“In the UK
children’s books
have grown
from 24% share
of our print
sales in 2004 to
35% in 2014.”
Sources: Nielsen BookScan; Nielsen Books & Consumers US survey;
Nielsen Books Understanding the Children’s UK Book Consumer 2014
Jonathan Nowell is President of Nielsen Book.
books are bought by adults with no
children–and not as gifts.
Then, of course, there is the young adult
category. In 2011, five of the US top 20
bestselling children’s books fell into the YA
category. In 2014, 11 of the top 20 were YA,
including three John Green titles and four
Veronica Roth titles. YA titles have started to
dominate the children’s books charts and the
reason is that in the US, 73% of YA books are
bought by US adults for themselves.
In the UK, children’s books have grown from 24%
share of our print sales in 2004 to 35% in 2014. British
children’s reading remains the number one pastime for the
0-10 age group, although for the 11-13 age group reading
drops to sixth place–overtaken by television, gaming,
social networking and texting friends. And for the 14-17
age group, reading falls way down the pastime list. I don’t
think this particular challenge has changed much in the
last few years; the difference today, of course, is that
many of the preferred activities for teens are available to
them through the same device that they are increasingly
using to read.
At the Children’s Summit we ran some
teenage focus groups for the 14-17 age
range. The overriding impression I came
away with was that these teens preferred
reading print for pleasure and reading
digital for school-work (many did their
homework on their smart phones on the bus
to school!). But more importantly, they
wanted others to know what they were
reading for pleasure because their printed
book said something about them that the
generic digital device did not.
If we are to maintain this fantastic growth in children’s
book sales we must better understand the teen buttons we
need to push. My guess is that these buttons are no different
to those of the “20-somethings” that they aspire to be. But
we need to get it right. It is time the industry invested
seriously in teen research; these are the heavy book buyers
of the future–or they are not book buyers at all. ■
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