Hunger Games & Harry Potter

There has been a lot of chatter lately about how Amazon.com announcing that in the US Susanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy has been outselling J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Amazon's editorial director stated that this could be due to the growth in digital reading that has occurred, and the the Hunger Games series is consistently on the Top 10 list in both print and Kindle formats, and that the book "The Hunger Games is also the most-borrowed book in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library." Although this data only is for Amazon, after all there are over 400 million Potter books compared to 23 million Hunger Games. But it does perhaps start indicating the change in how the public wants their books. Both book in the US are though the Scholastic Publisher, but Hunger Games was first to go digital, and became Amazon's first young adult author to be named to Amazon's Kindle Million club (although now Harry Potter books are available through Pottermore, but even if accessed through Amazon, doesn't count as an Amazon sale).

When ever I see these kinds of discussions/articles I always think back to the beginning of the paperback. Publishers then (back in 1939) thought that no one would buy such books, but they were wrong as the publisher PocketBooks sold out of their first 100,000 copy run in the first week. Now we have ebook versions, and I'm seeing similar trends of one outselling the other, let alone that there has been reading crossover as more adults with ebooks seem to be reading more young adult books like Hunger Games. What I don't really understand is the fights about it. To me all I want is a good story, I don't care if it is ink, eink, or even audio. The ebook is just often easier to get a hold of for many. I always think back to when I was living on St Croix in the Virgin Islands, there on that island there were only a few book stores or stores that sold book and public libraries (mine was the Athalie McFarlane Petersen Public Library in Frederiksted). I quickly read out of everything that I wanted, and had no easy way to get more. Today that wouldn't be as much of an issue, I could download lots of books as they were released (not months later) and use online bookstores to browse and read reviews of other new books.

Athalie McFarlane Petersen Public Library is located in the town of Frederiksted, St. Croix on Strand Street (http://www.librarysample.com/usvi/librarypetersen.asp) .

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