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Book News: Young Adult And Kids' Lit Boost E-Book Revenue

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

E-book sales are standing on the shoulders not of giants, but of a much smaller set. According to new statistics released by the Association of American Publishers, the first seven months of 2014 showed marked growth in e-book revenue — largely thanks to young adult and children's literature.

The numbers, reported in The Bookseller, show that from January to July, e-book revenue grew 7.5 percent compared with the same period last year. It's a bump fueled mostly by a startling rise in revenue for YA and children's e-books — 59.5 percent growth — and a bit less so by e-books on religion, which also jumped 25.7 percent.

With print books included, the trade publishing industry saw modest growth — no thanks to adult and nonfiction books, which actually dropped 2.2 percent instead.

'Publishing While Black': "I feel like, with us, there's a sense that we're like these isolated nodes that have to somehow exist in competition with these larger groups and larger forces, but we're alone. So for me it was really important that I was constantly being reminded, even just as a reader, that there were people who were reading the same things I was reading and who were interested in the same kinds of voices and perspectives." — editor Chris Jackson in Scratch magazine, which brought together a roundtable of writers and editors of color for a deep dive into their experiences and frustrations in the publishing industry. The conversation has now been republished in full on The Toast.

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Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Colin Dwyer covers breaking news for NPR. He reports on a wide array of subjects — from politics in Latin America and the Middle East, to the latest developments in sports and scientific research.