The end of books?
A depressing take on children’s book reading where the ages 5-35 are basically discounted as reading ages. Hmm. One would think he had never heard of Harry Potter, but then he mentions it himself.
“”The primary target customer for books is folks over 35, 40 years old. Children are exposed to books for the first few years of life, when they’re read to, and then for the next 30 years or so, they’re mainly exposed to music and movies and all that other stuff. The hope is that they’ll come home to books when they’re in their 40s, but can publishers really afford to wait that long? That’s probably not the best game plan.”
But with the Harry Potter craze still in full swing, aren’t more children reading, and isn’t it reasonable to expect they’ll continue the habit as adults? According to Ipsos, children’s books had a fairly good year in 2003, with early lackluster sales jolted by the June release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. But despite the Potter phenomenon, Rappaport said, the consumer base for children’s books is actually shrinking, with 33 percent of American households buying at least one book for someone under the age of 14 in 2003, compared with 35 percent in 2002.
“Even with exciting, new and value-added books on the market,” Rappaport reported recently on the Ipsos Web site, “the children’s book industry has not managed to substantially increase the volume of children’s book purchases or share-of-wallet.””