RUNNING HEAD: Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

Reading, Writing, Reblogging:

The Young Adult Literature Fandom and Information Behavior
LIBR 200-11 Information Communities
Kathleen Esling
Professor Robert Boyd
San Jos State University
April 22, 2015

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

Abstract:
Young Adult Literature is an engaging genre with a diverse fan base. While the
genres title assumes a youthful readership, many adults are also fans of these books.
Online, YA fans have found their own communities in which to share information such as
book reviews, recommendations, fan fiction, and fan art. Publishers have increasingly
tried to break into this fandom in order to boost sales, and this increased presence of
readers and publishers online has led to an interesting co-creation of community
identities. The community of book lovers online is so immense that a term has been
coined to describe it: the bookternet (short for book Internet). On the bookternet there
are many sub-communities of readers. One such sub-community is the Reblog Book Club
on Tumblr, a group that meets quarterly and discusses newly released books. Using ideas
explored by Jenkins and others, this paper examines the April-May 2015 session of the
Reblog Book Club as a participatory culture and gauges reader interaction by observing
what types of content are being created and shared most often. By combining existing
research and real-time observations, this essay finds that short, clever text posts, quotes,
and dynamic photographs allow for a faster, wider-reaching conversation than other
content created.

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

Introduction:
Many people rely on the Internet to supply them with everything they need
information, entertainment, and connection to others. Communities of readers, for
example, turn to a corner of the World Wide Web known as the bookternet when they
want to find new information. There, readers can write blog posts, film videos, display
fan art, and share many other reactions to their favorite books. The bookternet is filled
with creative responses to reading. One particularly creative community is that of readers
of Young Adult (YA) fiction.
The YA fiction information community is extremely diverse. Young adults read
YA, but so do many not-quite-young adults. In fact, a 2012 survey by a market research
firm found that 55 percent of [YA novels] are bought by people older than 18 (Graham,
2014). Frequently, this information community meets online to share news; the Internet
is the perfect way for such a diverse group of people to connect. Websites such as Twitter,
Goodreads, and Tumblr are particularly friendly to denizens of the bookternet. As Naik
writes in the Readers Advisory column for Reference & User Services Quarterly, sites
like Goodreads are popular for several reasons (2012). For example, there is no
inconvenience of having to physically go to a certain location at a certain time to discuss
only a certain book (Trott & Naik, 2012, p. 322). Naik points out that this is attractive to
many readers: Because they can simultaneously discuss as many books as they like as
well, Goodreads becomes a formidably flexible book discussion tool (2012, p. 322).
While Goodreads is not the only site where these discussions are happening, the
bookternets ability to connect people thousands of miles away in order to discuss a book
series is astounding.

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

While meeting online, these readers discuss more than just what is on their
shelves. A little creativity goes a long way in the YA fandom. Readers write their own fan
fiction based on their favorite books, and they self-publish their fiction online. In an
article for the Handbook of Research on Childrens and Young Adult Literature1, Dutro
and McIver explore how children in particular use fan fiction to explore their own
creativity: Indeed, one of the powers of literature is how it can inspire a reader to reach
for her pen and weave her own magic with words, imagining, imitating, creating, even
rebelling (2011, p. 93). Something about reading great writing inspires children to their
own creativity, and fan fiction opens the door for young authors to attempt their first
stories. Other readers create pieces of fan art that they then post to their blogs to share
with others. Some readers compile playlists based on themes from their current reads, and
others write intricate posts exploring the elements of a novel that they found most
exciting. All of these creations are then shared across platforms by other fans of the
source texts. Discussions about characters, themes, and plot points jump from platform to
platform, medium to medium.
Discussions are not the only aspect of YA literature jumping from medium to medium. In
an age where the stories being printed in books can also be found on YouTube or at the
movie theatres, readers have adapted to following their texts. In true circular fashion,
Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice was adapted into The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a
YouTube series featuring the eponymous protagonist as a sassy graduate student. This
vlog-style update to Austens story was then adapted into a YA novel titled The Secret
Diary of Lizzie Bennet. Now, the YouTube channel has spun-off into other Austen
adaptations, and a site titled Pemberley Digital (www.pemberleydigital.com) exists to
1 Future references to this text will refer to the Handbook.

