Psst. Hey, Little Girl, Wanna Try an E-Book?

Baldwin Louie — Wed, 09 May 2001 15:00:00 -0700

Last year, AOL Time Warner, Random House and Simon & Schuster all took the plunge into e-publishing waters, which turned out to be surprisingly chilly. But despite lackluster sales and a dearth of public enthusiasm (what percentage of the population has read an e-book, or, for that matter, knows someone who has?), these publishers aren't clamoring for the lifeboats. Just the opposite, in fact: They're expanding their digital offerings to include e-books for children and teenagers.

Time Warner affiliate iPicturebooks.com, which launched in February, has some 200 e-books available for kids ages 6 months to 10 years. Random House has teamed with Sesame Street to release 10 picture e-books starring Elmo and various other characters. And Simon & Schuster is fixing its sights on the young adult market by e-releasing winners of the Newbery Medal for children's literature from its backlist, as well as 30 other titles.

The assumption — or hope — behind this foray into children's e-books is that today's computer-savvy kids will be more receptive to books on screen than adults are. To them, the thinking goes, it will be nothing to read a 200-page young-adult novel or look at the illustrations in Eency Weency Spider in an electronic format.

"We've been very aggressive in publishing our e-books and we tackled the adult piece of it first," said S&S director of corporate communications Adam Rothberg, "but in the back of our minds was always the feeling that the younger generation might be the ones to make the e-book work."

But will the younger generation, not known for its prodigious attention span, take to electronic reading? Kids may be used to videogames, instant messaging and surfing the Web. However, "are squirmy children going to be sitting in front of a laptop?" wonders Daniel O'Brien, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. He's also skeptical about the degree of teenagers' interest in e-books. "Practically speaking, I think teenagers, when given a choice between reading something in printed form and reading something on screen, will choose the printed form."

Still, if publishers can interest kids in e-books, they will have established a future audience for adult titles beyond the science fiction, fantasy and romance genres that are e-publishing's current strongest sellers for grown-ups. O'Brien argues, however, that today's e-publishing strategies, which "take the print publishing model and then replicate it in cyberspace," are insufficient. E-books, whether for kids or adults, that make use of technology to add interesting bells and whistles — like sound effects, links to Web sites and illustrations — may be more appealing and commercially viable.

For the moment, at least, iPicturebooks.com focuses on picture books rather than text-heavy ones. The company offers titles from the interactive Time Machine series (rather like the old-school Choose Your Own Adventure books, but with an educational component) and books in which children can name main characters after themselves. How do brightly illustrated books translate onto PCs and PDAs? IPicturebooks.com CEO Byron Preiss argues that illustrations displayed on million-color, backlit screens are superior to their printed counterparts.

But that depends on the quality of the hardware. And though these e-books cost consumers 20 percent less than their printed versions, the savings are diminished when one factors in the price of a top-of-the-line PDA, which can cost several hundreds of dollars. "Our goal is to aggregate illustrated book content for young readers and to be both a retailer and a publisher of books for that market," Preiss said.

Illustrated books for younger audiences may be forthcoming from S&S, but Rothberg said there are no plans for them yet. "We're not really certain that the technology is there to do picture books. I have no doubt that it will be there, but we need to see it." S&S' current young-reader e-books will retail for $6.99 — more, in other words, than kids' paperbacks.

As for Random House, the first e-book titles for young readers will be from the Jurassic Park series and will appear in June, according to Mary Beth Kilkelly, director of new-media marketing for children's books. By the fall, she said, classic young adult novels will be available in e-book form. Prices for the e-books are still being negotiated, as are potential "enhancements" to the texts, such as links to relevant Web sites.

"It's just complete experimentation at this point," Kilkelly said. "We're all just trying to find out what works, how we can convert the great content we have into the most entertaining and cost-efficient kind of book experience."

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Psst. Hey, Little Girl, Wanna Try an E-Book?