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01Consuming Media 10/4/07 11:17 am Page 75

commercially and municipally managed ‘book spaces’ is rare in a shopping centre.
The residents of Solna are therefore well situated, with a rich availability of books –
a basic prerequisite for books to be sold, borrowed and read in the first place.
Being part of Sweden’s largest chain of booksellers, The Academy Bookstore
(Akademibokhandeln), the largest bookstore in Solna Centre is connected to a wide
range of products that it cannot influence. The range of products is not exclusive: the
shop is ordinary in that it sells most things that are typically supplied by bookshops
in Sweden, from stationery to best-selling novels. Early in our fieldwork, our atten-
tion was caught by the fact that so many books were purchased as gifts. This was
especially evident during the Christmas rush, when gift sales dominated, but books
are commonly given away during the whole year. There is no Swedish statistic for
what portion of the total sales consists of gifts, but the large percentage that is made
up of Christmas shopping (circa 20 per cent) suggests that books are very often
bought as gifts, and that in Sweden perhaps a quarter of all bought books might be
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intended as gifts. Compared to other lines of business, the book trade distinguishes
itself in this respect (together with the recording industry).
Through the staff in the bookshop we got in contact with a book discussion group
on the Internet. In this way we got access to a new field, a ‘book space’ in cyberspace
and the fieldwork took a cyberethnographic turn. 12 At the time the group had
between 220 and 230 members, and twenty-seven of them (twenty-four women and
three men) were willing to answer questions about owning and giving books.
Selection processes take place in and outside the bookshop and eventually lead to
the purchase of books. After the purchase the book transforms into a piece of prop-
erty and is used by its owner. So, how does one use a book? For many people the
obvious answer is ‘by reading it’. This use is of course primary, both for borrowed and
bought books. But owning a book in itself provides opportunities for specific uses
that library books do not give, which is evident from the discussion in the reading
group and from the answers from the twenty-seven ‘bookworms’.
The bookworms all agreed that the most important advantage of owning books is
that one can reread them whenever one wants. And the current trend in Sweden of
publishing more and more titles as paperbacks makes it even easier to buy, and hence
to own books. ‘Long live the paperback!’ a member of the discussion group writes. ‘I
gladly pay the small amount to own my reading experiences.’ Some specify which
books are essential to own – one’s favourites. To borrow books from the library is also
all right, ‘but I want to own my favourites!’ Others underline that it is important to
own non-fiction and encyclopedias so that one can look up things quickly.
One can thus say that the ready availability is a partial explanation of why people
want to own books. Although they acknowledge the economic reasons and also the
space they save by borrowing from a library (several people complained of crammed
shelves), our informants say that the opening hours and queues for new literature are
restrictive. Libraries are called ‘test arenas’, a place where one can borrow and read books
by unknown writers, to test whether one likes a certain author or title. But if one does,
one has to buy the book to own it and be able to reread it whenever one wants.

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