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

help fans navigate the story across platforms. As Mackey notes in her article for the
Handbook, Harry [Potter] is not alone []. It is actually Harrys readers who join him in
inhabiting a multimedia world, where multiple versions, incarnations, adaptations, and
spin-offs are completely taken for granted (2011, p. 495). Different websites offer
readers different ways to engage with their favorite texts and each other, and the YA
community has not been slow to accept these changes. When the texts themselves are
available across multiple platforms, it only makes sense that readers would move their
discussions across the bookternet accordingly.
This cross-platform nature of YA media and fandom interaction brings to mind the
idea that the novel for young readers is a nexusa core of connections and links. It is a
nexus of other genres (Cadden, 2011, p. 303). Fann aligns YA literature with cult fiction
in that respect, writing cult fiction is a classic genre bender (Trott & Fann, 2011, p. 15).
Many of the key elements of cult fiction alienation, ego-reinforcement, behavior
modification, and vulnerability are things that Fann says are strikingly appealing to
adults in their 20s and 30s as well as to teen readers (2011, p. 16). The stories are
engaging and all-encompassing. Fann quotes William Sutcliffs views on cult fiction and
teenagers, writing
He quite bluntly states that cult fiction titles are important to read as [teens] enter
adulthood. He explains that cult fiction titles provide the perfect opportunity for
teens to safely explore everything that could be done in life: [a]t 18, anything is
possible, and you have to read these books to find out what anything really
means. (2011, p. 18).

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

This analysis of what makes cult fiction appealing to teenagers helps shed light on why
adults enjoy YA. These genre-bending texts allow for engaging stories to unfold without
the fetters of genre convention. Regardless of whether they are shelved with youth
literature or cult classics, these creative stories excite and inspire readers of all ages.
YA literature not only connects different genres (science fiction and mystery being
examples Cadden provides), but it also links readers to one another. On Tumblr, fans have
bonded over fan art depicting Hermione Granger and/or Harry Potter as people of color.
While not every young person in the Western world has read Harry Potter, many YA fans
have, and the series plays a large part in many readers childhoods. Readers of Harry
Potter are hungry for more diversity in the series, and so they have opened the doors for
it in the Wizarding World themselves via their fan art. As Sandra Hughes-Hassell notes in
her 2013 article, young people need to see stories about themselves. By recasting the
brilliant young witch Hermione as a person of color, fans are able to combat the single
story, a troubling trend in youth literature that Hughes-Hassel explores:
The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that
they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the
only story (Adichie 2009). And in most cases the single story reinforces a deficitoriented stance toward teens of color and indigenous peoplesa stance that
represents their race, ethnicity, culture, and/or language as limitations. (HughesHassell, 2013, p. 216)
Harry Potter fans of color see a lot of themselves in how Hermione Granger is portrayed:
she is an outcast because of her Muggle-born status, but she rises to the top anyway due
to her talent and determination. Many children of color identify with being marginalized

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

and underestimated, and Hermiones strength is inspiring to them. By creating fan art that
allows other readers to see the Hermione that these fans imagine, those readers are able to
open up a discussion about diversity in YA that otherwise may never have been
considered by many other fans. These types of posts are shared frequently, and
discussions continue about how people see Hermione and Harry, as well as what other
possibilities lay open to interpretation. In an article for Young Adult Library Services,
Brenner argues, fan works are more inclusive than mainstream media (2013, p. 35).
This is immediately apparent on Tumblr. In engaging with and discussing each others
creations, YA readers open themselves up to new interpretations of their favorite works.
These discussions also foster friendship and other connections within the community.
The YA community truly is a vibrant one. This paper will address the question of
how these readers interact with each other. What types of discussions are the most fruitful
(fruitful here meaning most able to foster discussion and information sharing)? Simply
being a reader is not enough; members must be able to communicate their feelings about
what they are reading in order to be part of this exchange. While passive members of the
community do exist, the real information sharing takes place when readers post opinions,
news, and creative responses. These responses are essential to the growth and
development of the YA information community.

