How about slow reading?

Today I read an excellent article in the New York Times about the slow movement ('The Slow Life Picks Up Speed').

Penelope Green described in the article the growth and development of the movement. If you thought that slow refers only to slow food, think again - now you can find slow design, slow cities, slow travel and much more. And it also goes online - in mid-march, according to the article, a new website - www.slowplanet.com will go online and it aims to be a hub for all thing slow.

Geir Berthelsen, who is the founder of the World Institute of Slowness, a Norwegian advocacy group, and who is behind the new website, said in the article: " The time is now ripe for trying to formalize this slow revolution". It got me thinking - is there also a slow reading?

But what can be defined as a slow reading? so here are few ideas that I thought about:

1. There's the literal translation of actually reading slower. In Wikipedia it says that "slow reading refers to practices that deliberately reduce the rate of reading to increase comprehension or pleasure. The concept appears to have originated in the study of philosophy and literature as a technique to more fully comprehend and appreciate a complex text."

2. The slow movement also has a strong theme of locality, so slow reading can be translated into supporting local independent bookstores, local writers and even your local library. Last November I mentioned Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, which is definitely an example of slow reading in terms of locality.

3. The slow movement is also endorsing alternatives to mass production and therefore I thought that print on demand (POD) can be considered as slow reading. It also goes well with the greenness of printing on demand.

These are only few rough ideas I had and I'll be happy to hear from you what is your definition of slow reading. Feel free to drop a comment and share thoughts with us.

For more information on the slow movement you can check www.inpraiseofslow.com, the blog of Carl Honore, the author of the great book "In Praise of Slow: Challenging the Cult of Speed".

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!

How Do you Say "Sustainable Reading" in Chinese?

Martin Daniels of The Booksellers Association brings us this story about an interesting business model coming all the way from Shanghai, which allows book readers to get their books for free by allowing sponsors to plant advertisings in the pages. Sounds familiar? No wonder, this is more or less the business model that keeps most of the content on the internet free, and many free magazines floating. Only this time we're talking printed books. Yep, it's time for China to teach us something about innovative business ideas, and BookGG may be just the first of many.

So how does this work? Martin Daniels explains:

"The consumer selects the book and then selects the sponsors with their placement on your book until the price of the book drops to zero. The book is then printed and posted.

For every free book, you need to have a book ticket, which you get once you have registered. You then earn further book tickets by referring new users or orders or buying into an account, which will issue new tickets every month.

Every advertising sponsor can only be selected by an individual once so promoting you to spread your sponsors and in effect find out about others. The sponsor receives all personal information.

Finally the books are printed on demand by Bookgg and contain your sponsors adverts."


So although I personally don't relish the idea of flipping through my new book while being annoyed by ads, I do believe that I would go for it to get a very expensive book I really want for half the price. And frankly I don't mind my purchases being sponsored, especially when I can choose the sponsor, and if sponsors are categorized for me with some conscious labels such as "fair-trade" and "organic".

But what most appeals to me from a Sustainable Reading point of view is the fact, that a successful venture like this in the west can also help popularize print-on-demand technology, which is apparently already quite popular in oh so unsustainable, or so they say, China.

So let's wait and see, shall we?

Best,
Eylon @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!