• The ECC Questionnaire

Q&A with Margot Wood, Senior Manager of Content and Community Development, HarperCollins | March 23, 2016

by Elizabeth Lynch (HarperCollins Children's Books)

1. Tell us a little about your role at Harper. What do you within the marketing department?

My official title at Harper is Senior Manager of Content and Community Development, but I will describe my job differently every single time depending on who is asking. The short answer to what I do at Harper is this: I run EpicReads.com and all of its social profiles. I am in charge of leading the content creation and execution for all of original content on the site and social, as well as working with the other marketing teams to help them come up with the best possible digital strategies for their teen titles.

2. What was your first job in publishing? How did you end up doing what you do now?

Technically this is my first job in publishing. I sort of came to publishing through the back door and then just pretended I was at the party the whole time. Before coming to Harper in 2012, my entire career was in digital. I moved to NYC in 2009 and started working as a community manager/front-end designer for a tech startup and there I managed any and all of their youth-centered brand communities. At that time, I had a lot of video game brands I worked with and then one day we got Random House as a client. They asked us to build them a community for their YA audience and Random Buzzers was born and I was running it. That was sort of how I discovered YA books in general and I quickly became obsessed with the books as well as the community. I found out Harper wanted to launch their own community and I jumped at the idea of building something from the ground up––creating a YA community the way I felt it should be run––so, I left the startup and came to Harper.

3. What goes into the creation of Epic Reads content, and what have you learned about what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to teen engagement?

A lot of blood, sweat and tears goes into creating Epic Reads content, but mostly tears. I find that authenticity is what works the best in a community. You have to be part of the community in order to understand it. When creating original Epic Reads content (like our infographics, etc.) a massive amount of research goes into it. The first step is coming up with an idea, then the majority of the time is spent researching and seeing if your idea has any legs. A lot of my ideas die during the research phase because I’ll start getting into it and quickly realize that my idea is actually a hot mess and would never work. Any ideas that make it beyond the research stage then go into design, and so on. I like to look outside the publishing industry for inspiration for content sometimes. Going outside our world helps keeps things fresh.

4. How do you determine what’s really resonating with teen readers now? Do you have any tips for predicting what they’ll gravitate towards next?

This one is a lot harder than it sounds, but my best advice to predict what teens will gravitate towards next is to listen. Actively listen. When I was in college, the best marketing class I ever took (I was a marketing major at Emerson in Boston) was market research. That class was so profoundly helpful in my career because it really taught me how to ask the right questions, how to listen and how to act on the information I was getting. No one will ever be able to predict what teens will want, so the best you can do is try to be nimble and responsive. Almost everything I do for the Epic Reads community is a response to what they are saying they want, rather than what I think they want.

5. What’s been your favorite part about connecting with real YA readers? Any stand-out memories from cons and tour stops?

Getting to meet and hang out with readers is my absolute favorite part of my job. If I could, I would just travel around the country (and world) and meet with teens all the time and just chat with them. I have so much respect for teens and young adults and I really love hearing what they have to say. One girl at San Diego Comic Con this past summer showed up to our booth in a homemade Epic Reads t-shirt. That was pretty badass. Another time at YALLfest, a girl cried when she saw me and her mom asked if I was Kiera Cass and I was like, “Nope. I run a website. Don’t worry about it.”

6. What advice would you give to a young professional in the industry?

Don’t get burnt out. Don’t forget to have a life outside of your job. Don’t stop believing. Hold on to that feeling. And you should keep pursuing your other hobbies and interests because almost all of your best ideas will come when you’re out and about, not sitting at a desk all day.

7. What books are you most excited for coming up in 2016?

I am very excited to read This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab and I recently read My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows and absolutely loved it. Oooh and A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah Maas. Oh and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo, and of course Replica by Lauren Oliver, and then there’s Ruined by Amy Tintera which will totally cure any book hangover, and on the graphic novel side, I already have Saga Volume #6 pre-ordered and I plan on taking a half day off just to read that one.

8. Just for fun—are there any classic children’s books you wish you’d had a chance to feature in an Epic Reads video or blog post?

OMG I have soooooo many inappropriate content/video ideas for classic kids’ books which is probably why it’s a good thing I don’t work in kidlit.