YA Publishers Websites: Do They Really Know How To Market To Young Adults?

I began my search for publishing company websites by pulling out my copy of the 2009 edition of Writer’s Market and flipping right to the Young Adult listings. In my own research and our discussions about reaching target audiences, it is clear that it takes a little extra something for a website to catch the attention of the average YA reader, so what better way to analyze a website’s ability to capture a target audience than to examine the website of those companies that cater to that audience?

My final conclusion? Few companies that list themselves as publishers of YA fiction actually seem to know how to capture their target audience in an online venue.

I visited a variety of companies, randomly selected from the list, including Lerner Publishing Company, E-Digital Books, LLC (simply because their name intrigued me), Front Street, Harcourt Children’s, Simon & Schuster, Puffin Books, Peachtree Publishers, Candlewick Press, Big Idea, and Tolling Bell Books.

Surprisingly, E-Digital Books was a huge disappointment. For a company touting technology, their website was very not tech savvy, complete with an outdated design and too much text. I was expecting something more cutting edge. I also couldn’t really see how they characterized themselves as a publisher of YA fiction. Children’s books, yes. Young Adult, not so much.

I also found Lerner’s website to be disappointing. They tried with bright colors, but for a YA reader, their site is way too juvenile with its primary colors. Even clicking on the link labeled, “Grades 6-12,” proved to be boring, only resulting in a blue, white, and yellow listing of all the books Lerner markets to that age group. Tolling Bell Books fell into a similar category—unexciting, boring, and nothing any YA reader would care to peruse.

A few sites did a better job, but I think that even those missed the mark. Front Street’s website is simple and easy to navigate. While they don’t have any showy features, they focus on their books, and make reviews and summaries easy to access. While it lacks animation and special features, I could see it appealing to a certain crowd of YA readers, maybe those labeled as more of the “bookworms.”

Simon & Schuster’s newly released website is a success. They are still working to embrace the technology that YA readers want, but are trying with a new set of message boards and book communities. Their new design is easy to navigate and has the modern, hip feel that teens want in a website. With a little work, their page may become the best at targeting YA readers (of the batch that I looked at, anyway).

For now though, I think the winners are Puffin Books and Candlewick Press. Both take simple designs but punch them up with color and graphics that kids and teens find exciting. Puffin even tries to gear their homepage to kids so much that they needed to add a “Grown Ups” tab to it. Even though they didn’t quite hit the target audience right on, they made it a lot closer than other companies simply by adding that one page.

Candlewick Press’ page design was good, with bright colors and graphics that link kids and teens right to series and book specific pages and sites. When you click over to Stink Moody’s website, you are greeted by a YA website dream—interactive, brightly colored, games, and other age-geared content.

This perusal was a bit of a disappointment. It’s hard to imagine companies publishing books for Young Adults without being able to adequately market them to their target audience online. Maybe I just happened to randomly chose a bad set of companies…I hope so! Anybody have any particularly great YA publishers sites to send me to?