In 2014, children’s books are facing more competition than ever from other forms of entertainment, particularly digital: games, apps, YouTube and social networking.

Does this mean that the children’s publishing industry is feeling downbeat? Actually, no. This week’s The Bookseller Children’s Conference in London was a notably positive affair, with buoyant sales figures and excitement – but not hyperbole – about digital opportunities.

One of the topics discussed was whether children’s book-apps can ever deliver stories as well as printed books. I’ve pulled that out as a separate article, but here are some of the other main talking points.

Some of them aren’t technology-related at all, but they reflect the discussions that engaged me as a technology journalist (and a parent). Also see Guardian books writer Imogen Russell Williams’ take on the day for her perspective as an expert on the children’s books world.

Children’s books are selling well

Really well, actually. John Lewis, who runs the charts and analysis section of publishing industry magazine The Bookseller, gave a presentation outlining the latest sales figures, which suggest that 2014 is a storming year for children’s (printed) books in the UK.

Last year, children’s book sales fell by 3.5% to £308m in the UK, but that was better than the 6.5% decline in overall book sales. And in the first eight months of 2014, sales of children’s books are up 10% year-on-year, with 37m of them sold so far.

If this continues, a 10% rise for the whole of 2014 would make it “the best year for children’s books on record” according to Lewis. “All in all, the children’s book market is doing spectacularly well this year: it’s up by 10% when the entire printed book market is down by about 2%,” he said.

He was backed up by Ann-Janine Murtagh, publisher at HarperCollins Children’s Books, in her keynote speech.

“It’s probably one of the best moments to be working in children’s books,” she said. “We speak often about the golden age of children’s literature, but I would actually say that we’re experiencing something of a gold-rush in the children’s book market.”

Walliams, Donaldson and Minecraft

What’s fuelling that gold-rush? Some big authors and brands. David Walliams has sold £3.4m worth of children’s books in the first eight months of 2014 alone in the UK, and that’s without counting his latest book Awful Auntie, which came out this week.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney had sold £3.3m of books by the end of August, but both pale in comparison with Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson, whose £8m of sales this year have taken her to £89m since records began. Again, remember all of these figures are for the UK.

What else? Minecraft. More than 1.3m official Minecraft books were sold in the UK in the first eight months of this year:

The Bookseller’s breakdown of Minecraft book sales in the UK in the first eight months of 2014 Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian

Overall, £25m of children’s non-fiction books had been sold in the UK by the end of August, and £6.6m of that was Minecraft.

Lewis also talked about the popularity of Young Adult (YA) fiction, whose sales are up 24% to £20m in the first eight months of 2014. And that doesn’t even include the £4m of sales for John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars, which is thought of as a YA title, but officially classified as an adult book.

Also big: older books. £65m has been spent on pre-school and picture books so far this year. Lewis added that when he analysed sales of the top 4,097 picture books for 2014 so far, 43% of their sales came from “backlist” titles published before 2011.

“If a child is coming to a book for the first time, there’s no such thing as backlist. Every single book is a new book if a child hasn’t read it before,” he said. Examples outside picture books include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (more than 31,000 copies this year) and Enid Blyton’s The Enchanted Wood (nearly 12,500).

Young people still read books

Obvious, yes? Not everyone under 24 is staring at screens rather than pages when reading. But some research was shown at the conference to dig deeper on this, including a survey of more than 1,000 16-24 year-olds in the UK – so “young people” rather than children – by research firm Voxburner.

It asked its respondents how many books they read a year (excuse the quality/perspective: these photos were taken from my seat):

Voxburner’s research into how many books 18-24 year-olds read a year in the UK. Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian

And also how much time they spend reading compared to other activities like watching TV, listening to music and browsing the internet:

Voxburner’s research into how British 18-24 year-olds spend their time. Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian

When asked how they prefer to read, 73% said a printed book, 27% said ebooks and 5% said audiobooks.

“These digital natives genuinely prefer to read a printed book. Why? Ebooks are too expensive compared to print. This is a generation that is militant about value for money. They expect ebooks to be much cheaper,” said Voxburner’s Luke Mitchell.

