Why are kids’ e-book sales surging? Partly because adults are reading them

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New stats from the Association of American Publishers show that kids’ and young adult e-book sales grew by triple digits in February, while adult e-book sales appeared to flatten. But the AAP notes that’s partly due to the fact that so many adults are reading YA e-books like the “Hunger Games” trilogy.

The AAP notes that adult e-book growth in February 2012 appeared to slow (adult e-book sales were only 9.9 percent higher this February than last February) because February 2011 included “an unusual one-off retail revenue transaction” making sales that month “abnormally high.” The AAP was also collecting data from many, many fewer publishers last February (under 100 compared to 1,191 now) so it may indeed be true that adult e-book sales are flattening — but we’d need more than a month of data to deduce that.


Why are kids’ e-book sales surging? Partly because adults are reading them