Tuesday, January 6, 2009

E-books Catch On With Children

It's scary to think that print media could really disappear. There could be a day when students don't even own paper, pencils and textbooks. Their worlds could really be digitized: only typing and reading on an electronic device. Alana Semuels from The Los Angeles Times reports about the sales decline of print books and the increase in e-book purchases -- largely driven by digital natives.


After he's finished his homework and his chores for the day, 8-year-old Skye Vaughn-Perling likes to read Dr. Seuss. He's a particular fan of the hijinks that ensue when the elephant Horton hears strange voices emanating from a dust speck in "Horton Hears a Who."

He doesn't read from a dog-eared copy of the children's classic, though. Skye, who lives in Agoura Hills, Calif., often reads on his computer, pressing the arrow button when he wants to turn a page. Sometimes the characters move around on the screen like animated cartoons on TV. If he wants, Skye can have the computer read a book to him while he's curled up in bed.

"It's a whole new level of exploring the books," said his mother, Victoria Vaughn-Perling.

Readers and publishers alike are embracing a digital future. Electronic-book sales increased 73 percent in October compared with the same month last year, according to the Association of American Publishers, while sales of adult paperbacks decreased 23 percent and children's paperbacks declined 14.8 percent. Sales of higher-education books, including textbooks, fell 443 percent.

The jump in digital sales is strongly related to the increased popularity of the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader and even the iPhone. Once readers have bought the hardware, digital books are much cheaper than hardcovers or even paperbacks. For example, you can buy a hardcover of Wally Lamb's "The Hour I First Believed" for $17.97 on Amazon.com, but it costs only $9.99 on the Kindle. And "100 Words to Make You Sound Smart" is $5.95 in print but only $2.99 in Apple's App Store.

Today's kids have grown up around technology and don't think twice about learning from computers and sleeping with their iPods. In some cases, watching a book on a computer might even make them enjoy reading more, publishers say.

Businesses are starting to focus on the children's market. Kidthing, a Los Angeles firm, makes the digital player that lets Skye read "Horton." Speakaboos, a New York company, offers children's classics that are read by actors as pages are displayed on the screen. Now publishers are rushing to put content online and create games, and in some cases, whole virtual worlds, about different books.

For many, it's a way to generate revenue and shift to a format that in the long run isn't as expensive as print to produce. But it's also recognition that children live in their own wired world, and that digital releases can goose print sales.

Read full story.

No comments: