Post date: Jul 21, 2012 9:31:41 AM
EBook sales surge in the Young Adult category as teens and adults turn to hot fiction including Hunger Games, Twilight and Harry Potter.
USA-ADULTS TURN TO TEEN FICTION - Twilight, Harry Potter, and the Hunger Games.
These young adult titles are igniting book sales, particularly in eBooks. The numbers speak for themselves, Children's/Young Adult fiction is a 2.8 billion dollar market and was the fastest growing category in eBooks last year - according to an annual survey by the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group.
But, it's not young adults who are leading the surge.
SARAH MADSON, AVID YOUNG ADULT READER SAYING:
"After Twilight, read the Harry Potter series, loved them. Hunger Games, my favorite of all time. I really enjoy the easy-to-read, you can get through them quickly, they engage you they aren't really hard concepts for adults to get. I think that's why they are so popular with adults nowadays."
Call it a guilty pleasure. Sarah Madson, well beyond her teenage years, is an avid reader of some of the top young adult fiction on her Kindle. And she's not alone:
SARAH MADSON, AVID YOUNG ADULT READER, SAYING:
"I discuss these a lot with my friends we discuss the topics in there, relate them to different topics in our lives, go to see the movies together. It's a big part of our social circle."
These crossover hits in young adult literature propelled eBook sales in that category by 12 percent in 2011, compared to the prior year.
Michael Cader is the Founder of Publishers Marketplace.com.
MICHAEL CADER, FOUNDER, PUBLISHERS MARKETPLACE/PUBLISHERS LUNCH SAYING:
"As this field of young adult literature has emerged, it's attracting not just teenagers, but people in their 20's, their parents. It's become a format that's a little less expensive than a hard cover, it deals with some themes in a way that some people find more accessible, oftentimes. YA literature is a little shorter than those big long books that some people don't want to take on, it's created for this group of readers that wasn't very well served but it's become such a dynamic field that it's attracting all sorts of readers."
And while young adult fiction is booming among ereaders, it has a long way to go before catching up to the industry giant, adult fiction.
Jill Bennett, Reuters.