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Why you should throw books out
I'm guest-blogging for Penguin just a bit, to promote the paperback edition of Discover Your Inner Economist. Here is my post on why you should throw books out. Natasha, alas, does not agree and sometimes she pulls them out of the trash and scolds me. But here is an excerpt in my defense:
Here's the problem. If you donate the otherwise-thrashed book somewhere, someone might read it. OK, maybe that person will read one more book in life but more likely that book will substitute for that person reading some other book instead.
So you have to ask yourself -- this book -- is it better on average than what an attracted reader might otherwise spend time with? No I'm not encouraging "censorship" of any particular point of view, but even within any particular point of view most books simply aren't that good. These books are traps for the unwary. A lot of books don't make the cut of "above average to those readers they will attract" and of course since you've spent some time with the volume you ought to be in a position to know. (But note the calculation is tricky. Sometimes a very bad book can be useful because it might appeal to "bad" readers and lure them away from even worse books. Please make all the appropriate calculations here.)
Note that the smarter and more discriminating are your friends, the higher the standard your book donations to them must meet. Toss it!
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 27, 2008 at 07:43 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
On the other hand people prize variety, not to mention that different people have different standards for what is good. So the calculation is a bit more complicated. Why not just donate to a library? Who knows what the preferences are of the person who will one day pick up your book.
Posted by: mk at Jun 27, 2008 8:16:47 AM
Doesn't the same reasoning apply to book recommendations also ?
Posted by: Stefano at Jun 27, 2008 8:22:16 AM
One good reason to get rid of books is simply shelf space. When publishers emphasize hardcovers and trade paperbacks, and demand that their most popular authors puff up the page count so they can charge more, do they even realize they are undermining future sales? DVDs went to thinner cases for precisely this reason: a full shelf is a hindrance to further buying.
Fortunately, Kindle and digital media in general will make questions like these moot.
Posted by: at Jun 27, 2008 8:29:57 AM
I agree it's good to pass books on, but by doing this the recipient gets a free ride and the author receives nothing for their work.
Would you think less of me if I had borrowed your book, read it, enjoyed it and passed it onto someone else for free? What proportion of free riding readers do you think is reasonable for you, the writer, to subsidise?
Posted by: Tom at Jun 27, 2008 8:33:40 AM
Tom: another big problem. Some people read books multiple times, but don't pay extra for it!
Posted by: ninja_zombie at Jun 27, 2008 8:41:37 AM
When I buy books, I buy good books. I talk over them with friends, blog about them, and as soon as they are returned by one friend they are loaned out to another.
So I'd say I get my mileage out of them.
Posted by: Jordan Peacock at Jun 27, 2008 8:46:54 AM
Throw books away??! Noooo. It's a sin.
I like to review and touch the covers of books that I've read over the years, even if I despised it or thought it was a piece of crap. My thought is that that a book is a part of me once I've read it, and I can't just part with it so casually...there would have to be some kind of incentive like monetary gain if I did decide to part with it.
Posted by: Jenn at Jun 27, 2008 8:53:37 AM
I doubt Tyler tosses books he likes (though I could be misreading him). It seems the dilemma is what he should do with books he has no intention of keeping: pass them on or throw them out.
Posted by: meter at Jun 27, 2008 8:56:46 AM
Why not dump them on your local library? Or even better, don't buy books at all and just borrow them from the library.
Posted by: Ted Craig at Jun 27, 2008 9:04:25 AM
If you think the book has any conceivable research value, either for scholars today or for hypothetical scholars of the future, donating to a library is definitely the way to go.
Posted by: Andy H. at Jun 27, 2008 9:11:16 AM
I have to dissent from the whole premise of this post. Keeping books is important for several reasons, especially if you think or write (or even do both!) for a living. For one thing, I often pull them down to grab a quote or even refresh a perspective, and despite the usefulness of text-searching at Amazon and Google Books, many titles aren't available this way or fully readable. Sometimes you want to re-read all or part of a book. Sometimes another family member, or a friend, will see it and read it. It's amazing how often, years later, you're working on something and you recall a passage and you can pull the very book down from the shelf.
Which leads to the second issue--the assertion that most books aren't very good. I will argue that most of the books chosen by someone like Tyler are pretty good--they may not be Anna Karenina, but they contain something useful or interesting or both. I review books and find that almost all the books I'm sent are worthwhile in some way, to someone (aside from the author). This is probably because ook editors rarely want to cover bad books nowadays, unless the author is noteworthy or there's an important argument to be made, so merely getting reviewed suggests a book has some merit.
I also can't imagine why giving books away wouldn't encourage reading (doesn't a lower price mean higher demand?), and that's good too. So if you must get rid of books for heaven's sake don't throw them out. At the very least, library book sales are a significant source of funding and you can take a deduction.
Posted by: Dan at Jun 27, 2008 9:33:19 AM
Does this comment apply to blog posts as well?
Zing!
Posted by: halfmath at Jun 27, 2008 9:42:42 AM
I'm recently faced with this very issue - with respect to a children's book. My preschooler's babysitter, knowing we are Christian (she herself is Muslim from another country), and knowing my child has aptitude for science, gave us a book on the animal kingdom, written from a so-called Christian perspective. This babysitter is not up on the whole evolution vs. intelligent design debate, and was just trying to show respect for our faith. However, we are not Christian in the sense of being fundamentalist, creationist, wanting to get the Bible taught in school in place of real science, etc., which is the kind of Christianity behind this book. I know those type of Christians believe sincerely they are working for good, but my perspective tells me their efforts are a great evil in the world.
