Book News
Sales of books for younger set likely to drop.
Books for children and young adults are set for a drop next year, marking their second decline in as many years, according to Children’s Publishing Market Forecast 2009, a new research report from media industry forecast and analysis firm Simba Information.
“The profound economic pressures felt by American consumers will lead them toward buying fewer books, or even no books at all,” said Michael Norris, senior analyst of Simba Information’s Trade Books Group.
Growth is being hampered by changes in the consumer book retailing landscape. The growing number of big-box stores and the shrinking number of physical bookstores are putting the squeeze on the largest bookstore chains and publishers alike. “Publishers are beginning to pay the price for allowing retailers with no real stake in the future of print books to grow as powerful as they have become,” Norris said.
The forecast also covers new ground by showing the nuances between books for young children and books for young adults. “The enormous success of young-adult titles from Stephenie Meyer and others has painted a misleading picture of the industry,” Norris said. “A smaller percentage of teens are reading now compared to 15 years ago, and data suggest adults are buying some of these sorts of books. While every sale is a good one, YA books may be to publishing what the PG-13 rating is to Hollywood.”
First Lines
From the short story “Body,” by Brian Evenson, in “Poe’s Children: The New Horror, an Anthology,” edited by Peter Straub
“I have been privately removed to St. Sebastian’s Correctional Facility and Haven for the Wayward, where they are fitting me for a new mind, and body too. Most of my distress, they believe, results from having a wayward body and no knowledge of how to manage it. As mine is a body which does not sit easy with the world, they have chosen to begin again from scratch.
“The body, says Brother Johanssen, is not simple flesh staunching blood and slung over bones, but a way of slipping and spilling through the world. While others slip like water through the world, I am always bottling the world up. The only way I can come unbottled is to crack the world apart. One cannot refashion flesh and blood, Brother Johanssen tells me, but one can refashion the paths that flesh and blood take through the world.”
Best sellers for Kindle readers
1. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
2. The Gate House, by Nelson DeMille
3. The Shack, by William P. Young
4. The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, Alice Schroeder
5. Extreme Measures, by Vince Flynn
6. The Lucky One, by Nicholas Sparks
7. The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly
8. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
9. Bones: An Alex Delaware Novel, by Jonathan Kellerman
10. Letter to My Daughter, by Maya Angelou
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