BUY or PASS? Teen And Young Adult Books

 

Welcome to the ‘Friday Five Challenge.’

Would you BUY or PASS if you had only a thumbnail image and five minutes to decide?

Welcome to the #FridayFiveChallenge. The original idea comes from Rosie Amber, and you can join up at https://rosieamber.wordpress.com

The rules are laid out at the end of this post if you fancy having a go.

Here is my contribution for this week:

My daughter turns into a fully-fledged teenager in a week, and although the girlie drama began as soon as she started secondary school, I’m sure there will be more to come – something I never experienced with my boys!

So to honour this landmark, I typed ‘Teenager’ into the Amazon search bar. The first option I was given, ‘teenager’s books for girls’, horrified me – the covers were full of boobs, bums and abs – NOT what I would expect from that category. So, I very quickly clicked through to the ‘Teen & Young Adult’ section – phew, much better.

Scrolling down I found a list of pastel covers, all very similar. Then I found ‘OMG I’m a Teen! Now What?’ Although the cover is very busy and the words aren’t clear, I liked the comic feel to it and the title was spot on.

BLURB:

OMG I’m a Teen! Now What? – A Survival Guide for Teenage Girls will unlock all of your teen problems and propel you towards being a successful adult. The secrets and actionable tips in this teen book are guaranteed to help you hit your target with power and precision every time. Be it improving your relationships, doing well in school, dating or finding the right makeup advice, it is all here in this clear, practical, and riveting survival guide. What you will learn in this book will be a pivotal point that changes your life forever. Will you be a success through your teenage years or just about hang on and survive? Do you think you can overcome all the problems teen life throws at you without reading this survival guide? It’s probably not a gamble you want to take. As a teenager you are faced with a huge spectrum of problems. Some of them are related to peer pressure, body image consciousness, health and emotional issues, as well as balancing school work and play. Things are moving and changing fast for you, and with that comes some uncertainty, awkwardness and fear. Coping with hormonal, physical changes and getting used to your new image can be daunting. How do you deal with facial hair, menstruation, hygiene and not forgetting acne? You need the power to be confident with your new body, guidance to be able to accept yourself and the knowledge to live a fitter and healthier life. Don’t despair. With the information contained in this book you can make huge progress in some of the most difficult years of your life. ‘The OMG Teen Survival Guide’ is here to be by your side, to be your handy guide whenever you need advice, help, or guidance.

The book blurb claims to unlock all your teen problems – that’s a huge declaration and quite a task to complete in 211 pages. For me, I don’t get the same comic feel from the blurb that I did after seeing the cover. I think I was expecting a tongue-in-cheek style of humour. It is advertised as Book 1 in the series, so I assume there is more to come, not clear if this is more teenage guides or if they are going to progress to, Help I’m an Adult!

I was looking at this book on the UK site, and there were only two reviews; a five star and a one star. As I scrolled down I could see the seventeen USA reviews with 94% at five stars and 6% at four stars. The US reviews repeated the same message, ‘this book is what I needed when I was a teen’, which makes me think they are family and friends and all above 18!

I was feeling very dubious and still had enough time to check out the authors. There is only this book listed under Greg Noland and Cristina Noland (they have separate author pages on Amazon). Neither of them mention having a family, in particular, any teenage girls. Greg Noland’s author bio goes into great detail about his company selling Bum Gun Bidet Sprayers to replace toilet paper – I kid you not! Cristina Noland’s bio reads; Cristina pressured Greg to write these books after a holiday to the UK made her realise that the local bathrooms were well behind many in Asia in terms of advanced hygiene facilities for females. 

Coincidentally, the one-star reviewer said there was a good reason why toilet paper was trusted by billions of people. Need I go on? I am totally convinced that this book was written as a sales tool for the Bum Gun Empire. It may have plenty of valid advice for teenage girls, but I’m not prepared to pay the £2.56 Kindle price to find out.

Totally baffled by everything I saw on the book and author pages, I decided that this was a PASS for me.

OMG I’m a Teen! Now What? A Survival Guide for Teenage Girls. By Greg Noland & Cristina Noland.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00T4EUYB8

What is the Friday Five Challenge?

In today’s online shopping age, readers often base their buying decisions on small postage stamp size book covers (thumb-nails), a quick glance at the book description and the review. How much time do they spend making that buying decision?

AUTHORS – You often only have seconds to get a reader to buy your book, is your book cover and book bio up to it?

The Challenge is this… IN ONLY FIVE MINUTES…

1) Go to any online book supplier,

2) Randomly choose a category,

3) Speed through the book covers, choose one which has instantly appealed to your eye,

4) Read the book Bio/ Description of this book,

5) If there are reviews, check out a couple,

6) Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?

(then write a little analysis about your decision)