Books and reading are in the throes of a revolution

Not everyone is happy about this. Book lovers, publishers and booksellers alike are watching the book-v-ebook sales battle with great interest, and when Tom Tivnan of The Bookseller reported recentlythat ebook sales had dipped for the first time, he sounded almost relieved: “For those who predicted the death of the physical book and digital dominating the market by the end of this decade, the print and digital sales figures […] for 2015 might force a reassessment.” Physical books may have the upper hand for now, but the debate is a long way from being settled.

Book lovers, publishers and booksellers alike are watching the book-v-ebook sales battle with great interest (Credit: Getty Images)

The odd thing is that the current angst over the book’s changing face mirrors a strikingly similar episode in history. Two thousand years ago, a new and unorthodox kind of book threatened to overturn the established order, much to the chagrin of the readers of the time.

Scroll with it

Rome in the 1st Century CE was awash with the written word. Statues, monuments and gravestones were inscribed with stately capital letters; citizens took notes and sent messages on wax-covered wooden writing tablets; and the libraries of the wealthy were stocked with books on history, philosophy and the arts. But these were not books as we know them – they were scrolls, made from sheets of Egyptian papyrus pasted into rolls anywhere from 4.5 to 16 metres (14.76ft to 52.49ft) in length. For all their ubiquity, however, they were not without their flaws.

Ancient Rome was awash with the written word – but with scrolls made of sheets of Egyptian papyrus rather than books (Credit: John Clark, The Care of Books)

For one thing, it took both hands to read a scroll properly. Unless the reader was seated at a desk (in which case paperweights or wooden pegs could be used to pin down the springy papyrus), the only way to read a scroll was to unwind it carefully from the right hand and, passing it to the left, to roll it up again. Writers and copyists usually wrote in columns a few inches wide, so that the bulk of the fragile papyrus in the scroll could be kept safely rolled up. Even so, archaeologists have found scrolls whose bottom edges have been worn away where they rubbed against the reader’s clothing.

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