"Harder to get boys into books" means "scholastic sales are down" - it's hard for me to believe that with 50,000 + novels that we can't find any that are appealing - but they're not scholastic "new" and they don't move the money the way they need.

A boy (or girl! They're allowed to read, too now, like Belle) buying a copy of The Hobbit doesn't help much, they need consumption of the new mass-produced stuff to keep the machine running.