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Book people think they know why 9-year-olds stop reading for fun
It’s not the pandemic. It’s not (only) the Devices. So what causes the “decline by 9”?
Indeed, several people I spoke to mentioned that middle-graders’ lack of phones created a marketing problem in an era when no one at any publishing house has any idea how to make a book a bestseller other than to hope it blows up on TikTok. “BookTok is imperfect,” said Karen Jensen, a youth librarian and a blogger for School Library Journal, “but in teen publishing it’s generating huge bestsellers, bringing back things from the backlist. “Editors are looking for highly illustrated projects, shorter word counts, a bit more humor and adventure,” said Chelsea Eberly, director of the children’s book agency Greenhouse Literary.
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