SEPTEMBER 21, 2010 – Being a fictional character hasn’t stopped Shay Doran from creating a series of increasingly spooky Youtube webcasts, a detailed blog, and a regularly updated Facebook page with over 700 friends and growing. He stars in the upcoming novel Nightshade, arriving at bookstores on October 19th. Debut author Andrea Cremer has brought her fictional universe to life with an invitation to readers: help Shay solve the mysteries of the centuries-old Rowan estate, and you could be written into the official Nightshade prequel. Her clever melding of the fictional universe with this one has garnered her the prestigious Booksie Award from BookSwim, America’s favorite online book rental club.

Nightshade, a story about a young female werewolf falling in love with a human boy against the wishes of her pack, has already earned praises from the likes of New York Times bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith, who called it “a finely-wrought compelling tale of romance and treachery.” The welcome intrusion of the fictional world doesn’t limit itself to the internet: not only does the Nightshade website promise that you can even “text [Shay] straight to his phone,” but readers can send an email to nightshade@campfirenyc.com to enter the running to receive a calla lily mailed to their address—a special package from, as one blogger put it, “a cute fictional boy.”

In fact, as some book bloggers have already seen, ‘Shay’ has even gone so far as to send personalized invitations to take part in his world. The BookSwim office was bubbling with excitement when our own present arrived: an elegant gift box containing a silk calla lily, a cream-colored card with a ribbon and the words ‘An Invitation’ inscribed in script, and a golden USB key holding a personal message from Ms. Cremer along with the first episode of Shay’s video blog.
“Many readers dream of meeting their favorite character in the flesh,” said Jeevan Padiyar, BookSwim’s CEO. “By crafting such an interactive experience with the character through the social media sites we use everyday to talk to our real-life friends, Cremer has given us the next best thing!”

Cremer, an Associate Professor of History at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, began writing Nightshade after breaking her foot and being consigned to crutches for twelve weeks. She plans to follow Nightshade with two subsequent volumes, Wolfsbane and Bloodrose, as well as an official prequel and companion novel. Her other writing projects include The Inventor’s Secret, a YA steampunk novel set in an alternate nineteenth century in which the American Revolution never occurred and the British empire’s power reigns unchecked.

The Booksie Award was created to honor all types of innovation and invention in the publishing industry, in anything from printing techniques to character development. BookSwim.com will announce a new Booksie Award each week during Author Appreciation Month. Honorees, like Cremer, are selected by a panel of publishing professionals and receive recognition on the BookSwim site and through BookSwim’s content partners.

About BookSwim.com

Launched in May 2007, BookSwim is America’s only online book rental club offering paperbacks and hardcovers allowing subscribers to rent books “Netflix®-style” with free return shipping and no due dates or late fees. BookSwim offers nationwide home delivery of hardcover new releases, paperback classics and everything in between. Subscription plans start at $9.95 per month, with an option for members to keep the books they love.

Not every author is the cliché quiet introvert who has little online marketing expertise. Suzanne Collins, who wrote the Underland Chronicles and The Hunger Games, has won the first BookSwim.com Booksie Award for her marketing success of new young-adult title, Mockingjay.  Collins is honored for her exciting embrace of internet technology at a time when so many publishers are ambivalent about it.

The Booksie Award was created to honor all types of innovation and invention in the publishing industry, in anything from printing techniques to character development. BookSwim.com will announce a new Booksie Award each week during Author Appreciation Month. Honorees, like Collins, are selected by a panel of publishing professionals and receive recognition on the BookSwim site and through BookSwim’s content partners.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

“I hadn’t considered Suzanne Collins until people started talking about Mockingjay on Twitter,” said Jeevan Padiyar, BookSwim’s CEO and sci-fi buff. A simple internet search turned up the website for the series, www.scholastic.com/​underlandchronicles. The site is not the typical author page with a few factoids and a short bio, but a stunningly realized portal into the Underland Chronicles world. “What really got us excited was the use of flash games to captivate an audience,” Padiyar said. “In just a few minutes I was hooked, chasing fireflies through the Gnawers’ Labyrinth and birthing my own Fishenstein with the Creature Creator.”

Collins began her career in 1991 as a writer for Nickelodeon’s Emmy-nominated Clarissa Explains It All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo.  She received a Writers Guild of America nomination for her work on the Christmas special Santa, Baby. Then a meeting with children’s author James Proimos inspired Collins to write children’s books herself. From 2003 to 2007, she wrote the five books of her enormously popular Underland Chronicles. The series met with such acclaim and success that Collins was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people of 2010. More recently, she is the author of the best-selling Hunger Games trilogy, whose first volume landed on the New York Times Best Sellers List for sixty weeks in a row. The latest volume, Mockingjay, came out August 24 and is already the best-selling book on Amazon.com.

About BookSwim.com

Launched in May 2007, BookSwim is America’s only online book rental club offering paperbacks and hardcovers, allowing subscribers to rent books “Netflix®-style” with free return shipping and no due dates or late fees. BookSwim offers nationwide home delivery of hardcover new releases, paperback classics and everything in between. Subscription plans start at $9.95 per month, with an option for members to keep the books they love.