The scent of paper no longer exists

For almost two decades now, we have witnessed two phenomena becoming more acute. The first is the ever-increasing spread of eBooks and related eReaders. The second, certainly influenced by the first, is the growing morbidity around the physical medium of the paper book, with the ‘scent of paper’ contrasted with the asepticity of plastic. This is not a reflection on particular data or research in the field, but only an attempt to draw some insights into the two phenomena.

The eBook, while not experiencing a real boom, has now established itself as a ‘competitive’ alternative to the paper book. No new edition of any novel in the last ten years has been released without being accompanied by its digital counterpart. Driving all this are the online stores, which have fully exploited the immense possibilities of digital to accumulate huge purchasable and searchable databases. Some of the biggest, such as Kobo and especially Amazon, have started to directly produce eBook readers of all types and price ranges. This, in an attempt to close the circle and become distributors of content and containers.

How the role of book distributors is changing

And it is precisely from here that a first reflection arises. While in the paper book support and content are simultaneously usable and inseparable, at least in the physical copy of the book itself, with digital this paradigm changes. The medium becomes a mobile and variable container where content is accumulated, but can change according to the reader’s choice. The eBook thus becomes the mere content in a much larger whole, capable of containing thousands.

In contrast, the paper book, for obvious reasons, remains confined to its physical dimension. Based on these findings, the question then arises as to how the latter performs. Despite the gloomy predictions of digital detractors, print publishing has enjoyed and still enjoys good form. On the contrary, the growth trend of digital and the possible overtaking ‘to the detriment’ of print seem to have come to a halt in 2022, at least in Italy. This confirms how the publishing world is very susceptible to change, but also adaptable. Physical bookshops, while innovating, maintain their primary function of selling paper books. Libraries increase their capacity to distribute eBooks. On online stores, as already mentioned, paper and digital books share the same shop window.

The ‘scent of paper’ vs. the scent of plastic

Let us now turn to the second phenomenon. Many of us have witnessed, in different ways, the diatribe between the advocates of a digital-only future for books, the convinced proponents of the insuperability of the traditional book, and the readers who draw on both, often without being able to ‘mediate’ between the two positions. The traditionalists bring to their support a particular axiom, which we have all heard at least once. Paper books possess the undeniable quality of providing ‘the smell of paper’ and ‘the rustle of pages’, a physical, visual and olfactory satisfaction that digital books cannot provide.

In an attempt to provide an explanation for this phenomenon, British chemist Andy Brunning analysed the structure of printed paper in depth in 2015, with interesting observations. The smell of books, especially older ones, comes from the cellulose and lignin that degrade over time. The paper turns yellow and releases organic compounds at the same time. The components identified by Brunning would be vanilla, benzaldehyde (which adds a sort of almondy scent), a floral aroma produced by ethylhexanol and finally sweet odours produced by ethylbenzene. The superior quality of today’s paper greatly mitigates this phenomenon, as it is subject to less degradation and consequently less release of these odours.

This undoubted quality of the paper book has led to rather extreme episodes of fetishistic commercialisation. Indeed, we can cite the ‘Smell of Books’, a sort of spray to be sprayed on one’s eReader to try to make it smell like paper (useless to comment on such a ridiculous and potentially dangerous invention for the device itself), but also the more recent ‘Eau de Bookstore’, born after the pandemic and able to revive, with a spray, the typical scents of a bookstore.

Conclusion?

All this leads to a final, but not definitive, reflection. The market trend is fluctuating and influenced by very big changes, such as COVID 19. It is not known whether one medium will end up prevailing over the other, not least because while the physical book retains its substantially unchanged structure, the digital one evolves and is perfected over time. It remains to be seen whether a competitor will arrive that will outclass the old and traditional paper medium.

In the meantime, it remains a well-considered analysis that of Roberto Danese in his ‘Qualche riflessione prologica sulla lettura nell’era digitale’. An open conclusion on the role that the paper book will increasingly assume. That of a “precious and exclusive” object, capable of having an attractiveness and a purpose beyond the content, more easily conveyed and disseminated by its digital “bad cousin”. The game is open.