Introducing Jennifer Laughran/Not Your Mother's Bookclub

Jennifer Laughran is not a little boy in a blaze-colored wig, but she is a wickedly funny and deeply wise provocateur who studies books, studies teens, and sees; that's the point of this photo: Jennifer sees. You'll find her in San Francisco at the ever-proud-to-be-independent bookstore, Books Inc., conducting some of the most successful YA events this country has ever seen. You'll find her on her always-interesting online book community, Not Your Mother's Book Club. You'll find her making new YA authors (like me) comfortable and (quite quickly) cheered by telling the sort of stories one strives not to forget.

She doesn't need much of an introduction, frankly. Her words speak for themselves.

Thank you, Jenn, for taking the time to talk.

http://community.livejournal.com/notyourmothers

Take me back to 2005. You and your absolutely charming cohort Miss Shannon are sitting about after a long day of, well, what?, exactly, at your fabulous independent bookstore when, well, who?, exactly, conceives of the idea that launched Not Your Mother's Bookclub. Ten minutes later were you a) giddy with optimism, b) filled with a sense of overwhelming responsibility, ...or c) something else altogether?

Well, er, that isn't quite how it happened. In 2005, I read the galley of a book called BOY PROOF by Cecil Castellucci. I loved it, and I wanted to host an event for her at my store. The conventional wisdom was that "teens don't come to book events", so the idea for this event was a bit of a hard sell, but I promised that I would, somehow, get teenagers to attend. So I did (mostly by trickery and bribes, and by promising more fantastic YA authors to come). And the event was a modest success.

I realized that we could build on that by making a thing. Like, a club. Something that would happen every month. Miss Shannon got on board and we cooked up some ideas for a launch party, or something, but we weren't sure what. Then Miss Cecil told me that her agent (the fabulous Barry Goldblatt) was having a client retreat near San Francisco. So, I asked him if I could borrow a bunch of his clients, like Cecil, Holly Black, Libba Bray, etc etc, to do a BIG event.

And he said yes. And we did the event. And it was awesome, and a ton of people came. YAY!

Now, the tricky thing is, you can't have a launch party and then have nothing come after it. So, we've just... kept going. And it's been pretty great. And sometimes exhausting.

Take me to a few months later. You're busy building the club, a presence, a following. What is the very first smart thing you did? The very first dumb thing? How do you know the club—and the site—are working?

Hmm. Well, the good thing is, we realized our own limitations. We simply cannot have events in every single one of our ten stores. We cannot have events once a week, even though I am sure that we'd have authors enough to fill that. That would just weaken the whole enterprise - the events have to be special.

We do "curate" this series -- every author that does something with us is AWESOME. That way, though people may not know who the author is, they'll come because they know we have superb taste.

Pretty early on we built some local school alliances, that has been very helpful too.

Dumb things? I don't know. We've had a couple events that maybe were smaller than we would have liked, but that happens. And it is a learning experience. OH! WAIT! I remember something! One time we got trapped with Rachel Cohn in a garage for like, two hours. Long story.

I guess we know that the club is working because we sell a lot more YA books than we used to, and because people come from other counties, other states (and in a couple cases, other countries!) to attend events. That is pretty hot.

Take a wild guess: How many YA authors have you met? How many have you interviewed for your site? And, I hate to be a pain, but: Do you have any guesstimate of how many YA books you've actually read?

I was trying to count, but it got too complicated, so this is really a wild guess - um, 200? 30? 1,000?

Those numbers could be totally wrong.

Tell me this, at least: How many titles do you typically read each week? How many books do you start that you don't finish, on average, and can you ratio that against the number you finish? When the heck do you read, given that most of your day you are—well, tell my readers what you are really doing most of the day.

I read a book or two all the way through every week. I probably read ten or so part of the way through. I look at and discard a lot more than that though.

The thing is, I also have a double-life, as a literary agent, so I have to read my clients work, too. And I read, yanno, some adult books and such as well on occasion. I used to be precious, like "oh, I started it and I have to finish it" -- bah, life is too short. My job(s) have given me a very low tolerance for books I don't enjoy.

What makes a YA book sing for you?

A really strong voice that makes me feel like I KNOW this character. I also like books that make me think, and laugh, and cry. If they do all three, that is a bonus!

Why do you love YA readers?

Like me, most teenagers have a very low tolerance for being bored or for bulls*it. Also, they are voracious and passionate in a way that most adults aren't. Teenagers who are readers wolf books down and are ready to be challenged and amazed, they WANT to get lost in the world of the book, whereas most adults just read to put themselves to sleep at night.

Do you think books should even be classified as YA books? Why not simply say, good books? For don't you find that, in this post HARRY POTTER age, adults are increasingly embracing YA titles?

If I had a dream bookstore, I would shelve things by authors name only and not put any categories at all. I would also expect customers to be irritated and confused and unable to find anything. That is why this remains a dream.

I would like you now to sing a few praises (bias is allowed) for independent bookstores.

This is a topic that I feel really strongly about and it is not something that I can easily encapsulate into a short, cute comment. Basically, shopping at independents is better for the economy, for the environment, and for your soul. If you like freedom of choice, if you are a writer, if you are a reader... you'd better support those indies!

Here's a link to a sort of essay I wrote that explains the importance of shopping at your local independent bookstore in much more detail:

http://www.verlakay.com/boards/index.php?topic=25029.0

Okay, go ahead. Sing some praise for San Francisco.

Well, obviously, San Francisco is the most beautiful city in country. We are awesome. (Overpriced, yes. But you can't have everything).

Finally, if you weren't living books everyday, what would you be doing?

I would probably be a lawyer. And rich! Sigh.