I’m delighted to announce that my most recent article has been published in the Lion and the Unicorn‘s January 2019 issue. This article came out of a very public kerfuffle on Twitter that played out in real-time while I was teaching my course on Bestsellers, Best Of and Banned Books at Georgia Tech. I was blessed with 75 students who helped unpack the events as they happened in real time as well as two incredible co-authors, Karen Viars and Liz Holdsworth, who brought their expertise in fan culture and library acquisitions to the project. Come for the public spectacle, stay for the nuanced reading of best-seller lists, public interactions of YA professionals via Twitter, and a look at the impact of faking bestseller status on library acquisition policies.

 

Article Citation: Fitzsimmons, Rebekah, Karen Viars and Liz Holdsworth. “YA Twitter versus Handbook for Mortals: A Case Study in Bestseller List Manipulation, Controversy, and the Effects on Library Acquisition.” The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 43 no. 1, 2019, pp. 108-132. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/uni.2019.0006