That was backed up by another survey question on how much 18-24 year-olds would pay for print books versus ebooks:

Voxburner’s research into what British 18-24 year-olds would pay for print books versus ebooks. Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian

Mitchell suggested there were other factors influencing the preference for print among this age group. “They want to feel the product in their hands: smell the pages, see the creases in the spine,” he said.

“And ebooks do nothing for your status: they like to show off the titles they’re reading. And they resent being enslaved to technology. Digital natives don’t want to spend any more time looking at a screen than they already have to.”

There may be different tribes of digital natives, though. Separate research from the National Literacy Trust was also presented at the conference, which surveyed 34,000 8-18 year-olds in 2012 – note the younger age range.

It found 68.7% saying they regularly read on a computer, smartphone and/or tablet outside school, while only 61.8% said they read regularly on paper. It’s the first time this survey has found screens ahead of print for this question.

The Trust is kicking off its next research project to understand how things have changed since 2012, but also – crucially – it wants more research into whether reading on screens is better or worse than reading on paper when it comes to comprehension: actually understanding what’s been read.

Some research in the past suggested that it might be worse, but the Trust’s research manager Irene Picton pointed out that this tended to look at reading on a computer, rather than tablets and smartphones. She also said that children who’ve grown up with touchscreens may respond differently.

“Will this younger generation of children, who have less history reading in print, show the same impact on comprehension as some of the older students involved in those studies?” she said.

Sanne Vliegenthart is building an audience of book lovers on YouTube.

There’s a thriving ‘BookTube’ community

Can social media fuel a love of books and reading? Publishers and authors hope so. Hot Key Books’ digital coordinator Sanne Vliegenthart is also a vlogger on YouTube, where her BooksAndQuills channel has more than 110,000 subscribers and 5.7m total views.

“There are so many people on YouTube who are really interested in talking about books,” said Vliegenthart during a conference session on social media, in which she encouraged publishers to explore the “BookTube” community.

Author Alice Oseman agreed that YouTube is an exciting opportunity for writers and publishers to connect with young readers.

“I think YouTube is the best, purely from how much I think John Green’s popularity has risen seeing as he does all those YouTube videos,” she said. “YouTube is like the ultimate personal social network: you can see the author and listen to them speaking.”

While authors and publishers are flocking to YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks, Oseman talked enthusiastically about the potential of Tumblr, while warning that it’s not as easy to build a following there as some think.

“It’s the most difficult one to crack. It’s its own little community with its own personal jokes and idioms. It’s very difficult for someone who hasn’t been on Tumblr very long to understand the thinking,” she said. “You have to really understand the mentality of the people on there.”

Vliegenthart agreed that it’s worth the effort, though. “There’s a huge book community there, tens of thousands of people who love books, and post pictures and videos and text about books.”

Ann-Janine Murtagh of HarperCollins, speaking at The Bookseller Children’s Conference. Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian

Publishers as ‘the natural custodians of children’s content’

Murtagh’s presentation was very bullish about the role children’s book publishers can play, and in the importance of them responding positively to the competition posed by various forms of digital entertainment.

“In a volatile and fast-moving world, our children are growing up with more access to information and communication than ever before,” she said. “The need for great stories for children has never been greater. Children will always want to explore the world in narrative form, to truly understand it.”

One thing she said might be challenged, though: “Children’s publishers are the natural custodians of children’s content”.

What I think she meant was that publishers should be very aware of their responsibility for keeping stories – “the authentic experience of words and pictures, created by one imagination to connect and ignite with another reader in whatever format” – engaging for children in a digital world.

Her phrasing could have been taken to suggest that publishers are THE natural custodians of children’s content though: something film studios (Pixar, for starters), games developers, toymakers (Lego Movie being one convincing argument on this front) and others might argue with.

Plus, with Minecraft and YouTube, you might argue that children are increasingly custodians of their own content, creating and sharing it with one another.

Talking of Minecraft, Murtagh talked about the success of rival publisher Egmont with its Minecraft books, congratulating the company before adding an inevitable ‘but’.