Literature Review:
There has not been great deal of research focusing on the community of fans of
YA literature. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that many scholars do not view YA
as destination literature (Coats, 2011, p. 317). YA is typically regarded as a checkpoint

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

on the way from childrens literature to adult literature, and as such, very little research
has been undertaken to follow trends in YA. There is some general research into young
peoples reading habits as well as how people interact online, and those are the articles
that have been used for this paper.
It has been noted that young adults themselves participate often in different online
communities. Jenkins has written about how both teens and adults engage in participatory
cultures online, and Harlan, Bruce, and Lupton studied how teens in particular
communicate on the Internet (2012). Brooker found that many fan groups try to create
an ongoing fan text through their contributions to Internet discussion threads (2005, p.
872). These observations are evident in the YA community online. Posts will be
reblogged across Tumblr millions of times as readers post their thoughts about a book and
fellow readers share and expand on it. Sometimes the authors of the books mentioned
even get involved; this is frequently the case when a John Green novel is mentioned.
Marketing companies encourage online interaction between fans and celebrities,
particularly in the world of YA fiction, and Stever & Lawson discuss celebrity-fan
engagement on Twitter. Taxel and Rutherford explore how marketing companies target
teenagers online, and Flanagin, Hocevar, and Samahito look at how individuals and
groups co-create identities online. While the idea of child-as-consumer dates back to the
18th century (Taxel, 2011), publishers of modern YA fiction are going further than ever
before in their attempts to gain the attention of their readers, an issue that has caught the
attention of childrens literature scholars and librarians alike.
As there is not a wealth of research on YA yet, there are some gaps and
inconsistencies that cannot easily be explained. For example, Merga found in a 2015

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

study of Australian teenagers that not all avid young readers are frequent users of social
media. This goes against findings by Jenkins, Rutherford, and Harlan et al. Upon further
consideration, however, it becomes clear that Merga does not consider fan fiction social
media, as her respondents are very active on fan fiction sites (Merga, 2015). Brenner and
Kell, two librarians involved with teens and teacher librarianship, have found that teens
enjoy the community of other fan fiction authors online (2013 and 2009, respectively).
Kell also quoted a 2003 study by Chandler-Olcott and Mahar, noting that the teenagers in
that study viewed fan fiction as a way that they could form online friendships (2009).
Mergas findings are confusing as they make it sound as though her readers are asocial
online when in fact they are extremely active as they read and comment on each others
fan fictions (2015). As this gap in the literature refers specifically to teen readers and not
YA fans specifically, it is not too much of a concern for this project.

Methodology:
As the Internet is a very large place and the bookternet itself is quite sprawling,
I turned my focus on how a small group of fans of YA literature interact via Tumblrs
Reblog Book Club. The most recent round of the book club ran from April 20th to May
10th, and the book club discussed Courtney Summerss new Young Adult novel, All the
Rage. Reminiscent of Laurie Halse Andersons classic YA novel Speak, this book is a
difficult, gritty look at rape culture in America.
Members of the Reblog Book Club range in age from teenagers to older adults,
but age is not a factor in this study. Instead, this paper aims to see what types of posts are

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most popular within the book club community as this is a community that communicates
via creative reactions to texts. The book clubs guidelines encourage creativity:
And because this is a book club the Tumblr way, you can express your feelings
about the book however you choose a written review, fan art, gifs, poems,
letters Maybe you have nail art? Maybe you want to post a video blog talking
through your ideas, a g-chat with a friend, or a song you think the characters
would relate to? Its all up to you! And, of course, you can reblog other peoples
posts to add your own thoughts and responses (Welcome to the Reblog Book
Club).
To gauge reader interaction, I observed and coded responses that the main Reblog Book
Club account reblogged. In order to be featured by the Reblog Book Club account,
members either had to submit their responses via a form on the main club blog, or they
had to use the tags #reblog book club and #all the rage in order to be part of the
discussion. From there, they would be reblogged onto the main account.
Responses could fall into specific categories I predetermined based on the types
of responses submitted during previous rounds of the book club. In cases where a post
could code as a number of things, I evaluated and coded it to fit the most similar post
type. I divided posts into the following post types:
1. Photographs (personal/cosplay)
2. Art (Drawings, Sculptures, Photo Sets)
3. Art (Needlework, Nail Art, Other Miscellaneous Art)
4. Food/Drink
5. Blog Post (Reporting/Reviews)
6. Written Word (Creative)
7. Fancasts (Creative posts casting actors for the film version of the novel)
8. Questions for the Author
9. Playlists
10. Quotes

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11. Vlogs
12. Miscellaneous Tumblr (posts that do not fit into any other category)
Once a post was coded, I recorded how often each post was shared. (Here, shared
means either it was liked by a Tumblr user or it was reblogged.) The types of responses
and amounts of shares were recorded from the start of the book club through May 8th, and
the final numbers are reported as totals (total amount of each type of posts, total amount
of shares per post type) in Table 1. While this window of observation does not account
for any last-minute reblogs or new submissions, it captures the majority of the interaction
on the site and provides enough of a basis for me to report my findings.
In addition to conducting an observation of the book club, I also read articles
discussing how people connect online, particularly with regards to avid readers and teens.
While there was not a great deal of information on my specific group of all-ages YA fans,
I was able to find a great deal of general research through the Library Literature &
Information Science Full Text Database, ABI/Inform Complete, and Emerald
Management Xtra.

