On Saturday afternoon during BEA, a group of six young adult specialists gathered for the panel called Teens Read Books—Teens Have Money—There Are a Lot of Teens: How to Get Them Into Your Store. Lauren Wohl, associate publisher of Roaring Brook Press and First Second Books, moderated the panel, which was: Emily Pardo, former events and marketing coordinator at Books and Books in Miami, Fla. (now executive director of the Boston Book Festival); Sarah Debraski, president of YALSA; Linda Braun, project manager and consulting coordinator for Librarians & Educators Online; Sue Corbett, children’s book reviewer for the Miami Herald; and Simon Boughton, publisher of Roaring Brook Press.
Pardo started the panel off by admitting that the best ideas for reaching out to teens usually don’t come from adults, but rather teens themselves. “Teens get teens into your store. We don’t get them into the store,” she said. While at Books and Books, Pardo said she asked the teenagers who came to the store a lot for their help in planning events. The teens were more than happy to comply and they got to use their own creative skills to help out by designing posters for the events and making gifts for the authors.
One of her most successful events was a Friday night event with Laurie Halse Anderson. “I was worried because it was a Friday night,” said Pardo. “Any other day of the week I wouldn’t have been worried about getting teens into the store, but Fridays pose a problem.” So she contacted local schools to see who had a band and invited them to a Teen Band Jam Night to coincide with the author event. Pardo put posters up in town at places that teens visit, like coffee shops and skate shops. She advertised the event as teens only and she carded people at the door. “Anyone over 18 was not allowed in,” she said.
Over 400 teens attended the event, in which free pizza was given out. “Thirty pies were gone in eight minutes,” said Pardo. Obviously free food is a draw. The guest author also had a good time at the event and ended up dancing with the teens during the Jam Night festivities.
Sarah Debraski spoke next, focusing on programming for teens. She gave a lot of tips to librarians who might be seeking advice on how to center a successful program around teens, as well as how to reach teens. Debraski mentioned that sometimes programs are a flop, but you’ve got to keep on trying. Her experience in programming has given her the knowledge that “no one program fits all.” She emphasized the fact that some programs, like crafting and gaming, may seem like they aren’t related to libraries in a direct way, but in actuality, they are. “It’s all about making a connection with the teens. They’ve got to know that the library is a fun place to be,” she said.
Some of her top ways to get teens into the library are giveaways, free snacks, and having something that kids want, whether it be access to books before others get them, or just a space where they can be with other teens. For any event, Debraski said, “advertise in many ways and in many places,” in order to make sure the word gets out. And once you have a teen inside the library for an event, she said that is the perfect time to push anything else you might be trying to promote. “If they come in for gaming night, make sure there are books on nearby tables that you’re looking for them to notice. They don’t have to be related to the event.”
Linda Braun then spoke to the audience about the importance of using technology to be where teens are. You need to be where the teens are before they are where you are,” she said. Some of the technologies Braun suggests using are Facebook, Animoto, iGoogle and Twitter. Those who work with teens, she said, should “stop thinking about youth participation and get into the thought of crowdsourcing.” She talked about a project at the Smithsonian as a good example of having teens involved in something that will benefit you. “They are asking people to create their own videos of what the Smithsonian should be doing in the future.”
While keeping teens who are regulars in your bookstore or library involved in what you are doing is important, Braun made the point that “you can’t just focus on the teens we know.” She suggests making it as easy as possible for teenagers to take information from your store or library’s Web site and putting it on Facebook or in a Twitter post, or however they want to get the information out to their friends. Another recommendation she mentioned was linking to or having things like I Can Has Cheezburger or Disapproving Rabbits on your store or library’s Web site. “Teenagers love these sites, and it may draw them in,” she said.
Sue Corbett suggested taking a different approach than technology to reaching and keeping teens involved. “Teens are hungry for story,” she said. “The key is the book.” She strongly cautioned audience members about being careful what they give away for free. While she loves the idea of having galleys available for teens to read, she does suggest not allowing them to keep the galleys. “Have teens write a review of the book. Then you can post the review on Facebook and you can twitter about it. Once the review is done, tell your teens they can return it to you and get another galley to read.”
She has seen much success with book clubs, both a mother-daughter book club, and a book club for young children, in grades two and three. In her young book club, Corbett said 75% of the members are boys. “At this age they don’t know that it’s girls who are supposedly the readers. We don’t let them know this and we try to keep it a secret,” she said.
Simon Boughton spoke of his experience as a publisher, working on books for teens. “When you publish for teens,” he said, “you are publishing for an audience who doesn’t know what they want.” So in order to get the publishing done right, he has asked teens over the years how they come about the books they read. He said the top three things they say, in order, are friends, title and cover.
A slideshow presentation showed how a book Boughton worked on—a teen memoir written by Blaze Ginsberg—is a 20-something’s recollection of his life, told in synopses. The title Boughton ended up going with is Episodes My Life in Syndication A Novel by Blaze Ginsberg. The cover image took quite some time to work out. “Some jackets take 65 iterations and some are right on the first try,” Boughto said n. Episodes was the one that took 65 tries in order to get it just right.