“Many of those books will bring new readers to our world, and they will lift and kindle the market, but they are not the books that ultimately will sustain our market,” she said.

“They are not necessarily the books that will become classics handed down again and again. It’s our core publishing that provides the backbone of our industry... We must create the classics of tomorrow. We need to find those books that will endure, and which each generation as it passes will fall in love with.”

Michael Acton Smith: ‘We’re finding it really tough to create kids’ apps that are not only magical, but also commercially successful’.

It’s (still) really hard to have success with children’s apps

British children are using devices in their millions. A presentation from Nickelodeon’s Alison York cited the latest stats from Ofcom in 2013: 51% of 3-15 year-olds in the UK have a tablet at home – a figure that has doubled since 2012 – while 55% of 8-11 year-olds own more than three devices.

“They’re spending more time with screens than ever before,” she said. “This generation of digital natives have grown up with touchscreens as the norm.”

The problem for children’s app publishers is that they (and their parents) aren’t necessarily spending money on children’s apps. Michael Acton Smith of Mind Candy – the creator of Moshi Monsters – reprised his speech from the Children’s Media Conference earlier this year on this point.

“We’re finding it really tough to create kids’ apps that are not only magical, but also commercially successful,” he said.

“We’ve created many different Moshi apps over the years.. we’ve had paid for, free, in-app purchase apps. Although we get quite a lot of downloads, we haven’t been able to find the secret solution to create very successful commercial products too. We need to do both.”

Smith pointed out that children have access to everything on the app stores, not just children’s apps, and that many are choosing to play “grown-up games” like Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans, even though those make their money from in-app purchases worth up to £69.99 at a time, which many parents disapprove of.

It’s not just developers finding app stores challenging. In a separate talk, literacy and technology consultant Bev Humphrey talked about another set of people: school librarians, who are interested in using educational apps with pupils, but struggle to find the best ones.

“I can see the appeal of using exciting devices and exciting apps as a way of getting kids into reading or writing, but how do you find these apps? It’s never easy,” she said. “What most app stores need is a librarian to sort them out.”

The Beano sold 2m copies a week at its peak, but is now reinventing itself as a digital brand. Photograph: BBC/D.C. Thomson & Co. Ltd./BBC

The Beano has “made a balls-up of digital” but is still trying

Moshi Monsters is struggling to cope with digital disruption, but so are some more traditional children’s brands. Tim Collins, head of commercial at DC Thomson, gave a talk on his company’s work with The Beano.

The British comic sold 2m copies a week at its peak last century, but in 2014 it sells 32,000 copies, albeit with an estimated readership of 500,000, and an annual that sells around 250,000 copies.

Collins talked about the company’s mistakes: for example a Dennis the Menace TV show that launched in 2009, but “missed the sweet spot” of the character and his fondness for pranks, instead dumbing down for an audience of 4-7 year-olds.

“There weren’t enough fart jokes basically, we lost our way a little bit,” said Collins, noting that the show’s most recent series has tried to get the balance back. He was just as honest about digital expansion.

“We’ve made a balls-up of digital. Most of us probably have, although most of us don’t admit it,” said Collins, addressing the room of publishing executives. “But we also haven’t lost our shirts on it.”

He talked about DC Thomson’s attempts to launch digital comics as PDF replicas – “nobody’s interested” – as well as a digital version of The Dandy (“that didn’t work”) and a few apps.

“The problem is we’ve tried to do it in-house, and haven’t embraced enough of the bright smart things out there who have a different way of looking at it,” he said.

That’s changing, with a recent photo-sharing app and plans to launch a Dennis-themed game towards the end of the year – “a shooting game, but it involves catapults and mud-guns, not AK47s, as you might expect” – as well as a new YouTube channel that focuses on prank videos rather than animation.

• YouTube, apps and Minecraft: digital kids and children’s media



Disclosure: Bev Humphrey, who is quoted in this article, is an expert in her field who talks regularly at conferences. She is also my aunt. Her quote is included for editorial reasons alone, but I thought it best to be transparent about the family relationship.