Books, as a medium, can be overrated, and very often they are. When audiences, publishers, writers, and critics share the belief that, somehow, books hold more intrinsic value compared to all other mediums of art—like cinema, music, dance, architecture, &c.—we are seeing an example of literature being overrated. This is terribly damaging for everyone involved in the pipeline of literary production, from the elevator pitch to the book being stored in a library shelf, to be read for the next several decades.
It is quite common to find research saying that people who read books have more empathy, or that books make you smarter, compared to other mediums. In schools, we force young students to review classical literature, but we do not do the same with classical cinema, music, video games, and other forms of art. Have you ever had to write a report on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, or on the 1950 movie Sunset Boulevard? Imagine if you had to experience and write a report on the classic DOS game Fallout, from 1997?
Books are treated as a more important, relevant medium—but there is no reason for that! The seminal album Paranoid by Black Sabbath is not less relevant in our world than, say, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. As such, why do we study one, but not the other? Because, for many academics, critics, educators, and philosophers around the world, books are intrinsically better and more relevant than any other medium.
I would argue that this idea is not only wrong, but is also harmful for the literary market, and for everyone involved in it, from author to reader.
1. Books are just a medium
Just because something has been printed on paper, doesn’t mean it’s good; doesn’t mean it’s right; doesn’t even mean it’s relevant. Books are simply a tool to store, compress, and transport information. In this sense, a book is not different from a vinyl LP, or a CD that you buy with a copy of a movie or video game.
Of course, as a medium, books have certain economic advantages, compared to other methods of distribution. For example, a book is cheap to produce and distribute. To make a movie, you need to spend hundreds of thousands, or potentially millions of dollars in cameras, sets, costumes, actors, production crew, &c. Then, you need to spend even more to “print” millions of copies of the movie in DVD to distribute. (And, not even get me started with streaming services!)
Books, by comparison, can be written with nothing but cheap ballpoint pens and pulp paper, with a typewriter, or with the cheapest, oldest, clunkiest computer you can afford. Laying words to paper to create an epic scene full of grand spectacle is much easier than creating fantastic settings in CGI. As such, books can afford to tell stories that are much greater and epic than anything cinema can even dream! And, yet, cost as much to produce as a simple story set in the real world, where characters talk the whole time, and settings remain grounded and simple.
Books can also compress a lot of information in a small space. Words, if forged by a skilled hand, can contain a great deal of information in the subtext—so you have not only what has been written, but also what is laid between the lines, as part of the “data” that the book is delivering.
This is, however, no reason to think that books are a superior medium by themselves. You could take a book and write, with nearly zero cost, a pile of garbage; then, distribute this garbage in a much cheaper way than you would in another medium, potentially reaching more people who will read and absorb this garbage to themselves. In this case, I would argue, books are worse than other mediums! Because, any idiot who has nothing to say can write and publish a book, and distribute their stupidity to the world.
Content is what matters—and good content is rare. This is especially clear today, when we have so many books on self-help that don’t really help anyone, or books on politics that propagate lies to convince electors to vote for a certain political side. We even have books that propagate dangerous, hateful ideologies, influencing the average elector to vote for people who will only harm the weakest members of society for their own gains.
2. Overrating books creates false expectations
If we spread the idea that books are always this noble, magical medium that always makes you smarter; a medium that should be destined to the shelves of Time itself; a medium that comprises all the cosmic wisdom of our people and civilization; we create a terrible, false expectation of what books can or should be. After all, a book is, supposedly, not worth its paper unless it is a literary classic from the start! And, an author cannot be published unless they are as talented, skilled, and innovative as Shakespeare or Hemingway.
Imagine how many great authors have been rejected because they did not live up to that expectation. Or, even, how many readers failed to keep up with their reading habit because, in their quest to purchase books, they failed to find someone as great as F. Scott Fitzgerald among the shelves of book stores. They decided to buy nothing, instead of buying an author that they felt was inferior, just because the author was not writing what ought to become the next American classic.
