Today's Ypulse Youth Advisory Board post comes from Liz Funk who spotlights readergirlz.com, a site that has grown to become much more than just a review site in YA circles. Remember, you can communicate directly with any member of the Ypulse Youth Advisory Board by emailing them at youthadvisoryboard at ypulse.com.

Readergirlz: A New Driving Force In YA Marketing

Readergirlz.com is a popular new web-site about books for teen girls. It's masterminded by the popular YA fiction author Justina Chen Headley, and run cooperatively by Headley and four other well-known YA authors (known on readergirlz as “divas,”): Dia Calhoun, Lorie Ann Grover, Holly Cupala, and Melissa Walker. The recipe for readergirlz’ success is promoting great literature. Each month, the divas pick a worthy book for young women and write extensively about that book and its author. They also briefly highlight a few other good books that young women might like. Previous readergirlz picks have included Good Enough by Paula Yoo, How to Be Popular by Meg Cabot, and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher.

Actually, there’s a lot more that goes into the readergirlz' winning concept:

Holly Cupala, author of A Light that Never Goes Out says, “Readergirlz is more than just a vehicle for our own literature. For girls, librarians, college girls, teachers, and people from all over who come to discuss books, I think it’s exciting to get so many different generations of people who love YA literature together! We don’t advertise, we’re all volunteers, and we’re all for the love of connecting girls with the authors they love and the authors they might not have heard of.”

Headley adds, “To be honest, it’s a delicate balance in that we want to cover books and authors that girls obviously know—like Stephanie Meyer and Sarah Dessen—but it’s important to us to put the spotlight on the authors who should have the spotlight that Stephanie Meyer, Meg Cabot, and Sarah Dessen have. It’s nice to be in a position where we can introduce authors [who] are important.”

The inspiration behind readergirlz had nothing to do with book publicity or marketing, but rather putting books in the hands of the teens who need them most. Headley recalls, “It all started when I was put on a book tour for my first novel in 2006. I made a promise to myself that I would do the inner city schools for free. Afterwards the students came up to me and they were like, ‘Nobody ever comes to visit us…’ And I thought to myself that this is a crime, that the kids who need authors the most are the ones who are the least likely to get them…. [But] the internet can deliver an author experience to anyone in the world regardless of their socioeconomic position.”

It helps that the internet can deliver a better model where teen-centric media can thrive. Melissa Walker, the editor of the new web-site/newsletter for teen girls, I Heart Daily and the “blog diva” for readergirlz has seen a huge online community grow around her three books about a personable teen model, the first of which was Violet on the Runway. A veteran magazine freelancer and former editor at ELLEgirl, Walker is looking to new vehicles for teen media that she predicts will have long-term success in a new media era. "What I’m really confident about with readergirlz and I Heart Daily is that we’re not selling something, we’re just talking about stuff that we love,” she says. Walker also is confident that book-centric start-ups are here to stay, citing that whenever she reads a new book, she always wants to discuss it with others who have read it. Where better to look for fellow readers than online book communities!

What’s endearing to me about readergirlz is the web site’s discreetly feminist tone and thoroughly pro-girl mission. Each of the readergirlz “divas” have written novels with strong female characters and the site’s editors are dedicated to helping girls find good role models in the literature they read. Perhaps readergirlz’s success (and the success of the books they cover) is partly due to its genuine mission of helping girls! A worthy storyline if there ever was one.

For more coverage of the children's and YA publishing space, check out the Ypulse Books Channel, sponsored by Poppy: The new home of today's hottest fiction.

About Liz Funk

Liz Funk is a freelance writer and college student. She has written for USA Today, Newsday, the Christian Science Monitor, the Huffington Post, Girls' Life, and CosmoGIRL!, among other publications. Liz' first book, Supergirls Speak Out, about the pressure on girls to be perfect, will be published by Simon and Schuster in March of 2009. She writes a blog for the Albany, N.Y. newspaper the Times Union and she edits the teen culture and politics blog GirlHeadQuarters.org. Liz is a senior at Pace University and lives in Manhattan. Her web-site is www.lizfunk.com.

Categorized under: Books, Youth Advisory Board

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. If you are a Facebook user, comment using your Facebook account.