SLJ Talks to the Founders of Flamingnet.com, a Teen Book Review Site
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Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 12/18/2007 2:20:00 PM
The award-winning teen book review site Flamingnet—run by a 16-year-old Baltimore high school student and his physician dad—has taken on a professional editor. SLJ spoke to teen Seth Cassel and his dad, Gary, about how kids who love books can find a voice at Flamingnet.
Tell me about the origins of the site.
Seth: I was a voracious reader back in fourth and fifth grades; I was reading 60 books a year during the school year, and my dad had gotten into programming as a hobby. We combined these interests into a way for me to talk about the books I was reading and a way for him to gain practice in making Web sites.
At first I wrote all the book reviews—I've written, like, 200 of them. But eventually publishers started contacting us, sending us advance review copies. Then, as we got more and more, I started getting kids in my class at my school to help us review the books. Eventually, we expanded into accepting student reviewers from around the nation.
How many reviewers have you had?
Seth: Upwards of 200.Some kids have done 20, 30, 40 reviews. One of the main focuses of the site, and one thing that makes us different, is that all of the reviews are done by kids—kids reviewing kids' books. We think it's important to get the student perspective on a book written directly for them.
What's the circulation of your newsletter?
Seth: Two thousand to 3,000. We have librarians, parents, teachers [reading the newsletter]. We do book giveaways, promotional stuff like that.
How many hits do you get a day?
Seth: There are 1,500 visitors a day.
Have you gotten author responses?
Seth: We get them all the time. When we review a book, we like to have comments on the bulletin board; and discussions by the reviewers and the authors have been on our bulletin board. It's kind of interesting. We got a response from Avi, a big children's writer (Crispin: At the End of the World [Hyperion, 2006]).
Gary: [The reviewer] loved his book but didn't like the illustrations, so [Avi] got upset because we didn't realize that in the review copy we got, there were just the sketches of the illustrations—not the final version. We did a correction; he was very happy afterwards.
Tell me about the financial end: You get credit from Amazon for referring a book to buyers?
Seth: It's relatively little—50 cents a book when they buy it. That goes to cover our costs. And we then donate to underprivileged libraries around the country. [Annually we get] very little—$1,000, maybe.
How much do you donate?
Seth: All of it. We're paying out of pocket for the site space. We donate excess books; and the money we get from Amazon we use to buy books and donate to libraries.
What is the real purpose behind doing the Web site?
Seth: It's about giving back and giving an opportunity to underprivileged kids.
Tell me about your new volunteer editor.
Seth: She's a former teacher; her name is Liz Bloom. When reviews are sent in from student reviewers, they go directly to her. She helps us edit them and get them coherent and logical.
What about the Plum Award?
We just got our first grant, for $500, to promote and start getting the word out about the site—it's the Plum Award for youth projects. It's exciting to get some recognition! [We'll use the funds] to market the site.
