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eReaders catch younger eyes and go in backpacks

Something extraordinary happened after Eliana Litos received an e-reader for a Hanukkah gift in December.

“Some weeks I completely forgot about TV,” said Eliana, 11. “I went two weeks with only watching one show, or no shows at all. I was just reading every day.”

Ever since the holidays, publishers have noticed that some unusual titles have spiked in eBook sales. The “Chronicles of Narnia” series. “Hush, Hush.” The “Dork Diaries” series. At HarperCollins, for example, e-books made up 25 percent of all young-adult sales in January, up from about 6 percent a year before–a boom in sales that quickly got the attention of publishers there.

“Adult fiction is hot, hot, hot, in e-books,” said Susan Katz, the president and publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books. “And now it seems that teen fiction is getting to be hot, hot, hot.”

In their infancy eReaders were adopted by an older generation that valued the devices for their convenience, portability and, in many cases, simply for their ability to enlarge text to a more legible size, reports the New York Times. Appetite for eBook editions of best sellers and adult genre fiction–romance, mysteries, thrillers–has seemed almost bottomless…

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