American Youth book: Getting the word out

Images from twenty-five Redux photographers fill the pages of “American Youth,” a 240-page book that examines the newest generation of 18-24 year olds.

Redux is marketing the new book, which will be available in early May, in a few interesting ways.

First, they’ve got a blog dedicated to the book. It contains stories from the photographers, and even share image outtakes. It’s a really nice way to continue the storytelling even after all the pages of the book have been printed.

The blog is really interesting and educational, especially the parts where the photographers talk about the assignment itself.

Some stuff that is especially cool…

Angie Smith on photographing tailgaters in Southern California.
http://americanyouthbook.com/blog/?p=127

Cheerleaders! Outtakes from John Keatley
http://americanyouthbook.com/blog/?p=112

Second – they’re on Twitter, and making great use of it. I must admit, when I first heard of “Twitter” I thought it would die out like 8-track tapes, but after we set up a PhotoShelter Twitter feed, I quickly realized how this medium was a way to quickly reach a very large audience.

Third, they are making use of PhotoShelter embedded slideshows (shown above.) These little Flash-based gems allow their images to “go viral,” and (legally) spread all over the web, giving their images, their blog, and their book exposure in places they never even knew existed. Click that little triangle on the lower right and you’ll see the code that makes it go viral.

And fourth, since they are using PhotoShelter, they were able to seemlessly integrate PhotoShelter galleries into their blog, which gives them a more powerful image gallery creation system than what’s normally available for most blogging tools.

Photographers with images in the book are: Marc Asnin, Ben Baker, Nina Berman, David Butow, Peter Frank Edwards, Danny Wilcox Frazier, Eros Hoagland, John Keatley, Andy Kropa, Erika Larsen, Gina LeVey, Joshua Lutz, Preston Mack, Kevin J. Miyazaki, Darcy Padilla, Mark Peterson, Michael Rubenstein, Greg Ruffing, Q. Sakamaki, Erin Siegal, Angie Smith, Ben Stechschulte, Brad Swonetz, Nathaniel Welch, and David Yellen.

I also spotted this line in their blog:

“We will have an event in May to celebrate.  Stay tuned here for details.”

Nice. Can I get an invite?