God bless e-readers! They just may be our nation's salvation from a very dangerous dumbing-down period.
The recent mass availability of economical e-readers has sparked young adults and teens to devour e-readable media and re-introduced many of the old intellectual classics (as well as new knowledgeable and intelligent word-fare) to an excited and hungry audience.
E-readers are common riders in backpacks, purses and briefcases...AND this is good!
It's good for our future as a country as well as for those who write and publish and/or will be doing so in the future.
This from Julie Bosman of the New York Times:
E-Readers Catch Younger Eyes and Go in Backpacks
Something extraordinary happened after Eliana Litos received an e-reader for a Hanukkah gift in December.
“Some weeks I completely forgot about TV,” said Eliana, 11. “I went two weeks with only watching one show, or no shows at all. I was just reading every day.”
Ever since the holidays, publishers have noticed that some unusual titles have spiked in e-book sales. The “Chronicles of Narnia” series. “Hush, Hush.” The “Dork Diaries” series.
At HarperCollins, for example, e-books made up 25 percent of all young-adult sales in January, up from about 6 percent a year before — a boom in sales that quickly got the attention of publishers there.
“Adult fiction is hot, hot, hot, in e-books,” said Susan Katz, the president and publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books. “And now it seems that teen fiction is getting to be hot, hot, hot.”
In their infancy e-readers were adopted by an older generation that valued the devices for their convenience, portability and, in many cases, simply for their ability to enlarge text to a more legible size. Appetite for e-book editions of best sellers and adult genre fiction — romance, mysteries, thrillers — has seemed almost bottomless.
The recent mass availability of economical e-readers has sparked young adults and teens to devour e-readable media and re-introduced many of the old intellectual classics (as well as new knowledgeable and intelligent word-fare) to an excited and hungry audience.
E-readers are common riders in backpacks, purses and briefcases...AND this is good!
It's good for our future as a country as well as for those who write and publish and/or will be doing so in the future.
This from Julie Bosman of the New York Times:
E-Readers Catch Younger Eyes and Go in Backpacks
Something extraordinary happened after Eliana Litos received an e-reader for a Hanukkah gift in December.
“Some weeks I completely forgot about TV,” said Eliana, 11. “I went two weeks with only watching one show, or no shows at all. I was just reading every day.”
Ever since the holidays, publishers have noticed that some unusual titles have spiked in e-book sales. The “Chronicles of Narnia” series. “Hush, Hush.” The “Dork Diaries” series.
At HarperCollins, for example, e-books made up 25 percent of all young-adult sales in January, up from about 6 percent a year before — a boom in sales that quickly got the attention of publishers there.
“Adult fiction is hot, hot, hot, in e-books,” said Susan Katz, the president and publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books. “And now it seems that teen fiction is getting to be hot, hot, hot.”
In their infancy e-readers were adopted by an older generation that valued the devices for their convenience, portability and, in many cases, simply for their ability to enlarge text to a more legible size. Appetite for e-book editions of best sellers and adult genre fiction — romance, mysteries, thrillers — has seemed almost bottomless.
