The Class of 2k7 Online: Using Our Website
by Melissa Marr
In order to provide accurate and easily accessible information to booksellers, librarians, and educators, the Class of 2k7 is utilizing several online resources: a website, a message board (a.k.a. the forum) and a blog. Each of these offers a way to access data on the class and on individual members; collectively, these online venues also highlight our personalities and provide methods of direct communication with us. To maximize accessibility, these three sites are also interlinked.
The website is designed to be navigationally logical. Booksellers, librarians, and educators can sort authors by key traits—region, season, age range (MG or YA), and genre (contemporary, historical, edgy, etc). To make it convenient to get more information on a particular author, we each have a data page with our bio, blurb, and pertinent links to our personal web sites and/or writing blogs. To get a sense of the group as a whole, there’s also a sidebar link to our release calendar.
The site also offers an opportunity to sign up for the ezine, to read news from group members, and to view the promotional video that class members Eric Luper and Sarah Aronson designed. The video offers a good introduction to the breadth of the class’ texts by way of a montage of images each author gave to our film team as representative of his or her novel. Additionally, visitors to the class web site can scroll through the news archive to find a podcast by class member (and founder) Greg Fishbone, a link to an article from Publisher’s Weekly, and other events highlighting the group’s activity or individual member’s activity.
Another element of interest on the site is the archive of our blogged replies to submitted questions related to the writing and publication process. Much like the tag system for authors’ profiles, this element of the web site is logically ordered. You can sort by question or by author, and individual author’s replies are also available through their 2k7 profiles. These once more highlight the scope of the group and offer a glimpse into each writer’s personality.
For those who prefer to get the data as it becomes available, new questions are posted in the blog weekly. Such questions vary from how we celebrated our book sale to how we revise or who we see as our ideal readers. Visiting the blog allows for readers to respond to the class members and often to receive immediate replies from said class members.
The forum is yet another route to reach class members and to communicate with us. This is an online discussion board wherein topics are archived in threads. Each author has an individual message board where readers can post comments and questions. These are viewable by the public at large. Other categories on the forum invite general discussions; feedback and questions from booksellers, librarians, and educators; and postings of authors’ events—for example where 2k7 members will be appearing at conferences. Should you elect to register on the forum—a free, quick process—you will then be able to contact a member individually through a “private message.” This is akin to an email—viewable to the recipient, but not the group as a whole. For those of us whose personal websites are still under construction, this is a particularly useful function of the forum. Finally, in connection with the forum is the 2k7 chat room where we will host occasional public chats for the purpose of book launches, 2k7 book discussions, or topical chats about writing. We very much encourage teachers and librarians, especially, to use the forum to connect your students and patrons to Class of 2k7 members. Readers from all over the country can interact with peers who have read the same book, creating a virtual book group to enhance their reading experience. If your school has a limited budget for author visits, the forum can provide direct contact and you may even be able to arrange a live, online chat with an individual author or for a specific book discussion.
By offering up these varied methods of sharing information about the class and about each individual author, our hope is that we will maximize access for booksellers, librarians, and educators. Together the three sites—class web, forum, and blog—give visitors options of gathering information and/or making contact. Like addressing different learning styles in a classroom, we aim to offer information in these different formats so you can find the one that fits your taste.
Melissa Marr is a member of the Class of 2k7 and author of Wicked Lovely (HarperCollins, Summer 2007)