Discussion:
The Culture:
One of the reasons the Reblog Book Club is so popular is partially because of the
instant camaraderie it inspires. Users around the world are able to form immediate
connections once they have read the assigned passages. In an article for The Millions,
Elizabeth Minkel interviewed members of the Reblog Book Club to ask what made the
club special for them. Lauren Bates, a frequent book club participant, said the following:
We have no idea what each others backgrounds are or where (or if) anyone attended

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college or what their major was or any of that. Your credentials dont give your opinion
more weight than anyone elses (Minkel, 2015). Community culture is a major force
behind the Reblog Book Clubs popularity. In their 2012 study, Harlan et al. found that
teenagers choose participatory communities by an intentional and reflective choice
guided by observing the particulars of the culture of the community before choosing to
participate (p. 577). While their study focused on teens, their observations ring true for
most Internet users. The Reblog Book Club community is a fun, respectful, and engaging
place.
This attitude of respect is important as fans of YA are used to being mocked in the
media. In June of 2014, Ruth Graham wrote an article for Slate slamming adult fans of
YA when she prescribed that any and all adult readers of YA fiction should feel
ashamed. She discusses Eleanor & Park, a popular YA novel, and states, the reader
seems to be expected to swoon. But how can a grown-up, even one happy to be reminded
of the shivers of first love, not also roll her eyes? (Graham, 2014). Unlike Fann who
acknowledges and celebrates the ties between many YA stories and their adult novel
counterparts, Graham believes that adults should leave childrens literature to children,
and many people seem to share Grahams sentiments. One Tumblr user submitted an
insulting anonymous ask to the author John Green stating that his books were bad
because they were written solely to be enjoyed by teenage girls (fishingboatproceeds.)
YA literature is often assumed to have an all-female readership, and it has faced some of
the same stigma as the chick lit genre. Perhaps it is because of this undeserved mockery
that YA fans have banded together, but fans of YA literature are a very close-knit group.
Conversations are conducted respectfully even in cases where readers vehemently

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disagree with other members interpretations of the text. No matter how much members
disagree, the conversations stay calm.
The YA fandom generally strives to be inclusive, and as a major online book club,
the Reblog Book Club chooses books that are telling inclusive stories. All the Rage by
Courtney Summers is an extremely important novel; it tells the story of a rape survivor
who is struggling with the aftermath of the attack as well as her communitys lack of
support. To bring back the idea of Adichies single story, Summers is combatting the
single rape survivor story by writing about Romy, a strong young woman who may not
be perfect but who certainly is strong enough to withstand her communitys failure to
support her. Previous book club selections have been equally as inclusive: The
Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson discusses PTSD, and Brown Girl
Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson brings up the issue of identity in a young girls life
when she must leave the South and everything that she knows. Vivian Apple at the End of
the World by Katie Coyle handles issues of intolerance, racism, and greed, and California
by Edan Lepucki follows a pregnant womans struggles in a dystopian America. Even the
very first book choice, Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, handles diversity in the character of
Cath Avery, an extremely shy and anxious young woman. Her father has mental illness,
and Cath herself struggles with her anxiety as she adapts to being a college freshman. As
a whole, the book club aims to tell important stories, and so far, it has done a powerful
job. As Machado writes in an essay for the Handbook,
something else is required in order to get at true meetings: something that goes
beyond hard facts, concrete data, and rational features; something that touches
emotions, feelings, personal identification, longing for closeness, mutual

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sympathy or compassion. Thats where personal expression comes in. Objective

data are not enough. Subjective touches are needed. Thats where a good story,
well told, can bring characters alive, in situations that make it possible for
different worlds to meet. (2011, p. 398)
Hearing a Sixty Minutes news story or a CNN headline does not do enough to connect us
with our fellow people. Reading their stories does. Reblog Book Club is a place where
these stories are being told; often, these stories are ones that do combat the single story
type. The subjective touches are there in Reblog Book Clubs book selections and in
the thoughtful conversations readers have as they respond to the texts.

