A recent survey sponsored by Random House, Macmillan, Penguin, Scholastic and Little, Brown took a look at consumer attitudes toward purchasing children's books including teen consumers. Here's what was said:
"For teen readers, celebrity endorsements, cover and flap blurbs, and awards have little influence on picking a book. Sequels are the most popular factor, followed by familiarity with author, and back and flap copy. The whole package counts, with the title and cover each affecting nearly one third of selections."
You can see by the graph above based on these results - that buying decisions seem to be most heavily influenced by the story. Either continuing a story, an enticing bit of copy that pitches on the story on the back cover, or a familiar author whose stories they already know they like.
They also go on to say:
"Teens, too, are heavy online users. But while favorite activities center around screens—text-ing and visiting Facebook—39% read books for fun. That's print books, not electronic ones. As tech-savvy as this segment of the population is, over 80% of teens don't read e-books, with only 5% saying that they do so frequently.
The fact that teens are early adopters of social technology means that they don’t see e-books as social. In regards to children’s online book search habits, the study found that 42% of all children don’t go to Web sites to find out about other books in a series; 40% haven’t visited a fan site; and 41% haven’t visited the book’s or author’s site."
You can read the entire article in Publisher's Weekly here, which also discusses where children find the books they read and where children get the books they read for fun.
So, what do you think? Do these results ring true? What do you think influences a teen's book buying habits?
~Kiki
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