Even worse: readers may reject certain literary genres that are considered too focused on entertainment, too escapist, too silly, to be treated as “serious literature.” Readers may think that, if they are serious about reading, they should read Mark Twain and Jane Austen, but not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert E. Howard, or Jules Verne. They want to be seen with The Catcher in the Rye in their shelves, not The Lord of the Rings. They won’t even walk through the corridors of Steampunk, Sword & Sandal, and Swashbuckler of the book store, and will, instead, go straight to the Prousts and Dostoevskys, because, to them, that is what literature should be.
But, what if you, as a reader, actually enjoy a silly swashbuckler? What if you, as a writer, like to write Steampunk love triangles and Sword & Sandal adventures? Then, many authors, critics, publishers, and readers, influenced by the belief that books should always be elevated, will treat your favorite literature as a “lesser reading.” This can influence entire marketing decisions. For example, cultural subsidies to the literary market will choose higher books, and ignore more “pulp,” cheaper literature. Libraries throughout the country will avoid buying the goofier stuff, and will, instead, fill their shelves with big, dense, philosophically complex literary masterpieces that only a few readers actually care about.
Meanwhile, most literary festivals and events will ignore the guy who wrote about, say, a situational comedy set in a zombie apocalypse, and will, instead, focus on an author who made a complex character study set in an obscure little town somewhere in France.
3. Overrating books promotes the worst kind of literature
There is a lot of garbage published in the market—especially today. And, people buy, read, and talk about this garbage, not because of its merit (of which there’s none), but because it is “literature.”
Think of how many pseudo-intellectuals with nothing to say have been raised to a dangerous level of political, social, and cultural relevance, not because of their ideas, but because they are “published authors with a butt-load of volumes in their name!”
If we believe all books should be elevated literature, and books are an intrinsically sacred medium, the first implication is that whatever book that is being published right now must be elevated as well. Why would, after all, a publisher release dozens of books of an author who is a total idiot?
But, it happens: many idiots out there have loads of books published! And, sometimes, they sell by the hundreds of thousands. The content of these books would have been ignored, if it wasn’t for the fact that it is printed as a codex, with a neat cover and glued spine. There are some books out there with so little merit that they shouldn’t even be analyzed or discussed. They should be collecting mold in the corner of a forgotten shop, or being used as a door stopper. Yet, they are being read, analyzed, and discussed! Journalists and critics talk about these books like they matter; their pages are used as reference for arguments, simply because they exist.
4. Conclusions
What we can take from that is simple: books are just collections of words printed on paper. They are a medium—like the CD is for music and the DVD is for movies. They are, by themselves, nothing special, except for their ability to compress information, for their comparative cost, and other intrinsic, materialistic characteristics. Other than that, books are not sacred, not magical, and certainly not capable of making you smarter and wiser by themselves!
In fact, you can spend a lifetime reading, and yet, remain stupid and prejudiced, stuck in absurd ideologies all your life. Books can even make you dumber, especially if you only read what you already know and agree with.
Or, they can simply entertain you, help you pass the time, make you laugh and cry, without really making you smarter or dumber. And, that’s okay! Not unlike movies, video games, music, and other mediums of art, sometimes all we need is a little brainless distraction from the misery of this world.
The belief that literature is this incredible, almost magical vehicle of culture and information is shared by many today—and, in some countries or languages, this is more prevalent than others. But, this belief is pervasive, as it creates a false expectation on authors, readers, publishers, and critics, who dismiss literature that they deem “inferior.” The belief even influences decisions on book purchases by governments and libraries, as well as policies of cultural subsidy, which may promote a few prestigious genres over others.
Lastly, the belief helps promote terrible books, written by terrible people, who would otherwise be ignored and dismissed (as they should), but, instead, are treated with seriousness, studied, argued, promoted, and elevated, just because they are “printed authors.” Many pseudo-intellectuals rose to the spotlight because they published books, and because audiences believe that, being literature such a sacred, elevated, art, then these authors must have something useful to say.