More profitable, cheaper: an increase in reading digital books // Eyal Hayut-Man
Book Week is here, and as every year, discussions resume about the dismal state of the book market in Israel and the solutions on the table.
The problem is that encouraging reading is a welcome process, but difficult to measure and only affects in the long run;
Whereas a government intervention of the "Writers' Law" type also has unintended consequences, such as reducing the incentive to publish and purchase new books.
A fact that tends to be ignored is that books are a relatively expensive product.
Not in an absolute way, of course, but in relation to alternatives: the Israeli consumer hates "coming out a sucker," and is constantly comparing prices.
With a monthly subscription to Netflix costing less than number one in the sale - not to mention the low price of digital books from abroad - there is an understandable reluctance to buy books. - Leave them at a loss.But there are ways in which the cost can be reduced, and at the same time leave more money in the hands of those engaged in the craft.
First, as long as the purchase of books takes place mainly in stores, it means that the price of a book embodied the price of real estate - the rent of shops in the most expensive streets and malls in Israel. Ordering directly from warehouses and distribution centers is a cheaper option, especially in light of Recent.
Second, there is great potential for digital books - which do not require storage or transportation, and their price is not affected by increases in paper prices.
As a result they are significantly cheaper than physical numbers, and still leave the same amount of money in the hands of publishers and writers.
Digital book sales rose during the Corona period - according to data from the "Hebrew" website, they constitute about 18 percent of the books currently sold in Israel - but they have a long way to go.
In this context, the first rabbi to find a permit to use a Kindle on Shabbat will probably contribute more to the Israeli book market than any government intervention: the religious public reads a lot, especially on Shabbat.
Of course, there are benefits to physical books and stores: the smell, the feel, the experience of wandering through hundreds and thousands of books.
Part of the book industry's challenge in the near future will be to make the purchase of books online more experiential - through direct contact with writers, the possibility of sharing the purchase on social media, and perhaps even virtual reality tools that mimic a visit to a store.
Of course, libraries also allow reading at reasonable prices - provided that the issue of rewards to writers for lending their books is regulated by law fairly.
In the long run the main tool for encouraging reading was and remains schools.
Teachers should be given broad discretion about the books they choose to teach - from familiarity with the students, areas of interest and challenges they face.
In terms of the love of reading, it is far better for students to read a simple and popular book that is relevant to them and their experiences, than a classic masterpiece that will pass over their heads.
Tell Me Who I Am: A Flood of Autobiographies // The Dotan Foundation
More and more people are writing life stories - autobiographies, biographies and illustrations (the latter, unlike autobiographies, focus only on a particular chapter of life).
Ahead of Book Week, the National Library announced that in 2021 alone, 447 biographies and autobiographies were published - a figure that reflects a 50 percent increase over the past five years.
A quick flick through the past year's publications will reveal a wealth of autobiographies and biographies written about or by well-known figures, including politicians (Shaul Mofaz, Yossi Beilin, Colette Avital, Ben Caspit on Netanyahu) and cultural figures (Anita Shapira, Benny Mar, Rubik Rosenthal, Amalia Ziv , Robert Elbaz, Leah Tzavoni, Dori Manor, Sivan Baskin, David Ohana on Jacqueline Kahanov, Moti Zeira on Yigal Mosinson, Jonathan Geffen on Nissim Aloni, Shlomo Avineri on Karl Marx).
But many more life stories have been published this year about unfamiliar characters and their hands.
National Library data reveals that if in the past key figures captured the majority of life stories, today they are already a minority: in the past year the vast majority (77 percent) of life stories were written by and by those considered unfamiliar figures (according to the National Library criteria).
While these data do not reveal to us whether people do read more life stories, rather than just write them.
To this end (in the absence of data on the Israeli market) one can turn to surveys published in the US, which show that the ratio between reading reference books and reading prose is almost double, that is: people read almost twice as many reference books - and first and foremost illuminated and autobiographical - than prose.
Many attribute the rise of life stories to the narcissism of the selfie era, but in fact the popularity of autobiography knew waves of ups and downs long before the 21st century.
(It's hard to say why writing an autobiography should be a more narcissistic act than writing any other prose book: in any case, the very fact that a person thinks his words, even fictional ones, deserve to be printed and sold - does not indicate a great deal of humility).
Still, it may be possible to explain our attraction to "real" life stories (only seemingly real - because in fact every autobiography has a necessary element of discussion, actually the desire to tell our chaotic lives as a beginning, middle and end pattern) in our anxiety about the "Pike" quantities Around us.
It is not certain that our lives are indeed full of lies more than in the past - lies have always been an integral part of history - but anxiety about them, and about how our perception of reality is manipulated, is a characteristic of our time.
Evidence of this (Sisyphean) attempts to "correct" some of the lies of elected officials (fact check).
Did the surge in the popularity of life stories come against the backdrop of this anxiety, which is pushing the masses toward the (seemingly) (real) life story?
Either way, this abundance brings to our door an opportunity to recognize the richness of autobiographical writing, which does not fall short of that of strictly fictional prose.
