Children’s Book Market Goes Digital
The children’s book market is moving quickly toward digital, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Kids are primed for reading books on a computer and via e-book readers, having grown up with technology such as laptops and iPods. They’re able to easily adapt to new gadgets, like the $359 Amazon Kindle, the Oprah-endorsed ebook reader introduced a year ago.
(The Kindle proved to be more popular than Amazon expected and is now out of stock, leaving customers high and dry until February - unless they purchase the slightly more expensive Sony Reader 700.)
Publishers like Kidthing and Speakaboo are making digital downloads of children’s literature and putting audio versions of children’s classics online. Supplemental content, like games and virtual worlds, soon follow.
Scholastic created websites and online games to complement its book offerings such as “39 Clues,” a 10-volume mystery-book project.
Publishers are also finding that digital formats are less expensive to produce and can therefore add extra revenue: Because there is no shipping, printing, or return costs, profits are free to grow.
Digital releases can also help print sales. Walden released a teen book called “Savvy” on the internet a week before it was available in print, encouraging kids to download the book or read it online. As many as 30 tween website and virtual worlds linked to the download site, helping spread the news of the release via word-of-mouth and helped push the book to the top of The New York Times best-seller list.
But just because kids enjoy reading books online doesn’t mean it is necessarily good for them: Young children may not get meaning from what they’re reading when they’re playing with gadgets and distracted by technology features, concluded Temple University psychology professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek after studying studied parents who read digital books with their children.
And staring at a screen instead of imagining stories in their heads or playing with friends lack hands-on creative play—a big part of their development—said Susan Linn of Boston’s Judge Baker Children’s Center.
Still, digital book sales are up 73% in October compared with the same month last year, according to the Association of American Publishers; adult and children’s paperbacks, on the other hand, fell 23% and 14.8%, respectively.
At Houghton Mifflin, digital books make up just 1% of sales but could easily grow to 10% in five years, said vice-president David Langevin.