When Brittany Geragotelis was writing her YA novel Life's a Witch, she posted it chapter by chapter on Wattpad, an online community for sharing writing and getting feedback from readers. Gradually, she gained 13 million fans. But despite that and an active blog, YouTube presence, and proving her chops as editor of American Cheerleader magazine, [...]You know it's essential these days that authors market their books, and social media is often the most cost-effective way of doing that. Now, Pay with a Tweet lets you utilize the value of your readers' social networks to spread the word about your new books. You create a button for your website or blog [...]Back in the early 1990s I worked part-time at a book package called Parachute Press, which was creating a new horror series called Goosebumps. The series' author, R.L. Stine, had begun his career as a humor writer, then found a wider audience with his YA horror series Fear Street. But no one had ever done [...]Those of you who are Fightin' Bookworms (members of our CBI Clubhouse online community) know that in the two years since we've launched the site, we've amassed a huge amount of information on writing and publishing children's books. So much information, in fact, that it was getting unwieldy. So Jon's spent the last two months [...]Seth Godin, easily the smartest man in publishing today, has once again nailed it with his post Reading Isn't Dead, But It's Changing on his Domino Project blog. His point (and he's talking primarily of young adult books, but this really applies to all ages) is that the job of authors is to write what [...]When I critique middle grade and young adult fantasy manuscripts, I often find myself jotting notes like "Why is this character the one called to this adventure?" and "What's at stake here of monumental consequence?" A cornerstone of successful fantasy is seemingly ordinary teen and tween protagonists who save the world. Without that, you're just [...]As the parent of a boy who desperately wanted an Easy Bake Oven when he was five, but couldn't bring himself to walk down the "girl" aisle in the toy store, I completely agree with three-year-old Riley as she rants over gender-specific marketing on this YouTube video. It's a good message for authors and illustrators [...]