Hello, marketeers!
Thanks for joining me today for a very special interview from three inspiring women who have built, and continue to build, an empire for a large literacy-loving community. With a credible social media backing, a podcast and more recently a newsletter (right here), the team from Your Kid’s Next Read are a wonderfully powerful force of nature! Thank you, Allison Tait for all of your insights into how you all created and developed the YKNR brand! AND readers, there’s something VERY COOL on offer (but you have to read to the end to find out!) …
Hello, Allison, Megan and Allison – the superlative YKNR team! Welcome to the Books On Tour Substack! I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to host an interview with some literary idols of mine – all of you!
I’d love to start with a quick introduction, if I may? So, my name is Romi … just kidding! The Your Kid’s Next Read community grew out of a need for children’s book suggestions and a conversation between literary friends. Now, a booming Facebook community, a weekly podcast series and here, a ‘best-of’ newsletter through Substack. What you have achieved is incredible!
Thanks Romi! And thanks for thinking of us. AR and MD have asked me to fill this out on everyone’s behalf as they are at Brisbane Writers’ Festival.
You’re all highly-acclaimed authors, public speakers, a teacher-librarian (congratulations on your recent award, Megan!), amongst other amazing things! Can you please share a bit about yourselves and what you’re most passionate about when it comes to children’s literature?
These are the short versions:
The award-winning, bestselling author of many, many books for children, young adults and adults, Allison Rushby’s novels are firm favourites in the Your Kid’s Next Read community. Her latest illustrated junior fiction series, The Wish Sisters, is fast gaining fans. More about Allison R here.
Between writing her novels (she has four out this year alone), Allison R is YKNR’s main moderator and Queen of Giveaways.
Megan Daley is an award-winning teacher-librarian working in Brisbane, the author of Raising Readers: How to nurture a child’s love of books, and co-host of the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast. She is also a sought after public speaker, literary judge, creator of the popular website Children's Books Daily and the 2023 curator for Word Play for Brisbane Writers Festival. More about Megan here.
Megan is a passionate advocate for Australian children’s literature and literacy and has been over many years and many different platforms. We founded Your Kid’s Next Read as a Facebook community six years ago to create a ‘village’ to help raise lifelong readers – and things have snowballed from there.
Writing as A. L. Tait, Allison is the internationally published, bestselling author of eight novels for middle-grade readers across three series: The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries. She is an in-demand speaker for author visits and literary festivals, a writing teacher for kids and adults, co-host of the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast and former co-host of the So You Want To Be A Writer podcast. Her new novel ‘The First Summer of Callie McGee’ is out on 1 August. More about Allison here.
I’m always looking for ways to raise the profile of children’s literature in Australia. With space for children’s books coverage very scarce in mainstream media, the various facets of Your Kid’s Next Read (podcast, newsletter, Facebook community) bring together an interested and engaged audience to hear about (and applaud) Australian children’s authors.
You each have your own individual channels in which you connect with your tribes. Has there been an active joint approach in building the YKNR brand, or has it been more organic (both through your separate and combined outlets)?
Definitely organic. Six years ago, we thought we’d just start a small Facebook group and had no idea how popular it would become. We added the podcast two years ago to take the discussions in the group to a wider audience, and to give the community a ‘voice’. The newsletter is a recent addition, to capture the best of Your Kid’s Next Read in a succinct, digestible format – and to allow us to add new resources down the track.
What do you find your audience responds well to, or engages with the most with your content?
Our audience loves curated book lists and genuine recommendations. Our Facebook community has always been strictly ‘no self-promo’ and our members are as fierce as we are about protecting that. It’s also a place for interesting and respectful discussion of different areas of children’s literature, and Megan and I have tried to keep that feel in our podcast.
What is the key to maintaining ‘happy customers’?
We really like each other and what we do, we are passionate about children’s literature, and we bring a lot of knowledge and experience to our discussions and to our group in general. People are in our world because they are looking for the perfect next book for their young readers – we give them the place and the information to find it.
