Industry Veterans to Share Insights on Connecting With YA Readers

The Digital Market and the YA Audience will be the subject of an ABA Day of Education panel discussion, from 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. on Monday, May 23, at BookExpo America. Moderated by Kristin McLean, consultant to the ABC Children’s Group at ABA, the panel will feature David Levithan, executive editorial director for Scholastic and the author of a number of acclaimed YA novels; Jacob Lewis, CEO of Figment, a user-generated website for writing and reading YA fiction; and Meghan Dietsche Goel, children’s book buyer at BookPeople in Austin, Texas, who is deeply committed to local economies and to developing a vibrant community of readers of all ages.

The panel is an outgrowth of the ABC/Bowker Pubtrack Survey “The Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age,” which found there is a correlation between the YA audience’s use of social media and their consumption of digital books, as well as a high degree of local influences in the way consumers hear about and choose children’s books. The survey’s Executive Summary called the latter a “Bullseye Pattern of Influence,” with the young reader at the center, parents and family next, a layer of local influencers such as friends, teachers, librarians, and local bookstores next, and the outside world a very distant ring on the outside.

In addition, the survey found that teens were very selective in the kinds of technologies they adopt. The high-adoption technologies were deeply social on the local level (Facebook, texting), while there was little or no interest in technologies that were productivity platforms (Twitter, stand-alone e-readers) or other media that let in the larger world (following celebrities on gossip sites, following authors or brands on Facebook, or visiting author and publisher sites).

With the survey’s findings in mind, session panelists will share insights on how booksellers can improve their connections with YA customers. Questions to be addressed include:

• What are today’s teens really like, and how do they diverge from the pervasive mythology of teens as screen-addicted, apathetic, tuned-out to family and community, and slavish adopters of any new technology?
• Given that “local rules,” what does this mean for publishers and other “outsiders” who want to connect with these readers?
• Bookstores have a “local edge” in reaching this group of readers, but what works, and what doesn’t when engaging this audience?
• Given the findings about teens and technology, are there better ways of communicating with this audience than we have already been using?
• What does it mean to be “authentic” for this audience?
• At the end of the day, what does this community want, and where does it intersect with our core competencies as booksellers and publishers?

Moderator McLean told BTW that she expects the session, which is open to all BEA badge holders, to “be deeply interesting to publishers and any industry professionals working with YA books.”

The Digital Market and the YA Audience will be held from 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. in Room 1E12 of the Javits Convention Center.