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Bestselling books have been getting shorter

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Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#101

Post by AlbertCory »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #98
AlbertCory wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, as a writer of two fiction books: it's really easy. You just include more pointless description. Some popular fiction writer (James Patterson? not sure) said, paraphrasing, "You know all those parts you tend to skip over? I just don't write those."

Brandon Sanderson wrote about his process of writing Mistborn and putting it through focus groups. There were apparently several rounds of female readers complaining that he wasn't doing enough description of ballgowns.

My nightmare as a male writer :)

Fortunately I had a female editor who read over stuff like that with a critical eye. And no ball gowns in my books. I do have a wedding but I don't even mention what the bride was wearing. My bad.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#102

Post by dubya »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #83
stocknoob wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amusing that people pay for page count and not the outcome. With travel, you pay more for faster shipping. Why not for transporting a good idea into your head?

Not so fast. I’d wager that repetitive padding is more effective at getting ideas into your brain for the same reason you don’t retain as much material from SparkNotes. There’s less exposure and time spent with the ideas in the shorter work.

As a teacher, I totally agree. Understanding something when the teacher presents material is not at all the same thing as digging in and trying some problems yourself.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#103

Post by yarg »

klodolph wrote: post #57

IMO most popular non-fiction books don't have enough content to justify their length. I'm not saying that the content is bad, or you shouldn't buy the book. The book is just padded out so you feel better about buying it. Who would buy a 40-page book for $15? The book gets padded out to 200 pages by repeating itself, adding filler sections, anecdotes, graphic design choices, etc. I am happy to see books get shorter if…

Fantasy books are guilty as hell on this front.

I somewhat enjoyed The Wheel of Time, but the number of times the books had Nynaeve pulling her hair, or wearing a prettier dress than those made from stout two rivers wool - which she continued to maintain was just as good....

Sanderson seemed to cut that out (or at least back) after he took over the last three books.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#104

Post by grogenaut »

vkou wrote: post #96
grogenaut wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is longer: a game of thrones #1 or Harry Potter #6... I think they're similar page lengths but got is probably at least 2x the words. Kindle sections or word count really do make more sense for pure length. But thickness and heft are real as well as is paper cost :). I have the above analogy from teaching my kids not to be afraid of long books. It actually works both ways. "Look you finished hp6 when you were 1…

I've never read Harry Potter #6, but AGOT#1 has more words than The Two Towers, and The Return of the King put together. Each of AGOT #3 and #5 on their own have almost has as many words as the entire LOTR trilogy. And while there are a lot of memes about how half of those words are detailed descriptions[1] of incredibly elaborate meals, I wouldn't say that they detract from the story. [1] Onion grease dribbling down…

if you look at the books themselves they're the same size but yes that was my point agot #1 is so so long. dude wrote so many words they made him split #4 into 2 books so the could make a paperback version.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#105

Post by jonjacky »

rqtwteye wrote: post #62
klodolph wrote: post #57

IMO most popular non-fiction books don't have enough content to justify their length. I'm not saying that the content is bad, or you shouldn't buy the book. The book is just padded out so you feel better about buying it. Who would buy a 40-page book for $15? The book gets padded out to 200 pages by repeating itself, adding filler sections, anecdotes, graphic design choices, etc. I am happy to see books get shorter if…

That's something I have noticed with a lot of programming books. They are super long and are just pages of unfocused blablabla and screenshots. I miss books like K&R that are well written and concise. Problem is that padding most non-fiction books is really easy while padding a fiction book is hard. So expect non-fiction to get longer and fiction to get shorter.

A friend in the book business once told me that publishers like big thick programming books because they take up space on bookstore shelves and deny that space to rival books!

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#106

Post by signaru »

jyriand wrote: post #70
klodolph wrote: post #57

IMO most popular non-fiction books don't have enough content to justify their length. I'm not saying that the content is bad, or you shouldn't buy the book. The book is just padded out so you feel better about buying it. Who would buy a 40-page book for $15? The book gets padded out to 200 pages by repeating itself, adding filler sections, anecdotes, graphic design choices, etc. I am happy to see books get shorter if…

One thing to keep in mind is that for traditional publishers your book's spine needs to be thick enough to be visible on the shelf and not get lost between other books.

