It seemed innocent enough. The Baltimore Sun runs a story, Money Wasters To Avoid, offering readers various ways to save some money during these challenging times. The piece included the usual money-saving tips like eat out less, wash your own car, rent DVD’s instead of buying them, and a few more abstract ones like don’t speed because tickets are expensive, you burn more gas and if you’re caught your insurance premiums will go up.
All sounds good. But then they included the almighty book.
“Some books are nice to have – like your favorite one, for example. But really, buying the newest hardcover Jodi Picoult because you can not wait to get it from the library – not very smart. Open up an account with your local library or arrange a book swap with some friends.”
Yes, of course on the most basic level, this make sense but please. Anyone there ever heard of used books? Copies of the aforementioned latest by Jodi Picoult, in hardback, are available online for as little as $7.95 (list price was $27.95). There is also the library lag time to consider; where the wait time for many of today’s bestsellers outpaces the release date for the paperback!
The absurdity of this careless inclusion was quickly exposed. Megan Halpern at MobyLives noted “The same newspaper that just unloaded their Books Editor (in the same industry that constantly wails, “help us! Print is dying!”) encouraged its online readers yesterday to avoid buying books” and here at @bookpatrol we tweeted ‘Newspaper to Avoid : The Baltimore Sun. Buying books considered one of the “Money Wasters To Avoid.”
Realizing that a storm was brewing, Nancy Johnston attempts to clear the air on the Sun’s Read Street blog with her post “In Defense of Books.” Acknowledging the “backlash”Johnson “thought a compromise was in order” and offers “a few options for booklovers who can’t stop reading, but can’t afford the latest best-seller.”
Well, we’ll see if that helps the Sun shine again.
Image ‘Atlas of Clouds – Open Book Clouds’ by Philippe Parreno, 2005 via artnet