Normally, I would dispose of toys, books and clothes that are not appropriate for my child (which is normally from having simply outgrown them), by giving them away. But if I do that with this book, I could be allowing it to go where it could be indoctrinating some unsuspecting child into a very wrong school of thought. So I should throw the book in the trash, right? But that goes against my grain, for reasons that posters here seem to understand very well.
The book is still sitting in my home…
Posted by: J Paul at Jun 27, 2008 9:43:05 AM
(Musing) In retrospect, I should have trashed Thomas Harris' Hannibal rather than giving it to the charity used book store. Thomas Harris ate five hours of my life that I am not getting back (I hope they were tasty). I should have stopped him before he could start consuming the leisure time of some other hapless victim.
Posted by: alkali at Jun 27, 2008 9:55:53 AM
Toss them? No, burn them.
Posted by: Vincent Clement at Jun 27, 2008 10:12:38 AM
Why be so presumptuous to assume that you know best what your friends should be reading? And why do you assume they'd be reading something better? (you might have just saved them from the latest Dan Brown novel)
I use Bookmooch. Let the free market decide what they want to read. It works great.
Posted by: Franz at Jun 27, 2008 10:46:40 AM
Tyler: A buyer or receiver of used books should use screening to determine that the book is probably really crappy. Problem solved.
Posted by: Daniel Reeves at Jun 27, 2008 10:49:35 AM
I usually donate the books I don't wish to keep to a local charity thrift shop.
Hmm...I hadn't thought that if I toss them instead I would be doing my part for libertarian paternalism.
Posted by: Paula at Jun 27, 2008 10:50:13 AM
Except in the case of very bad books that are well-written (like the creationist biology book mentioned by J Paul), donation is the way to go in any country which allows tax deductions for charitable donations. A $20 hardback that's been read a few times is worth about $10 as a used book, and thus a savings of somewhere between $2.50 and $3.30 on one's income tax. That outweighs the very abstract considerations of how the donation will affect other people's reading patterns.
If one is really concerned about a book, donate it to a charity like Goodwill which will try to re-sell the book, rather than a school or library, and donate it in a place where the charity already has a lot of books for sale and a low turnover.
Posted by: Anthony at Jun 27, 2008 10:51:35 AM
The best method seems obvious to me. ;)
If a book is good and you think you might read it again and you have the space, keep it.
If a book is good and none of the rest applies, but you know someone who wants it, give it to them.
Else, donate to a local charity and claim it as a deduction on your tax return.
In my neighborhood, local charities will come and pick up stuff from our house every six weeks or so. Why would I ever throw something away - which costs me money, since I pay for trash pickup - when someone else will take it away for free?
The entirely theoretical social cost of someone reading a not-so-good book that I didn't destroy rather than a better book is dependent on so many unknowable factors that it is foolish to even waste time considering.
by doing this the recipient gets a free ride and the author receives nothing for their work.
Ah, but consider this - we want the author to receive compensation for his work, and we discourage piracy, partially for reasons of fairness but also so that creators will be motivated to create more. But don't take that too far! If an author receives too much compensation for a work he might be tempted to coast on those financial rewards and never create anything again! It's a complex balancing act; we don't want our artists to actually starve - but we do want them starving...
Posted by: Bob Montgomery at Jun 27, 2008 10:58:42 AM
Shouldn't the decision to toss something, in a family, be based on "and" instead of "or" logic, i.e., as long as one wants to keep something, she/he gets to keep it? I vote for keeping those books.
Posted by: Yan Li at Jun 27, 2008 11:32:48 AM
Okay, here's the problem: a book sells a bunch of copies, but it's pretty bad, and so people generally take Tyler's approach and throw them away (or, recycle them, I guess.) So, now there are fewer copies of that book in circulation. The rest get re-sold, and most of them find the book to be bad and throw it out, leader to even fewer in circulation.
By the second or third iteration, the book become RARE -- a collector's item even ("fewer than 10 known copies of Johnnie Versus the Xombies in existence!"). Buzz is created about this rare book. Prices for the known copies skyrocket! Suddenly, trying to cash in on the buzz, a New Printing is authorized! Horrors! By throwing your copy away, 100,000 new copies are now entering the marketplace.
The best option is to sell it to a used book store for a nickel. We all know what it means when we see five copies of a trade paperback in a used book store -- best seller in 1978, but it was crap.
Posted by: Rich B. at Jun 27, 2008 11:36:57 AM
Do you lend out the books that you keep?
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jun 27, 2008 11:48:47 AM
Here's a better exercise. If you really loved a book and thought it was great, give it away. I try to always do this. It's hard to justify or explain: just do it and see how it feels.
The problem with Tyler's exercise is it makes a paternalistic assumption that the book recipient is incapable of deciding whether to read the book you gave them or some other book. Bad assumption.
On a more basic level, throwing it away is a waste of a perfectly good resource - better to put it on the secondary market (sell it to a used book store) and let that market decide if it's worth reading.
Most of the time I just use the library. Why pay for a book you'll only ever read once?
Posted by: Mark at Jun 27, 2008 11:58:57 AM
how about your book - keep it or throw it away?
i keep basically all the books that i have read. there are only a few that are so bad that i haven't read them (usually gifts, not from my amazon list) - i sell those on ebay.
Posted by: Finja at Jun 27, 2008 1:27:01 PM
