Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Gratsby 3710 days ago
This is very interesting. My son like most kids in his age range is a minecraft junkie. He blew through a series of Minecraft diaries - very short pages, very simple reading, but it entertained him. He read more than 20 of them in a week before I went and got Kindle Unlimited, and blew threw another 20 of them once I did.

It was obvious to me that the books were spam of sorts - but I figured it was to make money on $2-$4 purchases. It wasn't just one author, there was a series of similar book series.

Now I have an understanding of what's taking place. They are targeting kids like my son who can churn through pages like it's his job because it basically is. I'd rather him be reading ANYTHING than nothing. Once you develop a love for it, it turns into a lifelong joy instead of a punishment that you have to suffer through during school.

I really don't like how kids are targeted as revenue streams these days. I feel like there needs to be an awareness campaign targeting soccer moms so they are made aware of all the channels that are aggressively focused on making money off of elementary-school aged children. (endless youtube channels, video games, addictive mobile games, web games, etc.)

There is a giant hole in the marketplace for engaging and fun educational experiences that can be had for an annual subscription that doesn't try to monetize kids throughout the day. There are a lot of "free" educational options that don't have the quality or engagement that kids want. There are a handful of quality ones, but there really needs to be a market-leading presence that small/startup businesses can emulate and aspire to. The money is there in the market but nobody is attacking it properly.

1 comments

Is that really any worse than the dime store pulp novels of old?