Will children’s digital sales boom?

Whither the children’s e-book market? Sam Missingham highlighted earlier this week Amazon’s new advert aimed squarely at children (and their parents).

According to Sam: “The ad aired in the Xfactor break, thus capturing huge numbers of UK families. As you can see, the ad focuses on children. As far as I know the first to do so. And to clarify, it focuses on children reading. And the joy of reading. There is no mention of ebooks, Kindles, digital or the price, just 52 seconds of children describing their relationship with books.”

According to Sam, Amazon are taking the children’s market seriously suggesting a turning point for children’s digital sales.

Philip Jones comments that “The optimism contrasts with the view put out by Nielsen BookScan last week. Its latest report ‘Going Digital’, based on consumer panel data, suggests that sales of children’s e-books and apps are not showing strong growth in the UK, and not expected to show much growth in the near future. Worth just under £20m in 2012, Nielsen expects that they will generate sales of just £27.4m by the end of 2014.”

“At that rate, the growth will barely cover the price of the ad. But with e-book sales among the first wave of adopters slowing, e-booksellers are now in the hunt for new audiences. Nielsen reports that the rate at which readers are discovering e‐books for the first time continues to slow. A figure of 163,000 new purchasers of e­‐books in May was the lowest for two years.

Read Philip’s full analysis here.