Economists are told that the true state of the economy is measured in people’s pockets. Macro figures are of little use in a world that mostly lives at a micro level. In this way, with micro appreciations, I will make some comments on the state of reading, which does not seem to walk with the optimism of the publishing world.
Publishers claim that book sales have been on the rise over the last ten years. But what are they selling? Because when I travel on the subway in any city, it is already difficult to find a reader, and I am not going to fantasize that they have some classic on their cell phones. When I am looking for an apartment, the interior photographs do not show the existence of libraries or bookcases. Meanwhile, it is known that movie and series companies have multiplied their subscribers. Sports broadcasts have also been increasing their audience.
These days the Madrid Book Fair is being held. Different from what is done in Mexico, here the main activity is taking armies of writers to the booths of publishers, bookstores and associations to have their books signed. Has the book become a fetish with a dedication that will not be read?
This year, the Madrid fair offers 7,126 signing sessions. Both there and on St. George’s Day in Barcelona you can see writers catching flies and others standing in long lines. There is something for all tastes: from writers to television stars, from humanists to social media users. The longest lines are those of the famous people to whom they wrote their book.
Those who write many dedications say: “I signed so many hundreds of books.” On the other hand, those who spend their time as orphans: “I spent an hour signing books.” There are also authors who know how to sell. “Hello!”, they call whoever has approached the magnetic field, “do you want to take this book signed by the author, who is me? It is a gripping thriller about…”
More books are sold than ever, and why, then, is the level of reading, knowledge and debate not perceived in the pocket as was the case, for example, in the sixties? Why do people talk about movies and football and not books? Why do you seek individuality with banalities? “When I eat fried eggs, I eat the white first, then the yolk.” “No,” says the other, “I prick the yolk and stir everything.” “I don’t do one thing or another,” comments the third, “I eat it in order and the yolk gets its turn, although sometimes the yolk is not in the center but is at one end, and in that case the I leave it for last or I can also start with it.” “I like them to be a little raw.” “Yo, well cooked.” “I turned around.” So there are endless conversations to kill time with words. Hipolit Hipolitích syndrome.
The conversations are also full of phrases used to advise and fix other people’s lives. This is no surprise. Among the fifty best-selling books on Amazon.es, I find twenty-eight self-help books. The genre is misnamed, since only someone who cannot help himself turns to a book titled How to make good things happen to you either Recover your mind, recapture your life either 50 capsules of self-love.
Like every season of discouragement, it once again appears among the best sellers Think and become rich, a book that alone made Napoleon Hill rich. On this list, there are also novels of childish entertainment, but nothing that we could fit into the fine arts.
Perhaps, although it is our opinion, not every past time was better. Reviewing the list of bestsellers of the New York Times Review of Books fifty years ago, I find something obvious: bestsellersamong which stands out Jaws, a year before the film. And in the general list the well-known appears Alivewhich in Spanish earned some exclamation points: They live! This bestseller list includes a couple of books to fulfill the eternal fantasy of getting rich. The advice of one of them: “Buy gold, silver, Swiss francs and a gun.” I don’t know if the gun is for the case that everything goes wrong.
The list from seventy years ago has as its first place The power of positive thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale, a classic in that motivating genre that spends five hundred pages where only ten are needed. “It is terrible to realize that there is a large number of fainthearted people affected and afflicted by the evil known as inferiority complex,” says the author on the first page. “But you don’t have to suffer this problem.” We assume that the book did not work in Argentina.
Today more books are sold than ever. That’s good for publishing companies, but maybe not for reading. I don’t know if selling more is equivalent to reading more, reading better. For writers, the figures are overwhelming: 250 novelties appear every day in Spain, and we all want a space in bookstores, a review in a supplement and, of course, some readers. Those of us who spent our childhood with four television channels look with nostalgia at those editors who did the sifting so that we wouldn’t do it. Better a few novelties of large print runs than many of a few copies. However, the multiplication works because now, more than ever, the author himself is expected to sell his book.
That’s why an author’s sales plummet when they die. From one day to the next, from one fair to the next, he no longer gives interviews or appears on TV, he no longer presents his books or argues online and, above all, he no longer signs his books with beautiful dedications that speak of the affection he feels. by someone he doesn’t even know. ~
(Monterrey, 1961) is a writer. He was winner of the 2017 Xavier Villaurrutia Writers’ Prize for Writers for his novel Olegaroy.