Good point. This made me appreciate how shops would also stack books in the "perpendicular" direction with the front cover being visible.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#107

Post by dorchadas »

wobbly_bush wrote: post #54
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think society is in decline but my best friend is a university teacher and if you allow me an anecdote it’s become obvious to him in the past five years that first year students are less and less familiar with the written world and increasingly good with images and videos as a medium of communication. The shift seems real. Long works of literature were always fairly niche. If you read the articles you will se…

> if you allow me an anecdote it’s become obvious to him in the past five years that first year students are less and less familiar with the written world Do you mean they are less familiar with certain books (like famous ones like Ulysses) or their ability to learn from written medium has reduced (concentration levels, speed of reading, etc.)?

From my experience as a secondary school teacher, it's the latter which then leads to the former. Kids can't read. I'd say in my last year teaching I probably only had three kids who I would consider literate, able to read and make inferences, think about the material they're reading, etc. There's several reasons for this (and not just social media -- they're often taught to regurgitate for the state exams), but it's a real issue.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#108

Post by dorchadas »

yamtaddle wrote: post #15
UIUC_06 wrote: post #9

It is true that literary agents are less likely to take on a book that's "difficult" in any way, and "too long" is one of those ways. As slimy as they are, they do have a sense of what publishers want, who in turn have a sense of what readers want. And lots of people do not want to read books anymore, broadly speaking. There are too many other entertainment options.

I think fiction books that aren't extremely light reading are headed the way of classical music: a thing most people find too difficult to get into, and too dull until they've put in that effort, so it's coded as a "smart (and/or pretentious) people thing" and most folks just won't engage with it at all.

I think you're right, but it goes a step father. They then associate that with reading in general, and liking books. Then they start to believe that self-insert dystopian YA is just as literary as, say, actual dense literature that explores the human condition. Or they make books their personality, without ever reading them. r/books is full of examples like this, where it almost seems they talk more about the idea of reading than they do the books, while also constantly seeking validation for not even attempting something challenging.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#109

Post by auxbuss »

grogenaut wrote: post #68
WalterBright wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many books are padded by: 1. using thicker paper 2. using a larger font 4. more spaces between lines 5. larger margins 6. a bunch of blank and/or pointless pages at the beginning 7. ad pages at the end I see it all the time. A book's contents can vary 2:1 in length compared to another one of the same physical size.

Which is longer: a game of thrones #1 or Harry Potter #6... I think they're similar page lengths but got is probably at least 2x the words. Kindle sections or word count really do make more sense for pure length. But thickness and heft are real as well as is paper cost :). I have the above analogy from teaching my kids not to be afraid of long books. It actually works both ways. "Look you finished hp6 when you were 1…

293,000¹ vs 184,000², so about 1.6 times the word count.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire#Publish...

² https://www.anycount.com/word-count-of-books/harry-potter-wo...

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#110

Post by dredmorbius »

AlbertCory wrote: post #87
klodolph wrote: post #57

IMO most popular non-fiction books don't have enough content to justify their length. I'm not saying that the content is bad, or you shouldn't buy the book. The book is just padded out so you feel better about buying it. Who would buy a 40-page book for $15? The book gets padded out to 200 pages by repeating itself, adding filler sections, anecdotes, graphic design choices, etc. I am happy to see books get shorter if…

Actually, since I'm sorta on the producer end of that market: Word count is much more often what people in the biz focus on. It eliminates all the talk about margins, leading, font, paper thickness, etc.

Word-count is what authors are concerned with.

Spine-width is what (physical bookstore) sales are based on, amongst other non-content factors.

Publishers who focused on quality and salient content (say, back in the day, O'Reilly, Wiley (technical), and No Start Press, over, say, SAMS and whoever put out the "in 24 hours" series of books (notoriously overpadded) got a significant reputation boost in my eyes. (ORA lost quite a few points rushing some shoddy junk to market, but their classic work was and remains excellent.)

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