Ypulse Interview: Diane Naughton, Vice President of Marketing, HarperCollinsChildren's Books

Earlier this week in Essentials we covered the official launch of HarperCollins’ new online teen community and writing platform Inkpop. To find out more about the site we reached out to Diane Naughton, Vice President of Marketing for HarperCollinsChildren’s Books who sat down to answer a few questions over the phone.

Ypulse: Can you describe the inspiration for Inkpop?

Diane Naughton: Well, the idea didn’t just come to us one day. I’d say really it was about three or four years ago when we ran a teen writing contest, and in six weeks we amassed about 30,000 teens that participated. We then replicated that, perfected and partnered with MySpace and did even better. So we knew we were on to something with this teen writing contest and the whole idea of a writing platform and really took the last year and a half to formulate our idea before Inkpop was born.

[As far as how we got the site up and running] We have a site in the UK called Authonomy and the mission there is a bit different, but we were able to get Inkpop up and off the ground based on using their backend infrastructure. But the look and the feel and the premise is different in the sense that we really see Inkpop as a writing platform as much as it is a social community so users can really participate  through user-generated content and feedback and interactivity. In that sense you don’t have to just be a writer to partake in Inkpop, you can be a trendspotter, you can simply vote on others’ works. We think it’s an opportunity for overall creative expression, and we will start rolling out other multi-platform functions on the site in addition to writing in the months to come such as video and photography. So again it will be an opportunity for teens to display and vote on and share their creative works.

Right now though really at its core is the writing. For us it’s perfect in the sense that “teen” is a huge category in the book business right now. It’s an opportunity to really use our authors and our editors in a way that no one else is doing in terms of those supporting roles [the editorial board is composed of in-house editors who focus on the teen area and each month when the top 5 community-voted works rise to the top, the board critiques and judges if any material is publishable] In the meantime, through this process, the teens are getting that mentoring and that critiquing and that is, from what we’re hearing from the community, a huge benefit to what Inkpop brings to the table.

YP: What has the interactivity been like between editors and teens since the official launch? Between authors and teens?

DN: We’ve gone through two submissions since launching quietly in November. So we’ve had the month of December and we’re working on the month of January and  there has been back and forth critiquing of the works some of which you can see on the site itself. That is very much in play.

The other area that has become very popular is a feature called “The Author Is In,” and those are live chats. We’ve had four of them so far since November where the author has a podcast and a live chat with the Inkpop audience, and all the questions and answers that go back and forth are posted on the site. Teens ask everything from the author’s inspiration to other books they’ve written. And obviously many of our authors who publish with Harper publish with other houses so it’s not just Harper-centric in terms of the titles they’re talking about, which is something we encourage and think is a good thing. So that speaks to the author and editor participation, and we only see those two areas growing in terms of popularity and getting our authors involved in a big way. The biggest piece that hasn’t launched yet but will launch in March is a writing contest that’s going to go alongside the voting that is happening now and getting to the editorial desk. We see that as a potential opportunity to work with us on some sponsored contests. That again will broaden its scope and appeal beyond writing as well.

YP: Describe the teen participation on the site so far…

DN: We have a whole sort of underground that is very front and center on the site. One of the things that has come out of the community is Inkpopper of the week. That’s something they’ve created. Also, they’ve created the Inkpop challenges, which is like this sub-voting where they’ll start a thread like “I’m SO not over…” blank and then the community fills in the blank and weighs in on those. And thirdly  another aspect  of the community dialogue is the Inky Awards, which they’ve defined as creating Inkpopper achievements in writing and community leadership. This is completely spearheaded by the community themselves. So really for us it’s an excellent sounding board, it’s a great way for us to have a bird’s eye view of exactly what teens are doing and wanting and wanting more. But we want to keep it so that the teens feel like this is their own and they can customize it as they so choose, and we will just further enhance it based on what we hear the community reaction to be.

YP: What are some of the short and long-term goals for the site?

DN: Our short term goal is talking to potential partners, driving traffic, getting the word out, doing as much as we can organically and through strategic partnerships, that’s short term. In terms of our longer ongoing goal, it’s really to add functionality to the site that just expands on that whole idea of creative expression, whether  taking the form of writing, taking the form of photography, taking the form of creating videos, taking the form of creating book jackets, taking the form of creating a slogan, a tagline.

We also see them helping us out with our own marketing at Harper Teen—so that if we want we can reach out to the Inkpop community and say, “What do you think of this cover vs. that cover, what do you think of this marketing tagline vs. that marketing tagline?” We want to really have them be our eyes and ears and have them weigh in in terms of their opinion on the teen marketplace both in terms of books and outside of the book area as well. But still keep a little bit of distance since we do want this to be all about them and feel like they are crafting and determining how Inkpop develops.

The main thing in all that we do is really keeping that two-way dialogue going with our readers and keeping them engaged. Listening to what they’re saying, reacting to it, perfecting it, that’s really at the center of all of our marketing in terms of what we’re doing at Harper, and Inkpop is kind of at the center of it for our teen program.

YP: Can you describe the marketing plan for the site? How are these aspiring teen writers and readers hearing about it?

DN: Really we’re doing the bulk of our outreach through the web, and we’re trying to do that through our own sources as much as we can. So we’re using our teen database, and we have Facebook, MySpace, Twitter profile pages for Inkpop and Harper Teen, and then they’re also both cross-promoting each other.  We’ve gotten a lot of traffic through our own teen promotions and we’re talking to some strategic partners that we work with for our book promotions. Also, as I mentioned, through our authors getting the word out. So it’s kicking off in terms of traditional advertising but also really using the web and all its tools and community outsoutsourcing. We’re also going to continue having conversations, because they are part of the News Corp family, with MySpace, just trying to figure out the best place and home now that they’re sort of changing and changing their mission and goal. For now we have a direct connection on Inkpop so users can put Inkpop on their Facebook pages. It’s about giving the community as much and as many tools as they need to get the word out.

YP: Are there any plans in the works to collaborate with existing teen reader communities online?

DN: Yes. I can’t announce anything official right now, but we are in discussions with all of the big ones.

YP: Anything else Ypulse readers should know about Inkpop and future plans?

DN: Inkpop is a really great place for any teen who just loves writing and also ultimately being able to express themselves in a community of others like themselves. It’s really fun, it’s interactive, and I think you can dip your toe or go in all the way. Really it’s intended for somebody who likes to read as much as they like to write, so I think that’s a fairly broad range of teens. It just gives teens an exciting platform to be able to be heard and also get in front of real live editors, which  I think really distinguishes us from other sites out there.

[As for the future] the big exciting piece to all this will be this contest that we’ll launch in a few months… It’s really going to be a little bit of something for everyone.

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