Harper Collins and MySpace Announce Joint Site Launch

Posted by Leslie Poston on January 4th, 2008

The new joint venture between Harper Collins and MySpace is a social literary site geared solely to teens. The space is dedicated to becoming a place for teens to talk about what they are reading and writing, and hopefully to discover new literature of all types. It also provides a place for literary teens to connect away from the usual shallow social network and social sets that face teens day to day.

Harper Collins is participating in the venture through its imprint HarperTeen, publisher of such books as Ana's Story, The Princess Diaries and Another Kind of Cowboy. Harper already has the link to the new network on its site, and MySpace is already promoting it to select users. Not only does the site allow teens to interact with each other, it brings them a way to chat with some of their favorite authors as well.

Both Harper Collins and MySpace are putting a lot of effort into the space, packing it with activities, contests and interactive applications that teens can use in hopes that it will become a draw to the younger set. Already they are planning the launch of a collaborative publishing aspect of the site. This will provide teens a way to put their creative writing on the site for the community (and hopefully the publisher) to see and critique.

The main drawback of the site is its focus on a single publisher. Harper Collins is a huge publishing house, but not all teens read the type of books they favor. This site would really hit one out of the park it it partnered with the other big publishing houses and some of the smaller ones like TOR as well, touching on all types of books and thereby hitting a chord with teens that read more than just mainstream fiction.

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