Love is screwed: MeToo has also reached the romantic literature // Dafna Levy
Romantic literature is the kind of genre whose consumers - who are mostly its consumers - come to stalls equipped with backpacks and bags: they go shopping.
As with most genres that "real" literature pushes to the margins, MDA and fantasy for example, each story is simply spread over three or four and sometimes even eight volumes, and is discussed at length and emotionally devoted to online forums. In recent years it has been moving back and forth, and it seems that for every revolutionary attempt there is, as in life, a backlash.
The most notable trend in the past year is the trend of female empowerment under the sign of Mi Tu.
The protagonists in all the romantic sub-genres - from humorous chicalits to dark literature - move away from the old protagonists of the Mills & Bone books, who were considered the prototype of the genre.
In the popular books of Maya Banks, who has written more than 120 books to date, women love sex, even when it is very tough, and they even seek control (as in her famous "devotion" trilogy).
Even with popular Israeli writers such as Eilat Svititsky ("Gold and Ink", "Pearl and Silk"), Sharon Zohar ("Five Fingers") or Little Moshe ("The Only Truth"), the heroines' dominance remains in the bedroom.
Alongside these generic titles, there are also growing writers, especially in the dark sub-genre (e.g. Pepper Winters or Elita Roaming), who already dare to deviate from the pattern.
These already feature non-innocent heroines from a slum, who fall in love with a multi-millionaire man who introduces them to the big world.
The new protagonists, in series like Winters' Debt Inheritance, Jane Dimond's Dirty Games or C.'s Intravenous.
If.
Radcliffe, largely dictate the evolving relationship.
For Colin Hoover, for example ("It's over with us," "Illusion"), romance comes with a surprisingly contemporary charge: discussions of ecology and environmental protection.
The feminist revolution is said to be the slowest revolution in human history, and there is nothing like the romantic literature to confirm this.
If in the 1960s it was the genre where women were not afraid to express passion but still sat at home waiting for a call from the knight - who, unlike them, had a full life even outside of falling in love - today they run businesses, want power and money, and even have the opposite desire: To penetrate their lives and body the hero needs to be handsome and available in a caressing stroke.
From the outside, the feminism of this literature seems ridiculous, because even the seemingly independent women are still containing and forgiving.
As in suspense literature in which the concept of the killer restores social order, here the bourgeoisie - marriage and children - is responsible for aligning the line.
But these are the rules of the genre, dictated by escapism and sometimes requiring the suspension of the credibility test.
That's why it's gratifying and optimistic to see them, too, slowly shaking and constantly changing.
The world in the wake of the rainbow: The cows of the LGBT youth are boiling // Tal Marmelstein
And the Flowers for Alice Ozman: The protagonist of this text is a 27-year-old creator and writer, a social media animal from Kent, England, who openly stated in a recent interview that she is non-binary.
Ozman wrote a graphic novel called "HEARTSTOPPER" in 2018, in black and white, which made a small revolution.
Since then, three more fat pawns have been added to the hit (swallowed), and the fifth is on the way.
"HEARTSTOPPER" - in Hebrew translation "Breathtaking" (all four volumes were published by Kinneret Zmora Bitan translated by Rachela Zandbank) - is a novel intended for adult youth (YOUNG ADULT), which describes a gentle and hesitant love story between Charlie and Nick, who study together in the same house Tell and deal with their new feelings in an incredibly embarrassing and sweet way.
Ozman also wrote "Does anyone listen to me?", Which was published in February this year by Rimonim Publishing (translation: Hamutal Levin).
"Breathtaking" started as a network series, swept millions, won numerous awards, and is also working on a TV hit of the same name on Netflix (the second and third seasons have already been announced).
The success of the transition from book to television led to lively discussions on the net from excited parents, who finally found a series to watch with their adolescents and fall in love with the same characters together.
Ozman's dizzying success, first in England and later in the US and around the world, lies in the fact that she serves as a fake seismograph for what it's like to be a boy or girl researching their sexual identity on the queer arc, including bisexual figures. Everything goes, with no apologies.
"Breathtaking" has led to the release of more and more books in which the objects of passion are for the first time members of the same sex, leading and navigating the main story.
In many of the most successful youth books in the United States, LGBT characters no longer function as a secondary sidekick - and sometimes social networks serve as a refuge and rescue tool.
The fact that it started as a network series and was promoted on Instagram accounts and ticked off literary reviews with missionary piety, also caused large and institutional publishers to join the celebration: less political literature, more realism, preoccupation with identity and queer romantic dramas and comedies.
What began with "Ari and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" (Tal Mai and IQ), continued with Casey McQueeston's "Royal Red, White and Blue" (Wing Release), and with the success of Alexis Hall's "Home-Connected" romantic comedy ( Rock) and the fresh translation of one of the best-selling books of the year, "If These Are Us" (Keter-Modan) for adult youth, by Becky Albertley and Adam Silvera.
Although belatedly, more and more large publishers in Israel have realized the literary and economic power of youth literature for the tobacco industry in the Tiktok era. Questions of identity and sexual inquiry are what is interesting at the moment, young readers are signaling to us, and publishers are beginning to understand.
Hopefully the trend will become constant with sympathetic representations - and this time in our source literature.
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