High school English teachers, probably, or those familiar with teen-aged girls and all their angst. But not, apparently, the thinkers at HarperCollins' children's division.
A few years back, the publisher created a web portal for young writers, thinking that it would encourage them to read and to buy HarperCollins products.
Inkpop never did amount to much of anything. HarperCollins has just sold it to Figment, another online writing community that has more members than Inkpop and is willing to pay for Inkpop's 95,000 subscribers.
The sale was precipatated by the realization that the website was a money pit for the publisher, and wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, which is generate revenue.
It isn't just the fact that most of the writing would have something to do with not getting asked to a dance or being ignored by the cool guy or not getting to sit at the popular table in the lunchroom. When you get right down to it, writing is hard work. Just because someone likes to read doesn't mean they'd love to sit alone in a room with a blank piece of paper staring at them, or puzzle over words and paragraphs and narrative arcs.
Reading is entertaining. Writing is a hard slog with little reward at the end.
HarperCollins understands that now. They're going to focus on their readers in the future, and leave the writing portals to others.
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