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Age guidance on books will help buyers - and improve sales

Adults unfamiliar with children's literature tell us they'd welcome a guide to content, says Simon Juden
  • The Guardian,
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Mark Lawson fears that publishers, in introducing age guidance on the back (not front, as he claims) of children's books, are motivated "more by commerce than morality". He went on to speculate that adults might be worried about giving a novel "about an adolescent being hired as a drug mule to a sensitive eight-year-old" (Classification dismissed, June 6).

This rather misses the point. Adults walking into any high-street bookshop in search of a book for a child would be confronted with an amazing and, for many, bewildering choice. More than 9,500 new children's books were published last year alone; 55% of children's books are bought by someone other than a parent of the recipient, and specialist in-store guidance is often simply not available, especially in outlets like supermarkets (which sold as many books last year as independent bookshops).

It's all very well for those who have an easy familiarity with literature. But the world of children's books does not feature in the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of adults. And, research tells us, they are crying out for guidance when buying a book for a grandchild, niece or nephew. Many do not have a good local bookshop where they can get expert advice. Where do they start?

Yes, there will always be children "whose reading age will be a couple of years ahead or behind the number of birthdays they've celebrated". However, age guidance isn't actually about reading age - it is about content and the appropriate interest level for children.

The Publishers Association's research shows that 86% of adults - both "heavy" and "light" book buyers - said they would welcome age guidance on children's books as one of several tools to help them choose fiction; 40% even said that age guidance would help them buy more books.

Children already make judgments about what they think they will enjoy reading. We believe that it is the images and colours on a book's front cover, a book's length, and, of course, the author that will continue to drive children's choices, rather than the discreet open-ended age range on the bottom of the back cover.

Fiction for both adults and children has always been categorised by the look of the jacket. As with adult fiction there are pink, sparkly novels, bloodcurdlingly gory covers, or jackets featuring ponies and puppies. The "10-year-old spotted on the school bus with a book aimed at the seven- to eight-year-old" is, sadly, likely to get into far more trouble if he is a boy caught reading a copy of the Princess Diaries.

We don't want a child not to be bought a book as a present because the adult doesn't know where to start. Nor do we want to put a child off reading for life by a book that they can't cope with. Age guidance is simply another way to get children into the world of reading, enjoying all the social and economic benefits that then accrue. Along the way, the extra sales may well keep our authors in print for another generation of children to appreciate.

· Simon Juden is chief executive of the Publishers Association

sjuden@publishers.org.uk

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