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By Joanna

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If you read any ‘ebooks versus print books’ article, you’ll soon come across the print fetishists. These are people who acknowledge the rise of ebooks—grudgingly—but then insist that ‘real’ book lovers surely prefer paper, or that paper is ‘nicer’ or a ‘better experience’ or in some way superior. I am starting to get really annoyed with these people! Overlooking the obvious ‘print and pixel really can co-exist and there is no need for an either/or mentality’ argument, I am starting to grow a little offended by the economic snobbery that I perceive in some of these arguments.

What I think a lot of these ‘paper is superior’ people fail to consider is that even in this modern day and age, having a large paper library is still an economic luxury. It used to be so because the cost of an education to learn the skill of reading was prohibitive; then, it was because the cost of books themselves was high in a time when income was so limited. Now, it’s because the cost of the cost of real estate is, for many, a very real economic fact of life. I live in a large city where even one-bedroom apartments sell for almost half a million dollars. Under what scheme could a young person like me starting out in their career possibly be able to afford a single-family house with space for all the books (in paper!) that I might want to read?

Yes, other cities do have more favourable real estate markets. But my job is here and my life, for now, is here. I am open to that changing in the future. Certainly, if I reached the point of having kids myself, I would look outside the city when considering a home. But the bottom line reality for a young person in my shoes is this: space costs money. A lot of money. So, to say ‘oh it’s so lovely to have all these nice paper books!’ is really saying ‘oh, it’s so nice to have all this money for such a large amount of space!’

When I read these arguments in favour of paper, they all seem to come from people my parents age who have had long lives and careers in the well-paying later stages during which they acquired their homes. Indeed, Of the people in my real life who do the whole ‘I just enjoy so much having all the lovely books in paper’ thing, the only one who is not over the age of 60 is a twentysomething co-worker—who lives in the large, single-family house belonging to her parents.

No offense to my parent’s generation, but they seem to have a different perspective on money than me and my thirtysomething friends. I remember the year my boss mandated attendance at a staff social event that cost $50. We were all horrified, and she didn’t see what the fuss was about. $50 was just not a lot of money to her. And indeed, when I complained to my own similar-aged parent about this, her response was to offer to just give me the $50 so I could go. It simply never crossed their minds that this amount of money might be large for us. Similarly, from the comfort (and space!) of the homes they can afford at that stage of their lives, I think many of them have forgotten the one-room-apartment reality of the younger generation. It just does not occur to them that some people truly do not have the facilities to purchase, and keep, a large collection of books in paper.

So, when I read these comments from people who claim they love books too much to ever stop buying paper, my reaction is not ‘you make a valid argument about the aesthetics of one media over another.’ My reaction instead is ‘must be nice to be rich enough to afford that much space!’ I cannot afford a home big enough to house every book I love, in paper. But that doesn’t make me less of a reader, of a customer, of a book lover. What it does mean is that ebooks have opened up the notion of ‘owning a library’ to people like me who might otherwise be excluded. So maybe those of you in the rich ‘upper classes’ so to speak should be a tiny bit less snobby about us electronic upstarts, and consider—just for a moment—that your choice to stay with paper might actually be an economic privilege that is not universal.

 
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