Blogging for Young Adult Fiction
by Lisa Iannucci

If you write YA fiction and haven't yet tapped into promoting your book with YA bloggers, you're missing a valuable opportunity to market, make sales, and spread the word about your novel. This group of young bloggers, most of whom are under 18, are serious about their love of books and their blogs, and know as much about the YA industry as seasoned publishing professionals. They not only blog daily, they aggressively market their blogs with giveaways, Twitter, Facebook, interviews, and more. Most have hundreds, if not thousands, of followers. The bottom line: Teens are reading and writing, so ignore the reports that they aren't, and tap into what can be a great marketing campaign for your YA novel.

I learned about this voracious blogging market, thanks to my daughter, Nicole ‘Nicki' Brinkley, the founder of WORD for Teens (WORD stands for Worthy of Reading and Discussing, www.wordforteens.com). She started it when she was 14, after her love of reading grew so much that all she talked about was the most recent book she was reading. While I encouraged this conversation, after awhile I realized that she needed another outlet, so I suggested a blog. In the beginning, she blogged about the most recent book she purchased or borrowed from the library. She gave it a rating of 0 to 10 (the best) and compared it to something else she read in that same genre, letting her readers know which one she preferred.

In the meantime, she learned about marketing and linked with other blogs, networked with other YA bloggers, and every month she created something new: contests, interviews, rating the covers of the books, writing about books that were made into movies, and more. Through Nicki's hard work, the Poughkeepsie Journal, our local newspaper, promoted her by adding her blog to their blog page, which means additional publicity for the authors.

Publishers and publicists now work with these bloggers on reviews, contests, and virtual blog book tours. Marissa DeCuir, a publicist with JKS Communications, says that their book, Crossing by Andrew Xia Fukuda, released this spring (www.andrewxiafukuda.com), received a great deal of positive publicity through YA bloggers.

"They came on his virtual tour and posted reviews, author interviews, and did book giveaways to help spread the word—and posted to Twitter to get the word out even more in social media," says DeCuir.

Lara Starr, the marketing manager at Chronicle Books, was pleased with the promotion she did with YA bloggers recently.

"They were instrumental in the success of the launch of Chronicle's first YA novel, Blue Plate Special. Blue Plate Special was a Cybil's Award finalist due to the support of the YA blog community," says Starr.

But don't think that these young bloggers are writing just to get a free copy of your book.

"We don't review every book we get, and we don't always review positively," says Brinkley. "But if we all like a book, word spreads fast."

In May, I had the pleasure of attending the Book Expo of America with Nicki, and I met many of these YA bloggers. They weren't just there as excited teens eager to meet their favorite authors, but as experienced bloggers who knew what publishing company was responsible for what author, what books were due to be released, and what books were hot items. I was impressed with their professionalism as they spoke to the publishing companies and explained who they are and what they do. They blogged and Twittered from the conference and blogged, Twittered, and vlogged (video log) afterward.

"At BEA, the author of our first historical fiction YA, Prisoners in the Palace, attended the Book Bloggers Convention reception," says Starr, "and met many bloggers who are keen to read and review her book, and we did lots of outreach to invite the BBC attendees to our booth to check out our current and upcoming titles. It's thrilling to be able to participate in such a savvy, passionate, and supportive community and to learn from each other."

To show you how the publishing industry has accepted these bloggers as professionals, all were admitted as press with full press credentials. My favorite part of the Expo was when librarians from Pennsylvania saw Nicki's name tag and blurted out, "We read your blog every morning!" I found out from them that many librarians refer to these blogs as part of their decision-making process for books to be chosen for school libraries.

So tap into this market if you're a YA novelist (see the list of YA bloggers). These kids aren't just reading Twilight, they're reading everything.