Sandy Hall was nervous. Ms. Hall, a librarian in Morristown, N.J., was preparing one recent night to lead her weekly book club meeting with a group of 14 teenagers. The book being discussed, a young-adult romance titled "A Little Something Different," was her own debut novel.
"I'm still in the ‘I hope they like it' phase," she said an hour before the meeting.
But Ms. Hall, 33, has more cause for confidence than most other first-time authors. Her novel is the first book to be published by Swoon Reads, a new young-adult imprint that lets fans vote on manuscripts to choose which ones are published.