Age guidance

The provision for age-guidance on UK children’s books

A note for book buyers: age guidance explained:   age guidance for book buyers

Background and summary of research, June 2008

The Publishers Association (PA) is committed to children’s reading and to making children’s books accessible to every child. The PA shares with the rest of the book industry a commitment to expanding the market for books and reading of all kinds, to the benefit of publishers, booksellers, authors and readers.

The issue of age-guidance on children’s books came to the fore in 2005 with the publication of the Expanding the Book Market report1, commissioned from the research company Book Marketing Limited (BML) by Arts Council England (ACE) and other funding partners. The report made various recommendations for improved information for readers and book buyers, including the provision of age-guidance on children’s books to encourage gift-buying2. More than half the existing market (53%) for children’s books is made up of gift purchases by adults3.

In the wake of that report, the PA Children’s Book Group (CBG) - aware that there are strongly held views on the subject throughout the children’s books industry - decided to investigate the reported demand for greater age-guidance in more detail through the commission of objective research with booksellers, consumers and with children themselves. The first stage was to research the subject with booksellers, (Age-ranging on Children’s Books: A Trade Research Project, BML, 2005)4. This research was conducted amongst specialist independent booksellers and the major retail chains. The results5 suggested sufficient support from booksellers to encourage the PA to commission further qualitative and quantitative research with adult consumers, (Showing Your Age, Acacia Avenue, 2007)6 and a further smaller-scale study from Rapport/CPI Solutions7 with children and their parents.

The research with consumers showed that 86% of adults - both heavy and light book buyers – welcomed age guidance on the back of children’s books 40% per cent of them said that they were likely to buy more books with more guidance on ages.6 The research with children and their parents showed that for children the appeal of a book does not vary significantly whether it carries an age-guide or not. 

The style of the age-guidance being introduced was selected from three possible styles by the adults in the qualitative part of the Acacia Avenue research.6

Age guidance
 
Following a review of the results of these two final reports, the PA CBG issued a recommendation to all its members to introduce standard age-guidance on their titles (on new books from Autumn 2008 and on reprints) in the expectation that this will help to increase sales of children’s books to light and medium buyers (light buyers are defined as those who buy between 1-5 books per year, medium buyers are those who buy between 6-10 books a year, across a wider range of authors and therefore by extension increase the number of children reading.
 

1 Expanding the Book Market: A Study of Reading and Buying Habits in GB, BML/Arts Council England/Other Funding partners, February 2005, ISBN 1 873517270
2 Expanding the Book Market, pp 6,13,14,16,18-19,21,29
3 Books & the Consumer, BML/TNS, 2008
4 Age-ranging on Children’s Books: A trade Research Project, Full Report, BML, July 2005
5 Age-ranging on Children’s Books, BML 2005, pp 8, 11, 14, 15
6 Showing Your Age, Acacia Avenue, 2007
7 How children and parents react to children’s books with and without an age-guide on the back cover, Rapport/CPI Solutions, June 2007