Today we bring you the latest installment of "Checking the Pulse," our occasional feature with the folks at Pangea, an online advertising company that operates a network of quiz sites, including youth-oriented Quibblo.com. The surveys are developed by us and distributed to Pangea's network of self-selecting tweens and early teens (ages 8 to 15). We hope this will help Ypulse readers (not to mention us) get a glimpse into what teens and tweens think about the topics we discuss here…And if your company/agency/research house has access to tweens, teens, early twentysomethings and you're interested in developing a research based feature on Ypulse, just email us.

For this last survey we dove into another subject we thought tweens would have some big opinions about: Books. We heard back from 2,072 tweens and early teens (Pangea's audience skews younger and mostly female) in the past month, and received more than 500 comments! Here are some of the highlights…

Tweens are bookworms… and proud of it! If this doesn't give you the warm fuzzies, nothing will: 90% of the tweens who responded "enjoy reading." Most report reading around 1 to 5 books per month for fun, but an ambitious 27% report they read 6 or more. Also, in comments tweens were more than happy to identify themselves as "bookworms" and shout out the running total of books they've read so far this year. 

Buy or borrow? 42% of tweens get "most of their books" from school or the library, while 35% opt to make a trip to the bookstore. Not surprisingly, only 3% of our respondents said they get their books from Amazon (more of an option for older teens with access to a credit card)

What is this "e-reader" of which you speak? In response to the question "if someone bought you an eReader like the Amazon Kindle would you read books on it?" 64% responded "what's an eReader?" Amazon might not find this funny, but it made us smirk (it may make Kindle fans feel better to know that of those who did know what the device was 23% said "yes") However, if you think that means the reading experience ends at the page, think again.

When reading does lead online.  The top online reading-related activities tweens checked off included "logging on to an author's website" (1.37K), going online to "learn more about a book's character or background" (1.35K) and checking out book reviews (971). Others reported that they had logged on to "watch a book trailer" (885) and "read a summary" (565) The most unpopular category? Only 139 said they had "attended a live chat with an author" 

Whatcha reading? Not surprisingly, 1.81K tweens said they were fans of fantasy/romance (hello, Twilight). 892 said they were fans of science fiction and 784 spoke up as fans of graphic novels. Encouragingly, 750 claimed to be fans of poetry. In other unsurprising news,  71% said they preferred serial series to stand alone titles.

Tweens judge a book by its cover and a movie by its book. 62% of our respondents reported that a cover is "somewhat important" to their decision in whether or not to read a book. And 64% said that they usually read a book before deciding to see the movie version. 

For more coverage of YA books and publishing, check out the Ypulse Books Channel sponsored by The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (LB Teens).

Categorized under: Books

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