Interesting side note: German publishers hit on a similar strategy in the early post-war years. Nobody could afford to buy hardcovers anymore, so they printed their books on newspaper-paper instead, to be sold cheaply at the roadside - and thrived.
Very interesting. I wonder if something similar could happen today...digital or our paper, books have so much to compete with for peoples' attention.<p>I think we as a society could really use it.
It is funny how "giving away a book" has changed meaning since then.<p>Today, "giving away 1 book" is easily understood as potentially indefinite copies of a single work, but the headline here refers to 123 million, physical copies of a much smaller amount of works.
Many books were "given away" (forced) and burnt in fires at Reichskristallnacht Nov 1938: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht</a><p>Many thousands years old historic books, papyrus papers were destroyed amd vanished forever.