Are we Buying Books or Reading Them?
Everyone wants to build a collection of something: to buy porcelain dolls till they make rows in a glass cabinet, or collect hundreds of Barbies in a closet, and make shelves fill with books. Especially when the thing being collected has a use and might make you look smarter. In the case of books, people have had libraries for centuries–they store endless knowledge. But with owning a library comes a dilemma: if you have too many books, you won’t have a chance to read all of them in your lifetime. Today there are so many books on the market that it can be difficult to not want everything, especially when social media promotes buying over borrowing books. Walking into Barnes and Noble feels like walking into a candy store as a kid. Not to mention, the quality of the books you want to buy may not be that good. How much longer can I justify buying so many books? It’s no better than fast fashion.
Well, Gen Z has increased our reading rate more than any other generation since the start of the pandemic according to princh.com. Publishers have responded to the increase in readers since the pandemic by printing even more books than ever before. Combining self-published and traditionally published titles, about three million new titles are published annually in the US. And this is a startling statistic: over the previous 16 years, the number of new titles published annually has increased by more than 10 times as stated by Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Admittedly I’ve fallen down the book-buying spiral, justifying my overspending by saying “I want to build a library in my future home.” I think it's time we recognize that reading books and buying books have become two separate hobbies.
More than ever, I’d argue the reason for buying books is losing its meaning. Booktok influencers post book hauls daily and publishers push out hundreds of books weekly. With the oversaturation in literature comes errors that fall through the cracks, whether that be grammar or misprints. It seems like some books that have come out recently were first drafts.
A recent example of the issues in publishing was the release of Iron Flame, the second installment in a Romantasy (romance fantasy) series. The first book in the series, Fourth Wing was a massive success on TikTok earlier this year. I had a chance to read it this summer and raved about it to friends and family. Needless to say, I was counting down the days till the release of Iron Flame.
After opening my door on November 7, I grabbed the package, sat down and start reading. In comparison to Fourth Wing, the quality of Iron Flame was noticeably lacking; almost like it was written and edited in a short time. Most readers would agree that although we want the next installment in a series to come out as soon as possible, we don’t want the quality to be sacrificed for the speed of publication.
In addition to the speedy release of Iron Flame, the Publication House Red Tower Books (an offshoot of MacMillan) released an untitled and not pictured book on Target’s Website. Assuming the book was the next installment of The Empyrean series, fans sold out the book within hours as stated by Jessica Karl, a columnist for Bloomberg News. As it turned out, the mysterious release was just a special edition of Fourth Wing, a book the fans most likely already owned. Fans were just buying books based on the anticipation they had to be the first ones to get the new installment.
Above all else, we read books for their stories: owning a book is secondary. There shouldn’t be so much stress on having to own books, especially when we have a wonderful media center in our school and great public libraries in the area. There are so many options at our disposal.
“We are always trying to feed the library collection with what is considered the best of Young Adult fiction,” Dr. Culver, said.
The English teachers and media center staff (some overlap of course) have encouraged checking out titles from the library and carving out time in their class schedules for reading time.
“Ten years ago, in 2013, we checked out 1,902 books, compared to this year we have checked out 3,293 books. Nearly double,” Dr. Culver added.
The timely release of Iron Flame and the drama surrounding The Untitled Book are prime examples of the publishing industry's convoluted focus on squeezing as much money as they can out of readers. Books are now being made with a focus on quantity not quality. We readers need to be more conscious about what we buy and continue to or start to better utilize all the resources available in our local community.