For the love of the written word

When any form of new technology is invented or becomes popular, speculation abounds about the fate of previous "old-fashioned" versions.

With the advent of the internet 20 years ago and its popular use for news, it was professed that printed newspapers would die a horrible death.

There is no doubt that the internet did have some impact on the newspaper industry but many newspapers are still being printed quite successfully today.

When the global financial crisis hit, however, advertising revenue dried up and some newspapers found themselves in trouble.

So what threat does the advent of e-books pose? Will printed books simply go out of fashion? The latter, at least, are not as much at threat from financial crises, considering they don't rely heavily on advertising revenue (as media does).

On October 28, Sotheby's in London held an auction of a collection of 149 rare books, sold by an unknown 75-year-old collector.

A signed first edition of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol fetched £181,250 (Dh1 million), while an early copy of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte was sold for £163,250 (Dh962,000). Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice brought in £139,250 (Dh820,000), while a first-edition copy of Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel Dracula sold for £10,000 (Dh58,900).

In the United States, a 1938 first-edition Superman comic book sold for $1 million (Dh3.6 million), while a more recently published signed first edition of Harry Potter sold for $23,900 (Dh87,800).

The books are valuable and that is not only due to their age, as these examples show.

Renowned Egyptian author Khalid Al Khamissi grew up in a house with books for walls, where books were revered.

His father is a poet; his grandfather, his uncles and several generations before him are writers and intellectuals.

"I used to eat some Dostoevsky when I was two years old and my grandfather used to hit me," he told Weekend Review. "And he told me I could do anything — except eat Dostoevsky."

When paper degrades, hundreds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are released into the air. This is the familiar musty smell of an old book, identified by Dr Matija Strlic from the University College London's (UCL) Centre for Sustainable Heritage.

The smell of old books is, she has described, "a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness — this unmistakable smell is as much a part of the book as its contents".

The UCL department designed a "sniff" test to preserve the books without damaging them.

Take a printed book in your hands and you will feel its paper, smell its odour, read its words from different printed textures. Take an electronic reader in your hands, however, and the experience is very different — somewhat akin to reading from a thin computer screen.

Recently two separate studies released by the National Association of College Stores and the Student Public Interest Research Groups found that three-quarters of the students they surveyed preferred print/bound books to the electronic versions.

The story sparked a discussion by publishers Random House on microblogging site Twitter.

"...you can't use a kindle to hold up a wonky table ;) books RULE!" LouMcCudden tweeted.

"Until they make Kindles that smell like a new book, I'm not buying," jaquelinesteps wrote.

She may be in luck, if the DuroSport Electronics "Smell of Books" aerosol e-book enhancer is to be believed.

"Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favourite paper book," the unbelievable site reads.

The student Tweeps raise some valid points: You can make notes on paper textbooks; it is difficult to flip pages quickly in classes with an e-reader; hardbacks demand focus; and you can take printed texts into open-book examinations.

Cristina Shepherd is a frequent traveller, who lives and works for an NGO in Afghanistan. For her, printed books are simply impractical.

"I originally bought my Sony eReader before I moved to Afghanistan. I love to read but travelling with loads of books isn't very convenient," she told Weekend Review from Kabul.

Shepherd has been using the eReader since January but does alternate the electronic device with printed books.

"I do miss the interaction with physical books and I always travel with a select few. But, when you move around as much as I do, the convenience of having 50 books in something smaller and lighter than a laptop is priceless. I try to alternate when I can because I miss having the actual book in my hands," she said.

The last book she read was World Without End by Ken Follett on her eReader but is at present reading a printed book: Descent into Chaos by Ahmad Rashid.

Generally, she has found that e-books are less expensive, plus public domain e-books are free of charge, meaning "I've got Jane Austen's entire collection at the press of a button," she said.

In 1935, Allen Lane stood on a train platform in Exeter, England, having spent a weekend visiting crime novelist Agatha Christie. Looking for something to read on his journey back to London, he was appalled at the selection of magazines and Victorian novels.

His brainchild was the Penguin paperback book, which cost just sixpence (the same as a packet of cigarettes at the time) and published works by authors such as Ernest Hemingway, André Maurois and Agatha Christie.

"I would be the first to admit that there is no fortune in this series for anyone concerned but if my premises are correct and these Penguins are the means of converting book-borrowers into book-buyers, I shall feel that I have perhaps added some small quota to the sum of those who during the last few years have worked for the popularisation of the bookshop and the increased sale of books," Lane wrote in The Bookseller in May 1935.

He decided that good-quality, contemporary fiction should be made affordable and available at railway stations, tobacconists and shops (not just at bookshops).

Before the rise of Penguin books, cheap paperbacks were generally poor in quality and most used to borrow books from their nearest library.

Veteran British journalist Kate Adie attended university in the 1960s and was the generation after the first generation of Penguin book-buyers.

"Owning books became a mark of, well, it was pride, because nearly all of us came from homes where there were very few books that were bought; you went to the library instead. I went to the library as a child and borrowed hundreds of books," Adie said.

Her generation, she continued, has "houses full of books and we cannot get rid of them. ... We learnt to acquire books, so it was thrilling and new for our generation and the idea of getting rid of them is incredibly difficult."

Adie is a self-confessed "book person", who has piles of books "blocking out light in the windows".

As for an electronic book reader, Adie hasn't been "seduced yet" but hasn't ruled it out completely in the future.

Al Khamissi has just bought an iPad. When Weekend Review spoke to him, he hadn't tried reading a book on it but was looking forward to trying it out.

"I love to read, not to read paper. I am not interested at all about paper. I don't love paper as a matter of fact," he said.

So how popular are e-books? According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP), e-book sales for January to last August were worth $263 million (Dh966 million) — representing a 193 per cent increase for the same period in 2009 ($89.8 million or Dh329.8 million). In August 2010, compared to August 2009 alone, there was a 172.4 per cent increase.

This July, online bookseller Amazon released figures that showed it was selling more e-books than hardcovers.

Publishers confirmed the numbers, with one reporting figures higher than the 143 e-books to 100 hardcovers Amazon had quoted for its second quarter.

Publishers, however, explained this apparent growth in interest — Amazon is now selling the (cheaper) e-book version of hardcovers at the time of its publication, rather than three months afterwards. Another publisher simply pointed out that Amazon has a huge e-book market share, compared to its lower share of the hardcover market.

Therefore, although the e-book market might be becoming increasingly popular, this doesn't necessarily mean that the printed book market is dwindling.

Far from it in fact. AAP statistics for publishers' book sales last August alone were $1.6 billion (Dh5.8 billion), an increase of 3.4 per cent on August 2009 and up a total of 6.9 per cent for the year.

Perhaps Tweeper joshuajwirtanen describes it best: "As an English major, I feel there's nothing quite like holding a physical copy of a book. Ahhhhh. New book smell!"