Children's Books on eBook Platforms
Ever since eBooks started being sold on digital channels, they’ve quickly become the most popular method of buying books. For example, you can buy eBooks through Amazon, Google Play, Kindle, and other sources. You can also buy books from all genres, and you can even buy children’s books on eBook platforms.
However, in the vast majority of these platforms, the first and most popular books we see are for adults.
However, when you search, you can also find books for children and young adults. This leads us to ask ourselves a serious and important question: why is it so hard to find children’s books on eBook platforms? In this article, we’ll explain more about this topic.
Visibility of children’s books on eBook platforms
There aren’t nearly as many children and young adult titles compared to other genres. All you have to do is open up an eBook platform to see that.
On most platforms, when you perform a search, you’ll see the total number of children’s books available. There aren’t nearly as many eBooks for YA literature as adult literature.
Children’s and young adult literature together
Another interesting aspect is that, in the vast majority of platforms, children’s and young adult literature are in the same category. This is a serious mistake that platforms should fix since children’s books are very different from young adult literature. Therefore, they should have separate categories.
In this way, customers get confused when purchasing a book because they’re totally unaware of what they’re buying.
In addition, this aspect doesn’t help kids. During adolescence, teens don’t want to be compared to children because they have a deep desire to be mature.
Sample of covers and excerpts for children’s books on eBook Platforms
Another important reason why there needs to be more children’s books on eBook platforms is increased visibility. When kids and teens can see the cover and read a small sample, they can decide whether or not they want to read it.
Lots of platforms know that this is important, so many already include the cover and a small sample, as well as the summary. The more information you have about a book, the more likely someone will be to buy it.
Recommendations: Essential for choosing a book
Word of mouth has always worked when recommending a product or activity. If someone close to you recommends something they liked, you’re more likely to buy it.
However, nowadays, you don’t need to only rely on friends and family for their insight. Through social networks and the internet, there are lots of video channels and accounts that review and recommend books.
The platforms know how important it is for people to read good and bad reviews about books. Therefore, more platforms are including recommendation sections. Some of them include:
- Scoring or rating systems
- The ability to comment
- Symbols like “liking” or “loving”
- The ability to share the book from the platform through social networks
What are the best eBook platforms?
None of the eBook platforms meet all the requirements for children’s and young adult literature. They don’t make it easy to find good books for kids.
While it’s true that some of them do a great job in certain aspects, none of them meet all of the expectations.
This conclusion shows that eBook platforms don’t value children’s and young adult literature. However, this might be because lots of people still buy paper copies of these books. Although the platforms are making progress in making this category more visible, they’re still hard to find.