Last weekend I popped into Mrs. Dalloway’s bookstore in Berkeley and picked up the shortest book I’ve ever purchased: just 12 pages.
It was an essay from David Graeber titled Bullshit Jobs—the precursor to his longer book of the same name. You don’t find too many books of this length, but it was undoubtedly a book. Pages with ink, some sort of binding, and a cover made of thicker stock.
If you’re not convinced yet, it also has an ISBN (978-1-967751-44-0), a barcode, and a New York publisher (if that matters to you). It has all of the qualities of a book. It has them, of course, because it is a book.
I wish that more people wrote period, but I also wish that more people published books. It’s easy to put books on a pedestal, even if you’re comfortable calling yourself a writer. It feels lofty; serious.
To state something that’s hopefully obvious: I love books. Books are important. Books are wonderful. Books are special, in their own way.
To state something I also believe, though: books are just another vehicle for ideas. We should have more books. Books should be used.
You can print a single copy of a book on your home printer, bind it with staples and give it to someone you love. That’s a book. If you wanted to get fancy, you could purchase an ISBN, assign it to the book, and make up a cool name for your imprint. Still a book; the same book.
If you wanted to sell that book instead of giving it away, you could do so directly in person or online, and honestly say you have a single copy in stock. If you wanted to see if a book store would sell it, you could generate a barcode and affix it to your book. It’s still the same book.
Of course, you don’t even need to print a book for it to be a book. Your book could be a PDF, or an ebook, or simply a website. You’ll find many such books today; books that have never been printed on paper.
I say all of this with the knowledge that I have not produced a book myself—not even by the standards I outlined above. As usual, I’m writing this blog post for me primarily. I’m writing it because I want to publish a book. I want to produce it with love, and give it to those I love.
We treat some things with the wrong kind of reverence, I think. Books should be treated with reverence for what they do, not what they are. Books help to spread knowledge and increase human understanding, but it’s the knowledge that’s important to me; the form a nice treat.
If you’re the kind of person who thinks that you could never publish a book, I urge you to join me in dispelling that myth. If you have an idea, that idea could be a book. It could be pages with ink, some sort of binding, and a cover made of thicker stock—or it could be none of that.