Authors on the web
From LIS 460 Summer 2007
Contents |
Authors on the Web
There are several ways in which authors make space for themselves on the web. Any author presence online allows students, teachers, librarians, fans a way to find out more about books, and more about the people who write them. Finding a favorite author on the web and following their website or blog is a way for peoople to become more comfortable being online. In order to keep track of authors you can add their blogs to your RSS agregator, post their websites to del.icio.us, or become their "friends" on MySpace. Reading an author's blog regularly can give a person a look at blogging practices, and links to other things they may find interesting.
As there is no way for me to find and describe the online presence of every YA author, or adult author popular with teens, what follows is merely a collection of examples. If you like an author, google him, look her up on MySpace, find his website and bookmark it.
Authors on Myspace
Myspace is a popular social networking site where you can find everyone from teens to teachers. Authors who have profiles here can get in touch with and get feedback from fans as well as connect to other authors, through "friend" lists. When you find one favorite author on Myspace, you can easily discover others.
Along with spelling her first name differently from the traditional "Stephanie," Meyer's profile page is predominantly black and displays the image from the cover of her first book, Twilight. The song "Reptilla" by The Strokes plays in the background as a quotes from her books scroll by, above images of their covers. Eclipse, the third installment in her vampire trilogy is coming soon: check out the countdown here, currently at 36 days, 11 hours, 8 minutes, 7 seconds, and an ever-scrolling count of miliseconds. This is a MySpace page that goth kids, and all other fans of Twilight would love. (Halfway through the book after starting it on the train yesterday, I am now qualified to comment).
Author of Gingerbread, Shrimp, Cupcake and (with David Levithan) Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, says in her profile that she lives in "the land of dreamy dreams, California". Cohn does not blog all that often, but her most recent post is a response to questions solicited from her fans. It's nice that she chose to interact with them so directly. In her "about me" section, there is a scrolling slide show of photos including pictures of Cohn and covers of her book.
David Levithan, author of Boy Meets Boy and (with Rachel Cohn) Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist uses his MySpace blog to recomend books to his "friends" and fans. Under who he'd like to meet: "Readers. Of my books, or of any books." Other authors on his friend space include: John Green, Blake Nelson, Rachel Cohn and Holly Black.
Coe Booth's profile page is a great example of design. The brick wall background goes so well with Booth's book, an urban story of hardships, Tyrell. In her blog, she has posted the first chapter of the book. Her friends list includes several other YA authors.
"Crime and Punnishment on Skateboards" is the quote on Nelson's page, and a description of his novel, Paranoid Park. "Destroy Everything" by Ladytron plays along. News to me: Gus Van Sant will be directing the movie version of Paranoid Park, and plans to shoot it in Portland, OR, where the novel takes place. The movie will star actual teens from Portland.
The author of An Abundance of Katherines has a strong internet presence outside of his MySpace Page on the video blog he shares with his brother Brotherhood 2.0. He shows his sense of humor on his profile, playing a folk-rock version of "Baby Got Back" by Jonathon Coulton.
Author Blogs
We know blogs. By now we should be experts. Reading an author's blog is a way to get the latest updates on the books they have written, the books they are writing, and where you might find an author to shake hands and get your book signed. But more than this, you get to visit an author's worldview, get to know him as a person, find out what she is interested in outside of her books, what causes he chooses to champion, and what webpages she's reading that day. An author's blog lets you in on his world, and might give fans the opportunity to connect with that author through e-mail, some of which, some authors post and answer right there on their blogs.
The popularity of Neil Gaiman is something of a cult. He is the author of the graphic novel series Sandman, adult novels with teen crossover potential such as Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, and most recently Anansi Boys. He write short stories, most recently collected in Fragile Things, and also books for younger kids, like Coraline and The Wolves in the Walls. Neil is beloved by his fans. On his blog he keeps them up to date about where he is, what he's doing, when he's signing and the like, as well as what he's thinking about and a host of links to other interesting things. Neil is involved with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and always writes supportively about authors facing censorship. Just lately, his daugher Maddy has been guest blogging during their trip to Hungary to visit the set of Hellboy 2. More fun from the world of Neil, he is well connected with the realm of entertainment. I feel Will Richardson would support Neil's blogging practices, as he is articulate about events outside of his own imaginings, and is constantly linking to and commenting on other things happening on the web.
