E-books for kids: Where to find ‘em—modern titles, not just public domain books alone

By David Rothman

More kid’s e-books, please. While many young people favor screens over paper, the e-book industry is a long way from catching up.

As a bubble gum fan, until my evil dentist put a stop to it, I was happy to see Mr. Bubble Gum listed among the 216 children’s books at eBook Impressions. Gum may or may not figure heavily in the plot, but the title will do, thanks, and it’s good to see EI carrying some kid’s books.

Still, 216 is hardly a huge number, even by e-book standards, especially with 30,000 titles at EI.

Kid’s e-books at other stores

Fictionwise, a more established store, offers 276 children’s novels, 74 nonfiction books for kids and 668 novels for young adults. And Diesel eBooks sells hundreds of children’s books in well-organized categories.

Also check out the 947 titles within the Children’s & Young Adult Fiction list at eBooks.com, the 605 Juvenile Fiction listings at Mobipocket, and eBooks about Kids.

Still just drops in the bucket

Despite these stats, keep in mind the many thousands of paper books published each year for the young. The e-book industry needs to put out many more e-books for children and young adults, including members of minorities.

Pat Schroeder, head of the Association of American Publishers, has remarked to LINCT‘s Ken Komoski about the need for minority-related books. The economies of e-books—they’re cheaper to distribute than P—might help address her concerns although I’d regard the ethnic angle as just one detail, not to be overdone.

Far more significantly, as valuable as old public domain books are, children often prefer contemporary writings than the overwhelming majority of titles in public domain collections.

Parents thoughts’ welcome on commercial e-books of kids

I’d welcome thoughts from parents, educators and librarians. What are the kinds of e-books that could best serve children at your school or library? And how do you feel about the costs of children’s e-books?

Many of them listed seemed fairly low, though this could be expected, given the shorter lengths? How about illustrations? Their quantity and quality? Other QC concerns, including, of course, the text variety? Do the books address kids’ needs and hold their interests?

And how do you feel about the possibility of separate sites for kids, so Junior won’t wonder into the erotica section? Hey, no moralizing here. We’re just talking about age-appropriateness.

Children’s books in the public domain or via Creative Commons licenses

Meanwhile, in the public domain area, don’t forget to check out free kids’ classics at sites such as Gutenberg and Manybooks.net and the International Children’s Digital Library. Amid the classics, you may also find modern books authorized for posting or out of copyright.

What’s more, LibriVox offers readings of Aesop’s Fables and other classics of possible interest to the young.

And don’t forget to look over the child-related resources at the Internet Public Library.

The future

I’ll be interested to know how children’s e-books evolve. Is there a future risk of multimedia distracting from the text and reducing the usefulness of these books as literacy-builders?

Of course, similar issues arise with other categories of books.

Other impressions of eBook Impressions

eBook Impressions was a nice site to me—it’s ranked far lower in the Alexa ratings than other e-book sites, ranking 430,954 among Net sites, compared to, say, 14,513 for eBooks.com.

For what it’s worth, however, EI also boasts an e-book forum and some free e-books, hopefully without spyware (I don’t know, either way). It offers, too, some e-book format comparisons, author bios and a link to an online newsstand.

Alas, the the site was slow, slow, slow when I visited. Any improvements on the way?

What’s more, I noticed that the Children listing within Fiction apparently overlapped with the Juvenile Fiction category. The titles looked the same at first glance, and the number listed was, in both cases, 216.

I’d welcome pro and con impressions from EI customers, including feelings about the store’s e-commerce infrastructure.

Related TeleBlog posts: Reading e-books to your kids, ‘Kid-friendly’ animated e-books—free from some public libraries and also available at $30 a year and others. Also see external search results from Google and Yahoo.

(eBook Impressions link found via Dr. Ellen Hage.)