[HN Gopher] Bestselling books have been getting shorter
___________________________________________________________________
Bestselling books have been getting shorter
Author : benbreen
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-12-15 23:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (wordsrated.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wordsrated.com)
| fedeb95 wrote:
| Before jumping to conclusions, it's ten years over a lot of
| centuries of book lengths
| teeray wrote:
| I wish longer books would take advantage of shorter chapters. I
| generally tend to read to the end of a chapter, so if one takes
| me longer than an hour to work through, I find it more fatiguing
| than chapters that take 10-20 minutes.
|
| EDIT: I realized my thought was incomplete: I find the longer
| chapters more fatiguing than the short ones, even if I read for
| the same duration overall.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| 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.
| blockwriter wrote:
| There are a select few agents who specialize in literary
| fiction. If you start a naive search of literary agents, you
| will find that their stated interests zero in on books that are
| of the political moment. The majority of agents are looking for
| a book, preferably young adult fiction, that focuses on a
| protected class, of which the author should also be a member.
| This is not a complaint, but the evident regression to the
| mean, which is really no more than an acknowledgment of market
| forces, is available at a glance. Books are no longer
| commodities whose primary purpose is to be read. Rather, they
| are meant to capture an upswing of interest in a particular
| topic, and then become more widely celebrated than widely
| considered.
|
| The fact is that most works of literary fiction written today
| are simply not up to snuff. Although there are writers devoted
| to their vocation, they lack a context in which to work.
| Literary agents cannot contribute to the process of writing. A
| kind of grassroots appreciation of the benefits intrinsic to
| reading and writing literature needs to take place, in my
| opinion, if we are to produce any great works of literature.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| They have little codes that designate the genres they're
| interested in, like MG (middle grade) and YA (young adult).
| And of course, LBTQ etc.
|
| > Books are no longer commodities whose primary purpose is to
| be read. Rather, they are meant to capture an upswing of
| interest in a particular topic, and then become more widely
| celebrated than widely considered.
|
| Well said. A book to display on your coffee table, not
| necessarily to read.
| cafard wrote:
| A look at the Pulitzer Prize for fiction suggests to me that
| production has been uneven for a long time
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Things being unfair in the past does not justify them being
| unfair in the future
| cafard wrote:
| I didn't have fairness in mind at all. I just think that
| we tend to remember the past for its successes and not
| for its mediocrities, so I hesitate to say that we are
| certainly at a low point.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| 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.
| woodruffw wrote:
| The last 10 years isn't a great sample (was 2011 really not part
| of the "digital era"?). It'd be interesting to see this spread
| across the last century -- my suspicion is that bestsellers have
| _increased_ in length over the last 50 years, due to diminished
| serialization.
| Jamesmoorez wrote:
| sergiotapia wrote:
| To be fair some of these books can be a blog post. Padding out
| the wazoo.
| crclist wrote:
| I hope for the death of the recipe book with a separate recipe
| for every sort of nut or berry or so on that you can put into a
| cookie or a muffin with extremely modest adjustment.
| systems_glitch wrote:
| I feel like the page size in mass market paperbacks has also
| increased in size since high school/college. Perhaps it's just
| that I'm buying less-cheap prints?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The "trade" paperback size seems to have largely taken over
| from mass-market. Not completely, but there are definitely a
| lot more that size on the shelf than there used to be. Except
| in some genres, like romance, a section of which you can spot
| from a mile away because of all the short, uniform, mass-market
| volumes--but I think even there a lot of newer material's
| coming out in trade, and maybe hardback, and never seems to get
| a mass market format release. Especially true for the material
| marketed at the younger end of romance readers.
|
| I expect interest in carrying books around is lower now. Pack
| it for vacation, maybe take it to the coffee shop or park, but
| how many of us still value a portable volume you can keep on
| you all the time, every day, just in case you have a moment to
| read? Phones fill that role, and then some, now. When you get
| ahold of one of those slim mid-century mass-market-size sci-fi
| paperbacks, and happen to be wearing a blazer or other jacket,
| you quickly discover _why_ that length + size combo was so
| successful for popular fiction. It fits neatly in an outer
| jacket hip pocket, and hardly even messes up the drape of the
| fabric. Perfect for the 1940-1950s fella on-the-go. Can 't do
| that with a trade paperback, nor with monster 400+ page
| Stephen-King-esque mass market volumes. A trim 200-280 pages in
| mass-market format is just the thing.