The Numbers:
As Harlan et. al write in their study on teens and participatory cultures, engaging
with information within a community can occur in a variety of ways including through
practices such as observing, commenting, interacting, and creating (2012, p. 571). From
the findings listed in Table 1, Tumblrs Reblog Book Club is a very active contingent of
the bookternet. While it comes as no surprise that the book club is an active participatory
culture, the types of content being generated by these readers is enlightening. The book
club saw a great deal of traffic with this book. Part of this may be attributed to the
publishing companys involvement in the club. Griffin Teen reblogged many of the book
club members posts, and staff members would pose new questions to continue the
discussions further. On the day that the book club launched, a hashtag campaign also took
place titled #ToTheGirls. While not many #ToTheGirls posts were featured by the

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Reblog Book Club, a couple of them were reblogged into the discussion, and together
they accounted for over a thousand shares.
The most popular content types were photographs, blog posts, and quotes. As
reflected in Table 1, there were 35 photograph posts, 45 blog posts, and 12 quotes posted.
The photographs post type received a total of 3,373 shares, the blog post type received a
total of 2,654 shares, and the quote post type received 1,420 shares. Fan art earned
hundreds of shares as did questions for the author, but the other post types were shared
much less frequently.
To be successful and earn a lot of shares, photographs needed to be unique.
Many book club members2 took a photograph of the review copy of All the Rage they
received along with the Tumblr swag included in the package. The first few posts of
that nature garnered fifty or more shares, but subsequent posts topped out with fewer than
twenty shares apiece. Other popular photo options were photographs creatively
showcasing red nails or nail polish and red lips or lipstick as the main character wears red
cosmetics as her battle armor. This limited cosplay was rewarded with more shares than
the average picture.
Regarding blog posts, the shorter and cleverer the better. Long walls of text tended to
receive below forty shares no matter how well written they might have been. It looks as
though no one wanted to spend time reading that much text, particularly when it had no
obviously creative aspect to it (such as the use of gifs or photographs). Blog posts with
photographs and gifs earned more shares if the photo was something engaging, creative,

2 For the sake of users privacy, I will not reference any user by name. All Reblog Book
Club participants will be referred to as users, readers, or members.

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or exciting. With regards to text posts that did not include photos, short, snappy
observations of the text were liked and reblogged most frequently.
Quotes are always a large portion of the content generated by the Reblog Book
Club. This type of post allows book club members to show what passages were the most
powerful for them, and it allows for members to feel an instant connection when they see
their favorite quote featured by the book club. There is also space to write a commentary
beneath the quote. Quotes are just as likely to start a discussion as original blog posts;
members can add their commentary in the text box beneath the quote, and subsequent
reblogs allow other readers add their own comments. Quotes also fall into the short and
sweet type of post, meaning that they are faster at catching the eye and take less time to
read. These qualities are very share-friendly. Blocks of text are easy to scroll past, but a
short quote catches fellow readers attention and increases the likelihood of a share.
Interestingly, quotes can be considered the most-shared type of post for this session of the
book club. There were only twelve quotes posted, and those quotes were shared 1,420
times. Quotes received more shares per post than either photographs or blog posts.
There are some outliers in the data. The Miscellaneous post type cannot be
considered when discussing most shared posts because it was the catchall for posts that
could not fit in any other category. While Miscellaneous posts received 14,017 total
shares, these shares could not be coded. Several of the posts were about topics tangential
to All the Rage: two posts were for the #ToTheGirls tag. Another Miscellaneous post that
earned thousands of shares was a post by Courtney Summers quoting a reviewer. Since
she was not quoting the book or writing a true blog post, it needed to go to this section.

