Bestselling books have been getting shorter • Hacker News Board

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#41

Post by comfypotato » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

nineplay wrote: post #25

I'm so weary of this sort of 'society is in decline' clickbait articles. Let's take some minimal amount of data, analyze it by some absurd criteria, and then present as some stunning insight. There's so much wrong with this article that its hard to know where to start. The fuzziness of 'page count'. The absence of any consideration of digital readers and whether they even know the page count when starting a book. Who…

Traditionally many authors were paid by words/pages. I’d imagine revenue has a lot more to do with the number of books sold nowadays. This isn’t new specifically to the time range studied in this article, but many of the classic novels that come to mind were definitely influenced by an incentive (other than content) for a higher word count.

Tolstoy, for example, took advantage of being paid by the amount of content by basically saying everything twice in a different way. This style makes for relaxed reading, because you’ll catch the content the second time if not the first, but it’s obviously not necessary. Dickens, as another example, also published less-dense material on a regular basis based on his contractual obligations (his novels actually read better if you follow the original publication schedule). His books were just part of another publication, basically a newspaper. As long as he delivered a satisfactory amount of core-story each week, he kept his job. This incentivized him to split up the best parts and add some fluff.

I’m no less satisfied by a good modern book than War and Peace. I enjoy both for different reasons.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#42

Post by Jamesmoorez » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

No post body was provided.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#43

Post by trey-jones » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #33

I'm very okay with books being shorter. Most non-fiction bestsellers can be summarized in a blog post, and (in my opinion) most of them should be. With fiction, there is nothing inherently better about a long novel, nor is it intrinsic to the form. There are great long novels, and great short ones, but in general it seems like most of the long ones have some fat on them. Usually, with a really long novel, I don't thi…

Fat is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder (belistener). I love some good flowery language and I salute the authors who indulge their own love of beautifully descriptive language for my benefit. For fiction of course. I completely agree with you regarding non-fiction best-sellers.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#44

Post by j0hnyl » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #34

j0hnyl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because publishers have loosened up a bit on their requirements and self-publishing is easier than ever. Traditionally, publishers wouldn't really invest in putting out short books aside from some notable exceptions.

Though I doubt many of the books on the NYT bestsellers list are self-published. In general though I agree with you. For a lot of non-fiction books 100 pages is probably plenty but, if you go through a publisher, you'll have to go longer. It's one reason I likely won't use a publisher again.

What kind of book did you put out? Do you feel like it was bloated as a result of going the traditional route?

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#45

Post by mc32 » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

CadmiumYellow wrote: post #38

mc32 wrote: post #3

Many things are competing for people's attention combined with people's ability to stay focused[1] going down may contribute to this. This is probably to be expected as we take the discipline out of people. [1] Universities discussing whether classes should be delivered in 10 minute chunks because students can no longer stay focused for 50 mins to an hour any more.

"Universities discussing whether classes should be delivered in 10 minute chunks because students can no longer stay focused for 50 mins to an hour any more." Do you have a source for this? That's absolutely wild (though believable).

Here is one example: https://nceo.umn.edu/docs/presentations/nceo-lep-iep-ascdhan...

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#46

Post by j0hnyl » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #10

j0hnyl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because publishers have loosened up a bit on their requirements and self-publishing is easier than ever. Traditionally, publishers wouldn't really invest in putting out short books aside from some notable exceptions.

There's also the "too big to edit" feature of many bestselling authors - look at the size of the Harry Potter books as an obvious example: ( https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/harry-potter-paperback-boxe... third image). When an author gets famous enough they apparently get edited less. There may also be something about people not wanting to pay "full price" for a "thin book" but I doubt that's a major factor.

Good point. I've definitely seen follow ups to books that did well that just felt more sloppy. The sequel to Shantaram is a prime example.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#47

Post by cptnapalm » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 6:35 PM UTC

mtillman wrote: post #36

boppo1 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! Count of Monte Cristo is known as a long read but it was originally serialized. You can kinda tell too, the plot meanders a couple times. Nonetheless extremely entertaining, I'd highly recommend.

Same for Count of Monte Cristo and some of his other works. Also Don Quixote if I recall correctly. I actually read them one to two chapters a week to stay on a similar to original schedule.

I have wondered if the reading of Don Quixote serially was a very different experience from reading it as a novel. It was a serial satire, so I could see reading the "new episode" every week being funny. Before I got side-tracked, I was reading it like any other novel and, while any particular episode is set up comedically, Don Quixote's mostly harmless delusional actions being given exponentially more brutal responses I found increasingly depressing.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#48

Post by thenerdhead » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

My main problem with books and videos getting shorter every year is that the context that provides the insight for wisdom is missing.

Sure you can understand a concept because it is reduced in its most basic form or as understood by AI. But you don't know why it is important.

Even if you re-read the same concept multiple times in a book where it "could've been a blog post", you are training your ability for insight because you constantly enter the flow state while you're focusing.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#49

Post by chrisbaker98 » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #31

zwieback wrote: post #23

I would love to see this broken out by fiction/non-fiction. I read mainly fiction and some stories just take longer to tell than others so I don't really take page count into consideration. When I do read non-fiction I almost always think that the book could be improved by heavily editing down the second half.

A lot of non-fiction books are IMO longer than they need to be, especially "business" books and things in that vein. Really fleshing out an idea takes more than a magazine article but a lot of the time it also doesn't really need a 250+ page book--but that's about the minimum that publishers will generally take on. One might have hoped that ebooks would have changed that but a lot of readers presumably would feel sho…

According to some Sam Harris podcast I vaguely remember listening to years ago, publishers generally don't want to publish short (like Which is one reason why 90% of "business" books are forgettable wastes of paper that contain one or two ideas stretched out over 250 pages and serve little purpose except to advertise the author's consulting company.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#50

Post by chrisbaker98 » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #30

greggarious wrote: post #21

Is shorter worse? I recently checked out "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire", one of the volumes on the list in my little black book from back before Kiva Han became a Chase Manhattan branch, and was surprised how thin it is. (I also begrudgingly reread Lolita and Animal Farm, both of which aren't exactly War and Peace in terms of page count... believe it or not, you can use "GRE words" outside the GRE when writi…

Must be a heavily abridged version. My full edition of RaFotRE is over 2000 pages in 3 volumes.

Are you sure you're not thinking of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"? That book is extremely long.

I haven't heard of the book "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" but it might be this one from 2015: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25686327-the-rise-and-fa...