Figment : An Online Writing Community for Youngsters

Via Publishers Weekly

Founded by New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear and former New Yorker managing editor Jacob Lewis, Figment.com is an online writing community aimed at attracting a membership of young people, ranging from kids to teens and older, to post, share and comment on each other’s original writing.

“We want to build a compelling site for young adults to share content and find stories by their peers as well as by published authors and publishers,” Lewis told PW, “a place where they can enter as reader that will offer infinite variety and where they can participate.” Since the launch earlier this week, Lewis said the site has about 10,000 registered users who have generated about 8,000 “books,” which Lewis said could be “a single poem or a multi-chaptered novel.”

While it is free to join and participate on Figment, Lewis said the site is a for-profit venture, and is expected to generate revenue from attracting publishers to market their titles through the site. While there is no banner advertising, Lewis said publishers can use the site as a platform for new releases and excerpt; “they pay us to run the stories and their content is their advertising.” Publishers can contract for pre-publication release through the site or they can post excerpts as books are released. “These days kids demand to be able to communicate with the authors of the books they read,” Lewis explained. “Publishers can use Figment to find new fans and new readers. On our site everybody is looking for everybody else. We’ve put everyone in a single place.”

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