Meg Cabot is another author with celebrity status, who writes for a variety of age groups including teen titles: The Princess Diaries, Mediator Series, 1-800-Series, Avalon High, and How to Be Popular, as well as adult novels: Size 12 Is Not Fat and Queen of Babble, and forthcoming series for middle grades: Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls. Cabot is girly and very funny in her blog, as she discusses the status of her writing projects (Queen of Babble in the Big City is now out and the manga sequel to Avalon High, soon to be), her travels, her cats, her hair, her hyperactive nature, and getting bitten by bugs, among other things. She also offers quick reviews and reading suggestions. In the most recent posts of her blog she does not post a ton of links, but she posts some. She also posts an occasional picture. From this small sample, I would say her blog leans more towards the journaling side of blogging, but is very entertaining to read and, no doubt, great fan appeal.
Holly Black author of Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside and co-author of The Spiderwick Chronicles with Tony DiTerlizzi, blogs on Livejournal. It's a very simple looking blog, which is updated frequently with information about her books, her travels, events she has attended, and links to interviews, both print and podcast. I think her fans will connect on a basic level to the fact that she posts her blogs on the same kind of blogware that many of them are using and that this allows them to leave comments directly on her blog.
Author Websites
The links in this section are author websites that are a bit more, or a bit different than blogs.
Stephenie Meyer Meyer's website is quite extensive including a long section of Frequently Asked Questions; individual pages for each volume of her vampire series Twilight, New Moon, and the forthcoming Eclipse; official and unofficial biographies of the author; information on her other projects; a calendar of events; and a store where you can buy the books, and t-shirts, too. I am sort of terrified of spoilers while poking around on this site, so I will not annotate extensively, except to say there are pictures of everybody's cars from Twilight. How cool and detailed is that? I hear there is much more.
Philip Pullman's website is not a blog because he does not update it that frequently. I only check back every few months. He did update in June. The reason why it is a useful and interesting author site is because it has a great news archive, and contains some essays on Pullman's worldview, an important componant for thinking about the His Dark Materials trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, which take on some heavy philosophical topics for YA books. The site also includes information about the His Dark Materials stage production and the upcoming Golden Compass Film which will be released this December.
I discovered Maureen Johnson because her book The Bermudez Triangle, which has a bit of homosexual content, was challenged. She, and the librarians in the school where it was challenged, fought, and at least got the book to stay in the library, though behind the desk for "classroom use". You can read more about it in her blog. After I looked at the blog, I found that her website has several other interesting features, including synopses of her books; a section of news and updates, both relevant to her books and random things; an author bio, where it is revealed that Johnson likes shiny things; a section called 13 Travel Tips; and a selection of podcasts featuring the author. At this point there are only two of these podcasts, but the very presence of them made me look twice at this site in terms of whether I thought it was a blog or more than a blog. Also the site has a very lively colorful design, bright colors with a hint of collage. I think it is very eye catching and would be for teens.
How Can We Use This
As an English Teacher or For Information Literacy
Author websites, especially blogs, can be looked at in order to flesh out information about an author while studying their books. If students are assigned the dreaded book report, why not discover more about a book by investigating the author's point of view. If the assignment is to write about authors themselves, these websites could be used to get information on a factual level, as well as get a sense of the author's opinions, feelings, worldview, other interests.
If I was an English teacher, I’d assign a project where students would pick an author blog to follow for a length of time, read some of that author’s work and write about the experience. This assignment could focus on the study of the author, or become a study of blogging practices as a gateway to student blogging. In order to get comfortable with the idea of blogging students could be assigned to read several blogs and compare them, author blogs being one type or genre of blog to study. Reading blogs could inspire students towards writing them.
As a Librarian
Author presences online are more ways we can get students excited about books and keep them up to date on their favorite authors, and help teachers connect with YA publishing. There are lots of ways, both online and off, to get the word out about author websites.
Online
- use the library's website to keep a list of links accessible by students.
- better yet, keep a blog for the library. Be aware of several author blogs and share their links and some annotations about them on the library's blog.
- use Twitter, on library computers, or get your patrons using it at home, to post links to author blogs or even annouce updates.
Offline
- stick a slip of paper in a book with the URL of the author's website or blog.
- put up signs in your library with lists of URL's
- make a display near the computer area of your library with some books by authors who have a strong online presence, and URL's where students can find them online.
References
What you see is what you get. I googled authors, I clicked links, I gathered information, I described and I linked for you what I found.
A Final Thought
Most of the authors mentioned in this entry have all three components: websites, myspace pages, and blogs. All of those are worth looking for and checking out as well. (As an aside this whole entry could be reorganized to be about author websites and break down the typical features you find on them. If I'm feeling adventurous maybe I'll change it later, or since this is a wiki, you can).
