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If Kids Are Our Future, Our Future Is Ebooks

Jeremy Greenfield
This article is more than 7 years old.

More people are reading ebooks now than ever and it's changing the complexion of the publishing industry.

If you told a publishing company CEO a decade ago that ten years later a quarter of their revenue would be coming from digital content, they would have probably snorted up some San Pellegrino with lemon, laughing. If they took you seriously, they would have then commenced panicking (or, in the case of those with vision, planning).

Now that the ebook revolution is here and the initial shock has subsided, I have a piece of news that I'd like to deliver (publishing CEOs, put down your sparkling water):

The next wave of the ebook revolution is coming and it's going to be led by kids. While just under a quarter of U.S. adults are reading ebooks, some 54% of kids are reading them -- that's more than double. This number comes from a brand new study Digital Book World conducted with PlayScience, a children's digital research firm. It's from the first of three surveys of parents with children aged 2-13 that we'll be conducting. (You can get the complete report here.)

So, for publishers -- children's, adult and every other kind of publisher -- it's important to figure out what this next generation likes, what it wants, how much it expects to pay and much more. Here are some factoids from the report to whet your appetite:

-- Kids e-read a lot: Of the 54% of kids who read ebooks, 85% of them read at least once a week

-- Tablets rule: 22% of kids who read ebooks read most often on an iPad; 20% on a Kindle Fire; 14% on a Kindle e-reader

-- Kids make the decisions: No. 1 way a parent chooses a new ebook for their child is that their child asks for it

So much more to unpack (but I can't give it all away), including:

-- How much parents are comfortable spending on an ebook for their kid (and an app -- the difference is shocking)

-- How much they spend per month on ebooks for their kids

--  What they intended to do this holiday season in terms of device and digital content purchases for their kids

Read the full report!

I'm Contributors Editor at TheStreet.com, a business news, market data and stock analysis website. I was Editorial Director of Digital Book World, a website dedicated to

I'm Contributors Editor at TheStreet.com, a business news, market data and stock analysis website. I was Editorial Director of Digital Book World, a website dedicated to covering the world of e-books and digital publishing. I've been a reader since 1986, a journalist since 2005 and an e-reader since 2011. I live and work in New York City.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremygreenfield/2013/01/31/if-kids-are-our-future-our-future-is-ebooks/
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