Making books and gifting them

“Back in the 1940s, when we became independent from Denmark, our economy was extremely poor, and there was a very strict quota of importing goods. So before Christmas there were very few gifts to buy. But there was no quota on paper. We had printing plants; we had authors. So the tradition of making books and gifting them was born, and it’s grown since. Now we call November and December the Christmas book flood—Jólabókaflóð.” – Heidar Ingi Svansson, quoted in this article (archived) by Jonathan Margolis I don’t know how many times I’ve read Margolis’s article on the culture and ease of writing and publishing books in Iceland. It gives me a weird heartache each time: what would it be like to just one day write a book and a year later see it being sold in all bookstores? Self-publishing allows that, but it’s another to have a culture where publishing the traditional way is possible for anyone. What would it be like to be part of a widespread culture where the people are “indifferent” to…