Why have you decided to add a newsletter to your buffet of literary offerings? What do you like (or not) about this platform?
Managing a Facebook community of nearly 30,000 members is like being mayor of a small town – it gets really noisy in there! It’s also a labour of love – there’s a lot of unpaid work in moderating the group, as well as adding our expertise to answer recommendation queries.
So we decided that a newsletter would allow us to offer up an ‘executive summary’ each month of not only the best of what’s going on in the group and on the podcast, but also updates about Team YKNR. If the podcast gives us a wider voice, the newsletter puts a face on what we’re doing.
Who designed / created your YKNR logo? It’s a visual delight!
Our logo was designed by the team at Luxe Communications in Bowral and we love it!
Do you have a favourite podcast episode or special guest that you are most fond of?
Oh gosh, that is a tough question! For me, the most surprising and delightful bits of any podcast episode come from the ‘quality waffle’, which is what the general discussions between Megan and I have been branded. This is an example of taking the one-star review and owning it.
One very early (disgruntled) review was simply: ‘too much waffle’.
We could have been disheartened by this, but instead we laughed, branded it ‘quality waffle’ and it has now become very much a part of our podcasting identity.
You only have to listen to an episode of Your Kid’s Next Read to know that we impart a lot of information about books – but we also discuss the various ins and outs of our lives as well. And, to me, those are the best bits.
Always the funniest, that’s for sure.
Odd question: What has been the strangest / most unusual bookish request or feedback you’ve received from either parents, teachers or students?
If there’s one thing we’ve learnt, it’s that there’s no such thing as a strange request when it comes to kids and books. Kids become obsessed by certain topics, from slugs to sea cucumbers, and parents will do whatever they can to keep that child reading. We recently had a full thread on dictionaries because a young reader had read their ‘child’s’ dictionary from cover to cover and was looking for a bigger one.
What never fails to amaze me is how quickly YKNR members will jump in with a full list of recommendations within minutes.
My favourite requests are members looking for a book they read in childhood – often it’s a vague description along the lines of ‘the cover was blue, there was an old neighbour and I think there was a dog somewhere in it’. By the end of the day, someone will have unearthed the title of that book.
It’s a very generous and supportive community – no matter how unusual the request.
Anything else you’d love to share?
In the context of your Books On Tour community, I guess the only extra thing I’d suggest to authors who are trying to promote their work is that if you’re going to get involved in a community like YKNR, you need to do it in a genuine way.
As I said, we have a strict ‘no self-promo’ rule, with a ‘one strike and you’re out’ policy because we realised very early that authors were joining just to bang on about their own books. It’s not the way to make friends in a reading community.
We have many author members, including bestselling and award-winning writers, who are visible in our group because they recommend other people’s books. Consequently, these also tend to be the authors who bubble up in organic recommendations across the group.
Organic recommendation is a very powerful force in book marketing – in a group like ours, it’s ‘word of mouth’ on steroids. But you need to put some time and patience in to make it happen.
One thing I’ve discovered in the nine years since my first novel was published is that there are no shortcuts.
That said, I’m also open to pitches on my established blog for select guest posts from author members – these are shared in the Facebook community, newsletter, across my social media, and often discussed on the podcast as well.
It requires more work than a ‘buy my book’ post in the Facebook group – but it also won’t be reported/deleted immediately.
I also have an online writing community called Write With Allison Tait, where I share my hard-won knowledge about writing, publishing and building an author platform, for writers of all genres. Details are here: https://allisontait.com/writing-group-membership/
Thank you so much, Allison (and the team), for your helpful hints and tips on growing an organic, friendly and sustainable following. So greatly appreciated xx
The links gain…
FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/276634156006126
Podcast: yourkidsnextread.com
Newsletter: yourkidsnextread.substack.com
As promised, there is a SUPER COOL offer for the YKNR community members …
You can WIN a AUD$100 voucher to buy books! Hooray! Fill out the YKNR survey at the button below. Good luck! :)
#thanksfortouringwithus
Romi x
Thanks for having me!