Week 7

Week 7: Assignment 1Take a look at the “What to Read Next” flowchart from the Lawrence Public Library (also available in PDF format.)

Done

Week 7: Assignment 2
Read any two of the following short articles. Post comments on your blog, and make comments on two colleagues’ blogs.

• New Adult: Needless Marketing-Speak Or Valued Subgenre? Publisher’s Weekly, Dec 14, 2012

While New Adult exists as a marketing term, I do not think that it needs to exist outside of the New York publishing world.  Lumping together titles that the only unifiying factor is the age of the protaganist is not a subgenre, it is a marketing term for looking at a demographic group (18 - 24 year olds).

• Who is Buying Teen Books? Christian Science Monitor Sep 14, 2012

"New market research shows that 55 percent of those buying books labeled 'young adult' are in fact 18 and over, a trend that's only been increasing over the past several years."

Obviously this is not a surprise.  Teen books have been growing in popularity for the past ten years due to the quality of the writing and also bigger publishers are more willing to take a chance on a title in the YA market then in the adult market.

I commented on Maureen R. and Zeke W.'s blogs. 

Week 7: Assignment 3
Choose any two of the following blogs/websites. Follow them for a week. Post comments to your blog regarding who is writing it, who is the intended audience, is it successful, etc.

• John Green Books or John Green’s Tumblr 

John Green's website is very engaging and he posts regularly or posts by proxy as is the case currrently since he is out on paternity leave.  Most of the posts are video and some text - there isn't always a correlation with his work.  There are links to separate pages for each of his books.  This is a brilliant use of a blog as he is connecting and engaging with readers or Nerdfighters directly.

• Stacked 

From Stacked's about this blog -
STACKED, on the surface, is interested in reviewing books for readers while simultaneously enticing non-readers to think about reading in fun and interesting ways. As librarians, we are aware that literacy comes in many formats, so we strive to include not just physical book reviews, but also reviews of audio books, digital books, videos, music, zines, graphic novels, and other materials easily found in the stacks. 

Okay, that might have been this blog's initial charge, but it seems to me that it is a blog about YA books for librarians.  It is written by librarians and the guest posters are...librarians.  It seems like it is a successful and robust blog, but not one that I would be visiting often in large part because it isn't relevant to my selection areas and also it is material that I already get through other sources. 

Week 7: Assignment 4Choose any two of the following teen imprints and spend some time on their websites. Blog about any trends you find in either current or forthcoming teen fiction.

• Harlequin Teen

At first glance this looks like a very low tech online catalog, but if you click on a title in addition to more information, there are excerpts, read alikes, customers can posts reviews of titles, and read the integrated Goodreads reviews.  No real new trend; lots of paranormals and dystopians still. 

• Harper Teen

Wow!  Lots of content here.  Readers can read some of new release or coming soon title before committing.  There are links to the publishers teen presence on multiple platforms Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.  The home page seems to be primarily about promoting their top selling authors.  There are 26 new releases and when you click on one of them it looks like there is a book trailer for each of them. Still no new trend here.  I only noted about two realistic fiction titles in the coming soon section despite the rumors that that is what is new in teen fiction.