Are we addicted to buying books?

As a psychology student I have studied psychological addiction and although addiction can bring images of drug and alcohol abuse, it is important to remember that you can be addicted to just about anything... and something I have found crossing my mind more and more over the last few months is whether we are becoming a community addicted to buying books? Lets have a closer look at addiction and see whether the patterns can be found in some of our book buying habits (as noted from the 'booktube' community and other reading related blogs- no specific people or persons).

 

Firstly many people will be wondering what I mean by addiction? Definitions alter depending where you are from, whether you are looking at medical definitions, psychological definitions or general knowledge definition...

 

 

As you can see from the definition above, there are levels to addiction and some book buying habits can easily fit these; when comparing some book buying habits in the booktube community it is clear that they are enthusiastically devoted to buying books (rooms dedicated to books... buying multiples of the same book... not being able to stop buying books).

Now some members of our growing community buy books when they need to read them, reading the books they own and then buying more; can we classify these as addicts? In comparison to those who buy books when they have hundreds left to read, we cannot; they buy with perceptive 'necessity' and not for the sake of buying books. Those who buy books when they have many left to read can be classified as hoarding, collecting and becoming emotionally attached to objects;  buying books when they have little or no room, financial supplies, because 'its a good buy' or because its an author that you have loved before.

So my question is, are the book buying habits of those we idolise online damaging our ideas  on how many books we should own? This question first crossed my mind when I wanted to post my first book haul and felt really bad and stupid for only having three books to haul; comparing that to the 20+ that those in the booktube community haul on a regular basis made my haul feel un-necessary and pointless.

 

Above is a commonly accepted breakdown of how addiction is kept 'alive' within sufferers, known as the 'cycle of addiction'. Although it is difficult to determine where the cycle begins, 'fantasizing' is often an accepted started point; each stage can be seen across the many participant of  booktube and also the book blogging world.

 

1. Fantasizing: We compare our own book buying to others and wish we had the amount they did (unhealthy comparison).
2. Obsessing: We watch constantly, know what they are buying and how often, where they are buying and as much information as possible.
3. Substance abuse: We snap and begin buying more books that we would originally.
4. Loss of control: Find yourself buying books daily, browsing for constant deals and find this becomes an automatic element of your shopping life (mainly online but less often can be within bookstores).
5. Guilt: This usually happens when the books have arrived and you look back at how much money you have spent on them.
6. Cessation of use: The well-known book buying ban, people placing themselves on harsh controls of no book buying for either a period of time or until they reach a specific goal (usually to read a certain percentage of their tbr).
7. Passage of time: During the book buying ban, attempting to avoid books, usually done buy avoiding the internet or certain websites.
8. Internal frustration: This is often found on a forced book buying ban, where you add books to wishlists and wait for the book buying ban to end.
9. And we return to fanaticising but about the end of the book buying ban...

 So its clear from the stages of addiction that many book buying habits can be seen as addicting, however, we can argue that the industry wants us to be addicted to buying books (money... money... money) and so they release ways to combat the common reasons people put themselves on book buying bans... space. Generally guilt starts to appear when a person realises that they are surrounded by unread books, so a great way to combat this is to place them all inside a small portable device which takes up less space than a single book and can hold more books that the British Library. Ask yourself, do you feel the same when you see your kindle with 300+ books and when you look at your bookshelves and see 100 unread books? No not really do you.

 

From the comparison to the library, it is clear that book buying habits can easily be associated with the demise of the library; people would prefer to buy books online and get them delivered to their house or kindle than order from the library and have to return it after. We are a materialistic society that values possession over knowledge, and that fact is becoming depressing.

 

So, should we stop buying books? Should we all get rid of our kindle-like devices and only read out of the library? No I don't believe that we should, I believe that we should break the cycle of addiction found within the book buying community, that we should invest more into our libraries but at the same time, without buyers the book industry as a whole will collapse.

 

As many betting adverts advice...

 

When it stops being fun... stop!