Early e-reader sales mostly ended up going to older generations of readers—the only ones who could afford to buy the highly-expensive devices. But the New York Times has an interesting article looking at the younger generation that is just beginning to get involved in e-book reading thanks to parents purchasing the devices for them as gifts.
This Christmas just passed seems to have been the first in which kids started getting e-readers, and publishers have been noticing spikes in sales of children’s titles in e-book formats. Some of the sales increases have been fairly dramatic: St. Martin’s Press reports that the percentage of total sales of its children’s titles in e-book format was only 6% in 2010, but is up to 20% so far in 2011.
Some teachers have been allowing kids to bring the devices to school for leisure reading, which is another factor that has convinced some parents to buy them.
“I didn’t buy it until I knew that the teachers in middle school were allowing kids to read their books on their e-readers,” said Amy Mauer-Litos, Eliana’s mother, adding, “I don’t know whether it’s the device itself that is appealing, or the easy access to the books, but I will tell you, we’ve had a lot of snow days lately, and 9 times out of 10, she’s in the family room reading her Nook.”
Ironically, the most popular children’s books in recent memory, the Harry Potter series, remains unavailable electronically so far, even though J.K. Rowling’s agent said last year that they were at least on the horizon. Hopefully the exploding popularity of children’s e-books will convince them to get them available as soon as possible so they can get in on this boom.
