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Bestselling books have been getting shorter

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Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#71

Post by weeksie »

yojo wrote: post #14
laura_g wrote: post #11

I'm not sure why page count instead of word or character count is used - feels like there could easily be external factors such as page size or typeface that are effecting this.

That was my first thought. Maybe it’s not “books are getting shorter,” but “publishers are getting cheaper.” Decreasing margins, decreasing font size, etc could all explain a diminishing page count to save on printing costs. That said, from looking into publishing, it seems like consensus is anything over 100k words (approx 400 pages) is basically unsellable unless you’re Stephen King or something. It’s not clear to…

Typical is 60-90k but 100k is pretty standard for SFF

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#72

Post by ghaff »

j0hnyl wrote: post #44
ghaff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The book I put out through a publisher (Apress) was essentially open source software (How Open Source Ate Software) for the business person who understands it's important but really doesn't know where to get started to learn about it and how it works from a community, development, and business perspective.

I did feel I was stretching to fill some pages in the first edition. That said, I was asked to do a second edition and it actually ended up a bit longer. I cut some "filler" that I didn't think was essential, reorganized, and dove more deeply into some topics (like legal matters with the assistance of a lawyer colleague) and I think it is now reasonably in right length territory; it covers a lot of territory.

Another book I self-published on software packaging broadly and its analogs to various things in the real world today and historically ended up around 100 pages.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#73

Post by ghaff »

chrisbaker98 wrote: post #49
ghaff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do think some historical background, case study examples, etc. can flesh out one or two basic concepts and help to give them more credibility and stickiness. But, yeah, even something like Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm probably could have been comfortably covered in 100 pages with room to spare.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#74

Post by stocknoob »

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…

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?

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#75

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

stocknoob wrote: post #74
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…

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?

Hmm, now that's interesting. I wonder what is the most someone would pay for a single sentence assuming it gives you the required information.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#76

Post by AlbertCory »

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.

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."

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#77

Post by UIUC_06 »

WalterBright wrote: post #64
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…

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.

There's a great book by Herman Wouk, Youngblood Hawke, where an author of a well-received book decides to be his own publisher for his second book.

It's not long enough, so he does almost all those things you mention. It doesn't end well for him.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#78

Post by yamtaddle »

mathattack wrote: post #24
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.

I recall someone saying “Most non-fiction books really just have a 15 minute message.” At least with fiction there can be some beauty in the extension.

I think that's true of most popular nonfiction. It gets less true fast as you move into more-serious writing and genres.

But, to be fair, that crappy airport-nonfiction self-help/lazy-(auto)biography/pop-business/pop-hustle-science almalgam-genre may well be most of the non-fiction that people actually read.

[EDIT] Well, that and True Crime, if we're counting that.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#79

Post by pythko »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #75
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?

Hmm, now that's interesting. I wonder what is the most someone would pay for a single sentence assuming it gives you the required information.

Executive summaries are part of the industry, where people boil down non-fiction books into short pieces of text. E.g. Blinkist (not affiliated, just the first result on Google)

It is somewhat funny that presumably a good amount of work goes into padding the book, and then work goes in on the other side to strip the padding away.

Re: Bestselling books have been getting shorter

#80

Post by dfxm12 »

stocknoob wrote: post #74
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…

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?

I don't know anyone who looks specifically at the page count over hype/reviews, but books are a physical media and people kinda have an idea of what a book should look like & cost. If we're really talking about 40 pp vs 200 pp., a hardbound 40 page book would look as silly on a shelf as you would reading it on the beach. Something that could be described as a pamphlet doesn't seem worth $15. Finding that tipping point of where a book looks like a book and also gets great reviews could be important.
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