Don't buy my book... borrow it!

As the Black Friday frenzy fades and the Montreal Book Fair has just ended, I want to address an essential reflection. What kind of author would I be if I encouraged you to buy compulsively, when my message advocates thoughtful buying and sharing?

During radio segment episode of Feu Vert, Catherine Perrin illustrated this tension:

This is the paradox of the current system: for a book to be valued by the industry, it must sell en masse, often as an individual object. However, our copyright system is not adapted to the logic of mutualization. It favors possession over sharing, confining knowledge to a market logic.

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What if, instead of owning, we learned to share? My book, like others, can live fully in libraries or circulate among readers. Each reading should not depend on a new sale.

Sure, the Public Lending Right Program in Canada compensates fiction authors who have their books published in public libraries, but still. I feel we are at a crossroads, much like the music industry has been in recent decades.

Signals

I wanted to share other ways of consuming and rethinking books, some interesting signals spotted for you in the last few months:

📗 BOOKS EXCHANGE

• The Newton Public Library is organizing a fall book exchange to encourage the sharing and discovery of new reading within the community.
• ​Ricardo Cuisine and his team, to launch his second volume of recipe book, distributed 100 copies in croques-livres (micro-libraries) across Quebec.

📒READ ELSEWHERE

• Bennet, the Italian retailer, has launched ​Good to read packs, packaging to give its buyers the desire to read again
• The ​Siéntate a Leer 2024 (sit down and read) campaign in Madrid transforms urban spaces with 26 book-shaped benches to promote reading and local bookstores, while offering interactive information about the works and authors via QR codes.

📕CREATE DIFFERENTLY

• By slightly adjusting the size of its books, ​HarperCollins​ has managed to save thousands of trees, demonstrating the ecological impact of design choices in publishing.
• A children's book that can't be ​read anywhere but outdoors​

📘DISTRIBUTE DIFFERENTLY

• ​A vending machine​ for books installed in an elementary school to motivate students to read and reinforce positive behaviors. ​
• The Aesop brand is integrating books into its identity, temporarily transforming its stores into literary libraries, such as in Singapore, where it offered free books written by women, drawing crowds.

Coming up...

📅 January - April

I am very pleased to announce that I am taking over the helm for a 5th year, teaching the university course MOD2302 - Trend and Lifestyle Analysis, at UQAM. I am therefore looking for trend analysis projects from companies for these future professionals. Would you like to give us a trend research mandate for $0 and in exchange for a maximum of 1 hour per week for 10 weeks?

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À bientôt

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