The Bookseller.com

4th July 2009

Book sales for kids and YA on rise in France

27.10.08 Barbara Casassus

Book sales for children and adolescents in France during 2006 rose to €526m,or 70m copies, from €497m to represent 15% of the book market, against 13% in 2004, according to market research firm GfK.

Sales for this age group are holding up better than the market as a whole this year, the firm also found. Titles for youngsters slipped only 0.9% in nominal terms including inflation, over January-September, compared to a fall of 1.8% for total books sales.

"Harry Potter readers have not evaporated," said Alice Cousin Crespel, senior book market analyst at GfK. "[They] have turned to new titles, proving that the taste for reading has truly taken hold."
The number of new folio titles has jumped by 30% over the past two years, whereas those of paperbacks have dropped by 5%, GfK found.

Demand for illustrated titles for young children remained brisk last year, accounting for 24.6m copies, or €177m, a real increase of 1.9%. But replacing children's TV tie-in Dora The Explorer, which flooded the market for two years, is clearly a problem, because sales of illustrated
books declined by a real 2.6% in the first nine months of this year.

Non-fiction sales have also dropped by 3.5% over the past two years, GfK said, with animals losing their appeal as the main theme in favour of encyclopedias, nature, the environment and religion.

But books are just one cultural product with a lacklustre performance in France, figures have revealed. Video games are the only exception, continuing to report nominal annual sales increases of 20%.

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