Simon and Schuster’s digital marketing team is officially retiring PulseIt, one of the earliest YA fan sites created by a publisher, to unveil Riveted, a website for YA fans with the tagline “YA fiction is our addiction.” The aim of the site is to engage fans with articles, quizzes, free content, and social media campaigns that according to Matt Pantoliano, associate director of digital marketing at S&S, aims to appeal to the YA community at large, not exclusively related to S&S titles.
“It didn’t make sense to just focus on S&S – teens and readers aren’t really looking at imprints,” Pantoliano said of the considerations behind building Riveted. “We love The Mortal Instruments series, but also The Hunger Games, The Red Queen, and others,” he said. “We want to talk about anything that’s happening in the YA world, including movies.”
Riveted’s first big campaign is to connect readers via social media with a scheduled “binge-read” of Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series. Readers can follow along with Riveted staffers according to a schedule, share their thoughts on social media with the hashtag, and watch weekly YouTube broadcasts. Riveted is also set apart, Pantoliano said, by offering free content. S&S will offer a rotating selection of entire ebooks to read for free.
The site has an editorial board of 15 people, working in-house to create content, but they’re looking to find new content creators outside the house to pitch ideas (though not reviews). The team behind Riveted is also looking toward expanding its reach offline, by hosting booths at YA conventions, including Apollycon in Savannah in February, YALLWest in San Diego in April, and BlogCon in New York City in July.
