Image credit: bookweb
If your little ones have been digging their heads into their favorite titles, you must be curious as to what genres have been keeping them glued. While the trending book genres/formats among kids have been diverse, Brenna Connor, Books Insights Manager of Circana, gave an in-depth insight into the Children’s book market state at the Children’s Institute in June in Milwaukee.
She exclusively spoke about the trends, growth rates, and performance of the books, as per different formats, genres, and age ranges. According to the American Booksellers Association, the session was organized on the basis of the Circana BookScan data and industry expertise of Connor.
Let’s get a quick overview into the Ci2023: The State of the Children’s Book Market and the things that Conor pinpointed, according to Shelf Awareness:
- Print book sales for children in 2022 declined by 3% as compared to the one witnessed in 2021.
- The down graph was equally split between fiction and non-fiction categories, respectively.
- Genres like holidays, animals, comics, graphics novels, activity books, etc., saw growth in kids’ book interest as compared to last year.
- As for the kids’ books according to age, the sales growth for all age segments has increased over 2019.
- The middle-grade segment saw the most downfall, with the paperback format being the key driver of the decline (as compared to the hardcovers). Meanwhile, the frontlist items have been decreased by 20% and backlists by 6%.
- The reason behind the decline in middle-grade segment books seems to be the break in the “chain of peer-to-peer discovery” due to the pandemic, according to Shelf Awareness. Another reason was the increased age of the readers, who were earlier in the middle grade in 2019.
- The overall children’s book market is likely to stay close to 2022, with slightly lower sales than a few percentage points.
- Connor considered the middle-grade segment books to “remain challenged” and asked the booksellers to work on the genre, probably with new voices and stories.
Mangas, BookToks and More
As for the other book categories, Connor emphasized on emerging genres like mangas, fantasy, and suspense and their eventual growth among readers. She also talked about BookTok and how it has been one of the key reasons behind the fiction book growth over the past two years. Besides romance, both Young Adult and children book genres have been witnessing an upsurge in the BookTok.
Conor also highlighted how print books have made two third of the entire book sales, followed by e-books and audiobooks covering the rest. She further said that it’s likely that audiobooks may surpass e-books in the future. You can read more about the insights in the Shelf Awareness June 12 issue.
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she's not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.