books, and with all of them, details about the books come out prior to the publication date. What makes the Twilight books such a special case? Remember, this was in 2006, before the movie. What am I missing?

This is a detail about the publication history of this particular series that has always bugged the hell out of me. The whole point of an ARC's existence is to generate prepub buzz and encourage libraries and bookstores to make informed buying decisions. That is exactly what the "spoiler" posters did. If someone had posted details of Eclipse prior to its release, I would totally get it, because there were no ARCs of that book so someone would have had to have devious intentions in order to get it reviewed prior to release. But what good would an ARC of New Moon have been if no one wanted any spoilers to get out? It would be awfully strange for people who did get ARCs to say, "Oh, yes, I have this book and I've read it...but I'm not going to talk about it." I suppose thousands of people can keep a secret under the right circumstances, but I hardly think an advance of a YA novel is that sort of circumstance.

Tomorrow (or later today?) I'll be making a spoilerific post about Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. But somehow I think the main character of that book would appreciate it.

SVH 2.0

I know the Random House book most people are clamoring for right now is Christopher Paolini's Brinsingr, but I'm not one of the clamoring. Mostly because I don't read fantasy. What I do read, however, is chick lit. Lots and lots of chick lit. Growing up in the mid-'90s, the premier chick lit franchise was the delightfully cheesy Sweet Valley High series. There's a certain camaraderie among Sweet Valley fans. We like to reminisce about the endless descriptions of out-there clothes, pick our favorite twin (I'm definitely an Elizabeth), and if Zazzle or CafePress had been around back then I'm sure we'd have a spate of t-shirts that proclaimed TEAM JEFFREY or TEAM TODD.

And now, those t-shirts can be ours.

Starting in April, Random House is reissuing the Sweet Valley High series. Everyone's favorite blonde, five-foot-six, lavaliere-wearing identical twins are back in all their identical-but-couldn't-be-more-different glory. Random, bless them, gave out galleys at ALA Midwinter, so I picked one up and read it.

What you may consider spoilers will follow. If you're spoiler-sensitive, now may be a good time to click your back button.

At their cores, the SVH books are still the same. They're still about life in sunny, middle-class Southern California. Jessica and Elizabeth's personalities are still the same. Jessica still schemes and ruins Elizabeth's clothes, and Elizabeth still prefers spending time with a few close friends over going to parties. Some details from the original series are changed. The twins no longer drive a Fiat Spider or hang out at the Dairi Burger. Elizabeth has an anonymous blog instead of an anonymous print gossip column. That's the bad news. The good news is that the plot still holds up, more or less.

The greatest thing about the SVH series is that the plots are timeless. Regardless of decade, teens still deal with issues of sibling rivalry, romance, feuding families, annoying but loving older brothers, and gossip. Those themes that drive the SVH series are still relevant today, which is why I think there's a good chance this repackaged series will find a new generation of readers. The other nice thing about the series is that there's no overt sex (at least, not in the first book), so this could be a nice recommendation for those who like "clean" romances or those who want a step up from The Clique but one down from Gossip Girl. Jessica and Elizabeth certainly like boys, but they're not hopping into bed with them. Even though Jessica likes a little danger in her life, she's not stupid enough to stay with the guy who endangers his life (and hers).

And years after I read the first books, I still want Lila Fowler's wardrobe.

crossposted at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

The amount of paper required for Paper Towns?

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Dutton or Penguin or Hank or John Green. I'm just a casual observer with an interest in numbers (and Numb3rs).

Yesterday, YA author John Green and his brother, environmentalist Hank Green, spoke on NPR's All Things Considered about their Brotherhood 2.0 video blogging project. Brothers Reconnect Using Video Blogging. I have all my usual thoughts about the Brotherhood 2.0 project of course: Nerdfighters rule! Why didn't I think of this, because my sister is totally a YouTube star in the making? Why am I not even half as smart and cool as John and Hank? But my biggest ponderance?

I wonder what the first print run of Paper Towns is going to look like.

Background: Those who know me know that I love book industry gossip. I have this weird ability to remember not just titles and authors of books, but who publishes them. Go ahead, quiz me! I'm fascinated by print runs and galleys and the editing and marketing process. Unrelated (mostly) to this, if I had to make a guess I'd say that the first watchers of Brotherhood 2.0 were YA librarians, because John Green was already quite well known in YA lit circles for having won the Printz Award for his first novel, Looking for Alaska. And of course, since librarians are some of the coolest people in the world, we helped spread the love of Brotherhood 2.0.

B2.0 didn't start until after John had won a Printz honor for his second book, An Abundance of Katherines, so until then there was no question as to the relative popularity of his books. But at Midwinter, Dutton announced a September, 2008 release date for John's third book, Paper Towns. With the popularity of Brotherhood 2.0 (They've been on NPR! In the NYTimes! On more than one EW Popwatch Must List! Front-paged on YouTube!), I'm not wondering if John will come up with something Printzworthy, but how many copies are going to be in the first print run.

I have no idea what the first print runs were of Alaska and Katherines. I can only assume that the first print run of Katherines was noticeably larger than the first run of Alaska. Either way, both of those books came out before John and Hank made their video blog and were featured on NPR, the NYT, etc. I'm not saying that John's books weren't popular, but let's face it, an author who wins a Printz and an honor with his first two books out automatically earns the label of "librarian's author," among others. (Other "librarian's authors:" Chris Crutcher, Ron Koertge, Chris Lynch, for example.) I know many people have gone on to love Alaska and Katherines, but let's face it, they're not Gossip Girl in terms of popularity. Through B2.0, John's found a new readership. There's no way their 16,000+ YouTube subscribers were all YA librarians or otherwise YA literature professionals. Dutton has got to know this, and I am now dying to see how they'll respond to John's internet popularity in the first print run of Paper Towns. 100,000 first printing? 200,000? Oh, the curiosity.

(If anyone from Dutton is reading this, inquiring minds want to know!)