Fourth Story Media

Bookselling This Week talked to FSM CEO Lisa Holton about the launch of the first book in The Amanda Project- Invisible I.

“First and foremost, the book is a great read and a fun handsell…It’s a perfect choice for Teen Book Clubs, Mother/Daughter Book Clubs, or for avid readers who love to write as well,” said Holton. “And if you look in the back of the book, you’ll find the work of Lisa Strumm — a 17-year-old girl whose writing on the website was chosen for the first book.” (For her piece, Strumm, who lives in Plano, Texas, received an honorarium of a $100 gift certificate to her local indie bookstore, Legacy Books.)

To booksellers, Holton said, “Encourage your customers to write on the site, and perhaps they will be chosen for book two!”

Read the full piece here!

Teen Lab is a research program that gets kids to talk about their end-user experiences with technology. Recently they asked Quinn to talk about social networks.

Her rundown:

• Webkinz: Old news. Used to play “a while ago” but has since moved on.
• Club Penguin: Used to have a paid membership but no longer. Now just uses it to chat with friends.
• Polyvore: (A scrapbooking-esque site where you can pull pictures off the web and turn them into “sets” that users then comment on and favorite.) Loves it. Found out about it from her mom 8 months ago.
• Teen Second Life Quinn defines it as a cross between Club Penguin and Sims 2.) Still figuring it out, but liking it so far.

I downloaded the Polyvore clip tool to try it out. Images are super easy to pull, but on some there’s a lot of distortion when you add them to your set.