The Good Column: Design determines consciousness

I’m not sure whether, for the sake of a better future, the book market shouldn’t be radically modernized. If you purchase a book innocently, you are often forced to go through all sorts of hardships: you have to open it, read it, and possibly store and evaluate what you have read in your brain, and perhaps even discuss it with others. Too strenuous! Too much energy consumption! Too complicated! Too time consuming!

Not only superfluous ideas could be saved immediately if the content of books were simply left out in the future. Large-scale slimming measures could also be taken in terms of personnel (authors, editors, proofreaders, printers, etc.) and materials (printing machines, printer’s ink). The publishing scene is already making huge progress in this direction and has long been diversifying its range, adapting it to today’s needs and converting it to contemporary products. Because books that contain traditional text are hardly needed anymore. Books, on the other hand, which function as a chic self-expression tool, a fashion accessory, a signal for initiating contact or a flatterer, are the commodity of the future.

Books, on the other hand, which function as a chic self-expression tool, a fashion accessory, a signal for initiating contact or a flatterer, are the commodity of the future.

Proof of the market readiness and commercial success of this new business model is provided by the following true story, which a friend, whose books are published by a respected German publishing house, recently told me and which in turn was confided to him by a friend who publishes at another renowned publishing house: Three years ago, on the occasion of the 150th birthday of Marcel Proust, whose monumental novel “In Search of Lost Time” has been considered a kind of monument of literary modernity for decades, the Suhrkamp publishing house, which in turn is considered a kind of monument among the German literary publishers are publishing several works by the French writer as well as literature that introduces the entire work in lovingly designed new editions. Among the newly published titles was Proust’s above-mentioned main work, bound in three magnificent volumes and provided with a “decorative slipcase” (Suhrkamp: “a real eye-catcher”, “a must on any well-stocked bookshelf”). There was also a book with previously unpublished early prose sketches and stories (“Die Zeit”: “a sensation”) as well as a two-volume, reprinted collection of selected letters from the poet, also in a slipcase (“NZZ”: “a magnificent treasure trove «). The new edition of a brick-thick biography was also part of the offer.

But the best-selling book of all Proust titles published for the anniversary year is a notebook. A notebook in paperback format, the cover and spine of which are designed in the style of the classic Suhrkamp paperback: on the front you can read the words “In Search of Lost Time”, shiny and purple on a black background (design determines consciousness).

The thing seems to have been a kind of permanent bestseller for the company ever since. At least, according to the publisher’s website, the seventh and most recent edition of the notebook dates from January of this year. So that there are no misunderstandings here: The publisher’s best-selling, most successful product in connection with Proust’s year is a book with completely blank pages. A fact that market observers and trend scouts in the book industry should register carefully (and which I therefore explicitly point out here).

The Suhrkamp company advertises the “paperback” that is completely free of text and in which there is nothing to read, with the following Proust quote: “In reality, every reader, when he reads, is actually the reader of himself.” A well-chosen one Quote! It flatters the potential buyer’s ego and gives the narcissistic and half-literate young customer the pleasant feeling of being a kind of reincarnated Proust, who, with every aphorism he leaves in his notebook (“Shop for beer – don’t forget!”), creates organically pulsating literature and, so to speak, writes along with our fast-paced present without wasting any time.

The Suhrkamp website goes on to say: “The elegant and handy notebook has 160 blank pages that invite you to write and take notes, to reflect and sketch.” So you can not only write and write in it, but also draw something in it, there is enough space Yes. The blank paper pad in paperback format costs six euros.

One thing is certain: it is, as business people say, an “unbeatable price.” And the best thing is: not a single cent of the six euros has to be passed on to any author.