DBW 2016: The Persistence of Print in the Children’s Market

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If you’re working in children’s books, some of the research offered at DBW via Dubit’s quarterly survey, Dubit Trends, is important for you to note. Dubit’s studies look each quarter at 1,000 families in the States, 1,000 families in the UK, and 1,000 families in another country on a rotating basis.

Here are the top-level observations from Dubit’s David Kleeman:

  • Tech change (as in delivery devices) is about to slow in family homes. Dubit notes that smartphone market penetration is very high in its survey regions, averaging 72 percent. Tablets are in place in about 54 percent of the homes (86 percent in the US) and are not devices people change out as frequently as phones. So there may be a couple of years when the devices hold relatively still—meaning that publishers may have a better chance than they’ve had for a while to target existing user tech and distribute to it.
  • Dubit sees children averaging six to fifteen hours per week engaged with their electronic devices—in all activities, of course, not just reading.
  • Kleeman played up the responses of children to questions about how much they like to read. In three age groups (five to seven, eight to ten, and eleven to fifteen), the most agreed-on survey statement was: “I love books, but only when I have time.” The next statement most frequently ratified by the surveyed kids was either “Books are OK, but I’m not that bothered about them” or “I do like books but they’re not at the top of things I do.” Across the three age groups, the response was fairly uniform.
  • Here comes the children’s book industry pledge of allegiance to print: 70 percent of respondents said they prefer reading print to digital. (This was a theme throughout the day; the kids’ sector is proud of “the persistence of print,” as one key publisher puts it.)
  • Lastly, 62 percent of five- to ten-year-olds tell Dubit that they share books with friends. This is one of the biggest justifications for the younger set’s fondness for print, while the second rationale—offered by Nielsen’s Kristen McLean—is that older kids, mostly teens, prefer print because they can signal what they’re reading better than on electronic devices. Books are a status symbol for them.

Bottom line: Kids’ book specialists are sticking to the print-above-all message, and they’re worried primarily that the rest of the entertainment world is going to swoop down like Angry Birds and carry off the children. To this point, Kleeman recommends cross-platform conceptualization of your work: think action figures and other merchandise—whatever might bond those young readers more tightly to you.

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