A Special Thank You

Okay, so you know I love all of you, but today I want to direct all the gratitude I have in the whole world to a special few of you.

According to the poll from earlier this week, (last week? can't remember. too lazy) just under 1/6 of you are under the age of 18.

Thank you.

It's obvious that you and other people your age who read are the reason I have a career. But that's not entirely what this is about. I need you guys, definitely. I need you to pick up books and buy books and tell your friends about books and read more books by the authors you love. That's a given. That's how BREAK, a little paperback by a debut author that could have been lost in the shelves, is doing so much better than I could have imagined. It is thanks, hugely, to teenagers like you who have read it and told their friends about it, and I am so incredibly grateful.

But that's not really what this is about.

this is about--as much of my life is--the internet.

I started this blog *right* before I turned eighteen, and only because, rather stupidly, I thought it would help sell more books. I'm pretty sure that, all in all, this blog doesn't help sell that many copies of BREAK. It's not as if most of the teenagers in the world are reading this. The vast majority, like I said, of the teenagers who pick up BREAK are ones who hear about it from their friends or their teachers, or the ones who happen to stumble across it at the bookstore or while browsing for it online.

Most teenagers use the internet to a large degree. But the teenagers who read this blog--who comment, I've noticed, all the time, and who are very likely to have their own blogs--are a very very special breed.

You give a shit.

Teenagers who read are incredible. Teenagers who connect with authors and review books on their blogs and tweet and comment...God, do you guys know how much we love you? It's something authors discuss all the time, how incredibly grateful we are for the teenagers who come online and advocate for books they didn't write, or who take the time to talk to us, who understand that I am not just words on a page or on your computer screen, I am a girl in an armchair with a dirty laptop and a yellow tank top.

As a teenager, these are connections that are invaluable to me.

And it makes you so, so much braver and so much smarter than I ever was. Or than I am even now.

You are truly the future of publishing.