One of the big publishing buzzwords of the digital age is "platform."
At its simplest, the term refers to a built-in audience: someone active online has a measurable, accessible platform of potential readers. The larger the number of readers, the larger the platform. It's become a common element in everything from contract negotiations (a writer with a larger platform has a more powerful bargaining position) to career development (publishers often provide guidance on how to build and nurture a platform).
Platform, however, is a doubleedged sword. What of the writer with a large platform who can't deliver the goods in a book? And what of the gifted writer who has spent time at work on a manuscript rather than blogging and participating in social media?
Indianapolis writer John Green has no problems on either side of the equation.
His Vlogbrothers channel - a series of video blogs and communiqués between Green and his brother Hank on YouTube - has more than 600,000 subscribers, and more than 190,000,000 upload views. That's not a misprint - 190 million views! The Green brothers have also fostered an entire movement, the Nerdfighters, a geek outsider movement celebrating the quirky, the creative, and the nerdy, raising money and awareness for good causes along the way.
As impressive as that platform is, though (and make no mistake, most writers would give their eye teeth for even a fraction of those eyeballs), it wouldn't mean much, literarily speaking, if Green didn't also have the chops as a writer.
Which he does, in spades. The Fault in Our Stars is the latest YA novel from the Printz-prizewinning Green, author of the bestsellers Looking for Alaska and A Multitude of Katherines, and it's a powerful, moving and significant novel, beautifully written, and populated with characters who will break your heart
The Fault in Our Stars focuses on Hazel, a 17-year-old girl with terminal cancer, her life extended by an experimental drug.
Living in the ongoing shadow of death, she meets Augustus Waters at a support-group meeting. As one might legitimately anticipate, the two teenagers develop a relationship, though neither of them (nor the readers) can imagine where it will take them. A trip to Amsterdam to meet Hazel's favourite writer is just the beginning.
The novel serves as a handy rejoinder for those few who might still be inclined to cast aspersions on young adult literature. Straightforwardly written, it is never workmanlike, and the language reveals the depths and sensitivity one might expect from young people forced to question their own deaths and the loss of those they have come to know. (The facilitator of the support group where Hazel and Gus meet has a list of former members, now gone, which he reads at every meeting: It gets longer as the novel unfolds.) Suffused with pain and fear and heartbreak, it is never leaden; instead, it is infused with life and light, the wild joy that is a cry against the coming dark. Make no mistake, it will make you cry, but you'll also feel like singing.