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To draw attention to an unusual event from the book club, Art 2 received 816
shares. 784 of those shares were split across two posts of needlepoint fan art pieces
depicting characters from the book. One of those needlepoints was featured as the Tumblr
login page only days after it was posted. Since the second, non-home-page needlepoint
only received 21 shares, it looks as though the act of being featured on the Tumblr home
page significantly increased the first needlepoints share value. Needlepoint is a unique
way of responding to the text, and it appears that this post was chosen specifically
because it was so astounding. Usually book club responses are not featured on the Tumblr
home page; it was interesting to see how much non-book club members shared the post.
The home page is generally reserved for the most interesting content.
Tumblr is home to a great deal of engaging user-created content. The Pew Internet
& American Life project found that more than one-half of all teens have created media
content, and roughly one-third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they
produced (Lenhardt & Madden as cited in Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison &
Weigel, n.d., p. 3). Many teenagers use Tumblr as a way to showcase their work; vlogs,
sketches, photographs, and poetry are shared across the website. There is also a large
amount of young book bloggers present on the site. Leonie M. Rutherford studied how
publicity firms marketed fiction to young adults in 2009, and her findings were that
publicists try aim to create content that resembled posts by other teens (Rutherford,
2009). As Flanagin et al. found in their 2013 paper, people tend to find information
contributed by similar others to be more credible (p. 1). Teenagers want readergenerated content, not ads. By using sites such as Tumblr to engage with their fans,
publishing companies are looking more and more like their demographic as they strive to

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engage these readers online. As Taxel writes in an article for the Handbook, many
childrens and YA books are now brands more than they are ideas (2011). By being
online where their consumers are, publishers are helping their own brands to construct
the identities of their readers, something that Taxel feels is cause for some concern
(2011). Griffin Teen is not the first publishing company to participate in the book club.
Penguin Teen, the publishing company behind Brown Girl Dreaming, also participated, as
did Houghton Mifflin Harcourt when Vivian Apple at the End of the World was the book
choice. Generally, the publishers do not do too much to control the club, but they do
share posts and try to start conversations. They are present and engaging with their
readers. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it is something to keep in mind. These
may be spaces for users to create their own original content, but brands are attempting to
be part of this content.
Information professionals appear to already be involved with the book club; it
seems that librarians make up a portion of the book club membership, and at least one
photographed copy of All the Rage being read for the club was a library copy. For those
who are not already involved, the Reblog Book Club can give information professionals
some good insights as to how to better serve the YA community. This is a very tech-savvy
group. Many members use e-readers; this knowledge was gleaned from the amount of
photographs showing an e-reader displaying the All the Rage cover image. The types of
posts being created and shared also gave insight as to the technical abilities of this group.
During an earlier interview with some book bloggers3, I learned that there are bloggers
who rely on the library for their latest reads. This is by no means the rule; many blogs on
Tumblr feature photographs of overflowing bookshelves as this tends to be the Booklr
3 I will only refer to them as bloggers to protect their privacy.

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aesthetic, but not every blogger wants to invest that much money into stories that they
will likely read once. Book bloggers have also self-reported their comfort using the
Internet to learn more about new releases; often, this is where these readers find their next
book. Information professionals can use this knowledge to increase their social media
Readers Advisory presence in order to reach more YA readers.
Some other information that may be useful for information professionals looking to
broaden their appeal to YA was the type of information that members felt comfortable
sharing publicly. While age was not a consideration in this paper, many members
volunteered information that made it clear that they were not teenagers. Seeing that the
YA readership demographic is not solely young readers may be helpful for some
information professionals looking to increase traffic for their YA titles.
There is some potential for gaps and biases in these results. I am a member of the
Reblog Book Club and participated in this round. I actually received a review copy of the
book, so it was expected that I participate. While I did not make any posts that were
designed to influence my observations, the fact remains that I am not an objective
observer. Another potential gap in the research is that the only posts observed for this
book club were ones that had been reblogged by the main Reblog Book Club account. It
is possible that some responses to the text were not reblogged onto the main account, but
as the moderator of the club is very good about reblogging most content, I did not do any
separate searches through the main Tumblr site for posts tagged #all the rage. I wanted
to focus on what the club itself was talking about, and I trusted that if the moderator did
not feature something on the blog, this meant that it was not crucial to the group
discussion.

