Shelf service ... the bookshop at Bramhall. Photograph: Don McPhee

Does choosing children's books make you all of a dither? With 10,500 titles published annually you could be forgiven if it does. Now a group of publishers have decided to print what they consider suitable age ranges on the covers of children's books.

Beginning at the end of April, several imprints will introduce age classification on their backlist titles with the intention that this will be introduced across all publications later in the year. The motive for this - greater sales and therefore greater profits - is as questionable as the need do it in the first place.

Research carried out by Acacia Avenue in 2006 found that 88% of us find book buying easy, with only 11% reporting any uncertainty, something reflected in a rise of over 34% in sales of children's titles over the past two years. These results are corroborated by a research exercise into children and parents' book selection techniques which found that even without age guidance on book covers, 85% of children and 75% of parents selected books from the relevant age group.

The proposed move fundamentally misunderstands the egalitarian nature of reading - the idea that any reader can choose to read any book - and the choices all readers employ at times to challenge or soothe themselves. It also fails to understand the complex process of choosing the right books for the right child.

The initiative also runs contrary to recent successes in building up crossover markets for titles such as JK Rowling's Harry Potter, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. These books transcend the boundaries traditionally associated with children's literature and have sparked a useful debate about what makes a book for children.

This cynical decision has been announced just as the second National Year of Reading begins, a time when reading, its promotion and the wealth of literature available through so many different formats should be being celebrated. Children's enjoyment of reading in the United Kingdom is already low in comparison with their global peers. The challenge is to design new, innovative, creative and exciting access-points for children to enter the republic of reading, not in finding more repressive regimes and rule with which to further limit it.