‘Something magical is happening’: sales boom for children’s comics creating young readers of the future
The best route to learning to love words in print could well be pictures. This, at least, is the hope of the publishing industry this spring, as it welcomes news that sales of children’s comics and graphic novels have reached an all-time peak of almost £20m in Britain.
While publishers and editors are celebrating this boom for its own sake, the popularity of these titles is also being hailed as a good omen for novels, ahead of the London Book Fair at Olympia this week. “Over the last decade we’ve seen a significant rise in sales of graphic novels for both the adult and children’s markets,” said Philip Stone, media analyst at NielsenIQ BookData, as he revealed details of the latest trends, hits and flops this weekend.
“Superhero books have been a reliably big feature, probably boosted by all the screen superhero movies. A lot of manga series are doing very well again, and this may also be linked to screen versions. What we really need now is some deep-dive research into the impact of graphic and comic fiction as a gateway for young people into reading. We certainly suspect it’s true.”
Among the major hits to lure the readers of the future with comic-style stories are paperback-sized titles such as the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney, and Jamie Smart’s Bunny Vs Monkey books.
Smart said: “As a creator, comics are one of the greatest ways to tell a story. You get to show the reader everything that’s inside your mind, how a scene looks, who the characters are, what they’re doing, all the subtleties and nuances of their behaviours, and you hold all that within the space of a single panel. Then you do it again, and again, propelling the story forwards, unfolding entire worlds in front of your audiences. And when you’re given that freedom to tell a story exactly how you imagine it, I think readers really respond to that.”
The appetite for books in graphic form comes after the National Literacy Trust confirmed the decline in children’s general reading habits last November. It found that just one in three children and young people aged eight to 18 enjoyed reading in their free time, with enjoyment levels decreasing by 8.8 percentage points in the past year.
Undaunted, Smart will attend the book fair as its first “creative” in residence this week, a sign of his industry status. He is convinced children are beguiled by books that avoid making them feel they are doing something overtly educational.
“A good story well told is worth its weight in gold, and comics are no exception,” said Smart. “We’re seeing that now, especially with younger readers and reluctant readers, who are all drawn in by the bright visuals and funny characters, before becoming carried along by the stories, and then forming lifelong bonds with these books. Something quite magical is happening at the moment. It’s really exciting to see.”
In truth, the demand for grown-up fiction needs little encouragement. In print it continues to drive sales across all the markets Nielsen looked at. The top-performing fiction titles were all written by women, such as Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, and Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid. Notably, the thriller writer LJ Ross has significant popularity in the north of England, becoming the second most popular fiction author in the region, ahead of everyone except McFadden.
Fiction hardbacks also achieved the largest sales by value in Britain on record, with six titles selling more than 100,000 units on their own. “Fiction is a little cheaper, which may be an element,” said Stone. “It’s also offers pure escapism, which people may be seeking now.”
In contrast, non-fiction is “having a tough time”, with the lowest sales figures in about 20 years. Stone ascribes this continuing slump partly to cost and partly to the internet. “There’s a lot of free content out there in the non-fiction area. We used to see personal development titles doing very well, but it’s fallen away a bit. Religious books are up, though,” he said.
Last year, the first university-led research programme into the impact of comics on literacy showed that superheroes may be saving us from more than supervillains: they also seem to turn young people into enthusiastic readers. The study project, funded by Comic Art Europe and conducted by researchers at Manchester University in collaboration with the annual Lakes International Comic Art Festival, ran for two years at Abraham Moss community school in north Manchester. Fifty students took part in the comics literacy programme, while 50 others functioned as a control group.
According to the school’s own measurements, the average reading age of the class involved in the comics intervention rose by 18 months in the year after the workshops started, in contrast to a rise of 11 months in the other group.
The number of children who listed reading as one of their favourite leisure activities also doubled in the intervention group, while falling in the comparison group.