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This paper also could not account for the silent members of the club, nor does it
account for the theft and reposting of images; only direct likes and reblogs count towards
shares. For the sake of time, specific conversations were not recorded. In addition,
some users build on others posts by including comments in the tags. These tags are only
visible to mutual followers and are not recorded in the Notes section of Tumblr. Should
any discussions have taken place in the tags, those exchanges went unrecorded.
It is also worth noting that the Reblog Book Club does not speak for all of the
bookternet. Many book blogs do not participate in the book club. Perhaps future research
could explore how a wider range of YA book bloggers discuss and share information
about their favorite books.
With these gaps in mind, I argue that the data found in this paper is valid. As a
member of the club, I was able to monitor the members activity and follow trends more
easily. I knew what to expect; for example, the blog sees a spike in submissions on
Wednesdays even though the discussion week starts on Monday. Reblog Book Club is
also a small enough group that it was a manageable size for a first exploration of this
topic. A larger group such as Booklr would have been overwhelming. By thinking
critically about the research I had gathered and observing how the Reblog Book Club
shared information, I was able to track the conversations and determine the most popular
post types.

Conclusion:
The bookternet is its own superhighway of communication. Book bloggers have
carved out a space on Tumblr known colloquially as Booklr where they write essays

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

21

detailing themes and plot points that they found most engaging in their favorite novels.
Artists paint, draw, sketch, sculpt, and sew their favorite characters and scenes. Vloggers
have dominated a corner of YouTube now known as BookTube where they post DIY
instructions and detail their progress on various book challenges. The bookternet is one
giant participatory culture, and each sub-community creates, shares, and supports
amazing new content.
The Reblog Book Club is a fitting home for much of this creativity. While
vloggers and many fan artists were absent from this round of book club, this can be
attributed to the serious nature of All the Rage. Typically, book club members create their
own videos and fan art pieces. For Vivian Apple at the End of the World, sketches of
Vivian clutching a sledgehammer filled the book club newsfeed. Brown Girl Dreaming
inspired readers to record themselves reciting Woodsons poetry. The Impossible Knife of
Memory even inspired someone to create jewelry based on the book. As this rounds
selection focused on a rape survivor and a missing girl, however, it makes sense that
some of the more whimsical responses were not a part of this discussion. While All the
Rage was not a text that welcomed much fan art, the focus on Romys lipstick and nail
polish opened the door for creative photographs featuring these cosmetics.
At this time, it looks as though the YA communitys needs are being met fairly
well by information professionals. Perhaps more social media based Readers Advisory
options would be a good way for information professionals to serve more members of the
YA community. If libraries already have these systems in place, perhaps reevaluating how
information is presented online might be a worthy endeavor. There were probably some
wonderful long-form blog posts about All the Rage, but those went largely ignored. In the

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

22

larger frame of Tumblr (and, essentially, any social media site), text alone is not
engaging. Unless a text post is a short, snappy observation or a witty one-liner, readers
will scroll past it. Information professionals may want to adopt the style of many YA
bloggers and incorporate more media into their webpages and social media accounts. Gifs
are hugely popular in online reviews of YA books. Photographs and memes are also
frequently featured as reactions mid-review. Memes in particular are popular reaction
images as these Stock Character Macros allow bloggers shorthand when expressing
their feelings about books (Jenkins, 2014). Having these eye-catching images can attract
readers. A wall of text is uninteresting, but text with a funny meme between paragraphs
will attract readers and, potentially, more patrons.
In addition to adding more creativity to library posts, information professionals
could also create a space for creative discussion. A community book club that encourages
creative responses would be another good way to increase service. The YA community is
a group that is particularly eager to read; many book bloggers jokingly lament their
increasingly cumbersome to be read lists. Perhaps if more libraries reached out to these
readers on sites such as Tumblr, those lists could be increased even further with offerings
from the library.
The community of people who read Young Adult literature is creative, engaging,
and incredibly involved in their bookternet groups. The Reblog Book Club has created a
space on Tumblr for readersand, frequently, fans of YA literatureto gather and
discuss important new books in a giant club setting. These people value fresh takes on the
text, and they create astoundingly intricate content to express their own reactions to the

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

23

texts. By harnessing a similar creative energy, information professionals could be able to

reach more fans of Young Adult literature.

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

Table 1
Types of Posts Created and Shared During the April-May 2015 Reblog Book
Club
Amount of Posts
Shares (Total)
Data Type
35
3,373
Photos
4
542
Art 1
3
814
Art 2
0
0
Food/Drink
45
2,654
Blog Post (Reporting)
1
37
Written Word (Creative)
0
0
Fancasts
3
139
Q's for Authors
0
0
Vlogs
11
14,017
Misc.
1
75
Playlists
12
1,420
Quotes

24

Reading, Writing, Reblogging: The YA Fandom

25

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