Today Harpercollins renewed their deal with Hello Kitty publishing! Under the terms the company will now be marketing their products in the digital sphere. Expect ebooks and interactive content to be released in the near future.
Hello Kitty appeals obviously to the younger demographic and many readers of our news source have children and are looking for new content for their little ones.
Harpercollins has grand digital plans for the franchise to include colouring books, drawing guides, friendship books and interactive enhanced ebooks. The plan right now is to put their books on the Nook Color and make dedicated apps for the Apple iPad.
Both of these devices fall inline with their digital strategy because most owners of the Nook Color are 75% women and there is no discounting the strong business the Apple ecosystem reaps.
Expect new digital content from the Hello Kitty franchise to appear in December in limited quantities and a major push in the first quarter of 2012. Why push it to the beginning of the year? If you track electronic content consumption like we do, you notice trends in the market. November and December people are purchasing hardware for gifts for the holiday season. Then in January and February books and app sales grow because they want buy stuff for their shiny new devices. This has been the trend for the last 3 years as e-readers and tablets grow in popularity.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
