You may recall when HarperCollins lauched their Romance Fanlit project they also tried to see if they could light a fire under their teen readers. Looks like they did.
30,000 registered teens, wrote, voted on, and reviewed chapters resulting in more than 100,000 user contributions.
I think that is just amazing and exciting news since we keep hearing how much kids aren’t reading. And this is grand news for a push to get more Young Adult titles released in eform.
A few nifty highlights from the press release:
* The complete HarperTeen FanLit short story entitled Reflection Perfection, comprised of the six winning chapters, and profiles of the winners and a host of writing tips from HarperTeen authors and editors, will be published as a HarperTeen e-book, and will be offered free to participants to share with their friends (and future writers) on March 15, 2007. At the conclusion of the contest, the HarperTeen FanLit community voted on both the title of the short story and the cover design for the finished e-book.
* It drew a community of more than 200,000 visitors and generated more than 6 million pageviews on the HarperTeen FanLit site.
* Grand-prize winners of HarperTeen FanLit were notified at the end of the contest. One of these talented teen writers will have an original webisode based on their winning chapter entry produced by Fox Television Studios.
* A second grand-prize winner received a $5,000 education scholarship
* A third grand-prize winner will fly to New York City to get a “crash course” in publishing from the HarperTeen team in March 2007.
* HarperTeen are incorporating a teen community-based web strategy in the coming months that will include an opportunity for teens to “Create & Share” fiction with our authors and their peers, get sneak-peeks of upcoming titles, and behind-the-scene info.
You can check out the site here.
