If you’ve been wondering what YABooksCentral.com is all about or you’re new to the community, you’ve come to the right place. I hope to answer all your immediate questions in as few characters as possible. (Although there might be gifs, because that’s just the sort of folks we are.)
What is YABC?
YABC is the only social network devoted to the young adult reading audience. That means that if you love YA books, then this is the community for you. We also discuss adult crossover books that are relevant to the young adult audience, as well as middle grade books all the way down to picture books. There’s even a new section to review film adaptations based on books. Basically, we’re a community of book lovers: from readers to authors, teachers to students, librarians to book bloggers.
Oh yeah, and it’s free to join.
What is the “young adult reading audience?”
Young adult literature isn’t “just for teens.” The YA reading audience spans all ages, and everyone is welcome and encouraged to post reviews on YABC. This site is for books lovers; there is no age limit!
What do I do here?
– Share your reviews! Write new ones or copy/paste reviews from your archive. You’ll automatically be entered to win a Bag O’ Books!
– Comment on other reviews or thumb them up as helpful
– Start discussion groups with fellow readers in the Community
– Enter our montly book giveaways (new ones posted every month!)
– Add books to your favorites list by clicking the red pennant at the top of the book’s profile page: 
– Easily and quickly buy books through Amazon or Indiebound widgets on any book’s profile page
– Click on any genre tag on a book’s profile page to find similar titles:
– Find other books that have similar elements by scrolling down the the “similar section” on any book’s profile page:
How is YABC different from the other social networks centered around books?
1) We’re 100% volunteer run by a handful of authors, readers, teachers, parents and librarians. YABC is not a profit-focused corporation. We’re just a group of passionate folks who do this solely for the love of reading and spreading the love of books. I know that sounds sappy, but it’s true! We’re happy getting “paid” in galleys from publishers because free books = feeding our reading addiction. We all have regular day jobs to pay the real life bills.
2) All advertising revenue goes straight into making YABC better for our members. We are continually improving the site, adding new features, and providing you with awesome giveaways and author exclusives. The rest of the revenue goes toward our hosting costs and keeping those pesky server zombies at bay. YABC has been around since 1998, so we get a lot of traffic! Keeping the site running smoothly under such traffic numbers requires a rock-solid, custom server, which is pretty expensive.
Being volunteer run also means that new features are added only when we have the resources. Sometimes we wish we had deep pockets, mostly so we could hire programmers to bring you better features more than once per year, but right now we’re small and intimate, and we kind of like it that way.
3) No data mining! While we realize selling back-door user data to publishers and retailers could be a lucrative business for us (like your physcial location, which book profile pages you frequent, which genres and keywords you’re looking for), we don’t like having our personal data mined, so why would we do it to you? We don’t share your behind-the-scenes info to anyone, that most certainly includes your email address. YABC is a kid-friendly site and we think exploiting kids in that manner is wrong. The only things made public on this site are the things you decide to make public (the name you use, your reviews, your comments, your favorites list, etc.).
4) No trolling or author bashing! While we know bashing a book is cathartic for some, it’s not allowed on YABC. Our motto is that every book is someone’s favorite book. We’re here to gush about our favorites, not bash something that wasn’t our particular taste. There are other sites for that. We promote the love of reading and authors here. Plain and simple!
That doesn’t mean that you can’t write a negative review. All we ask is that your review is helpful, well thought out, and adds something of value to the reading community. If you would like to rant about a book, I’m available for coffee. 馃檪
What are the rules?
– No swearing or vulgar language, please. YABC is accessed by classrooms and libraries all across the world. If we allowed swearing, then schools and libraries would block our site, and that wouldn’t help spread the love of reading very much, would it?
– No flaming reviews that attack authors, other reviewers, or give away too many spoilers. If this rule is violated, we’ll ask you to edit your review first, but if edits are not made in a timely manner, your review may be deleted at our discretion. Sorry! When we say we love authors and our community members, we kinda mean it.
That’s it!
The bottom line: books make us happy, and YABC is our happy place. We hope it can be yours too.
Got questions? Leave a comment or email Mandy at [email protected].
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This is a very helpful post!!