| greggarious wrote:
| 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 writing
| _literature_.)
|
| Maybe folks should worry about whether their book will be read
| for generations instead of being payola'd into some airport
| lobby.
| TylerE wrote:
| Must be a heavily abridged version. My full edition of RaFotRE
| is over 2000 pages in 3 volumes.
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| 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...
| tristor wrote:
| Makes sense. Best sellers historically have been primarily for
| entertainment, and we now live in a world primed for short-form
| entertainment.
|
| The common wisdom a few years back was that a best seller should
| be short enough to finish cover to cover on a cross-country
| flight. It also wouldn't surprise me if reductions in reading
| speed and literacy impact this as well.
| laura_g wrote:
| 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.
| yojo wrote:
| 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 me if this has always been the case.
| weeksie wrote:
| Typical is 60-90k but 100k is pretty standard for SFF
| elmomle wrote:
| Many of the longer novels in classic literature were
| originally serialized, and only later compiled into the
| lengthy tomes we know today.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Slightly related, but I'm a fan of web serialized fiction
| (fanfics, but also original works like Worm, Worth the
| Candle, Mother of Learning, Unsong, etc), and when I
| occasionally order paper copies I'm always astounded at
| just how _physically large_ they are, in a way that doesn
| 't come across in a purely digital format.
|
| I should note that this rebuts the idea that long-form
| fiction is disappearing, it's just not getting physically
| published, because the internet remains the best way to
| distribute information (and often make a living, since
| patreon can often end up paying more than a publisher).
| Archipelagia wrote:
| Btw, got any interesting book recommendations? (And yeah,
| I already know about r/rational ;))
|
| Seems like we both got very similar book tastes. And to
| recepriociate, I think you might enjoy: - Pretty much
| everything by Ted Chiang, but especially Understand -
| Asimov's Nightfall - Greg Egan's Reasons to be happy
| pessimizer wrote:
| Pretty much all of Dickens and Zola.
| boppo1 wrote:
| 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.
| mtillman wrote:
| 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.
| kace91 wrote:
| Don Quixote was never a serial, it was published in full
| in a 4-parts volume (there is a second part that was
| written a decade later though).
| cptnapalm wrote:
| 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.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Not just page size and typeface, how about those books with
| 100+ chapters, clearly just to increase the page count, as a
| new chapter ends the current page and the new chapter starts
| halfway down a new page. And don't get me started about those
| crazy large margins.
| TylerE wrote:
| It's the best proxy for retail space consumed.
| abiro wrote:
| Would be curious to see this broken down by fiction vs non-
| fiction. I read very few non-fiction books cover-to-cover. Most
| of them could be probably cut by 50% and not lose much.
| mc32 wrote:
| 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.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I know a lot of teachers and have heard some pretty dire
| reports about trends in reading skills in students. Even the
| "advanced" kids are tripped up by sentences as complex as the
| sort that were common in juvenile literature of the postwar
| 20th century. This wasn't the case 15 years ago, but books that
| would have been unremarkable assignments back then are now very
| difficult for kids in the same grades. This isn't a problem
| with outdated vocabulary or anything like that--the trouble
| seems to be that they just can't follow sentences that have
| more than a couple simple clauses.
|
| I dunno if that's fallout from some of the terser Moderns and
| their effects on popular preferences for prose structure,
| finally hitting in full force. Maybe? Seems like a long delay,
| though. I do suspect (relevantly to TFA, kind of!) some of it
| comes from publishers realizing how much of an advantage it is
| to make books hyper-palatable to their target markets, cutting
| anything that might be difficult. Sustained over decades, I'd
| expect that to gradually reduce reading skill levels. Maybe
| some of it's because people read way, way more amateur and
| otherwise very poor writing than they did before the Web and
| before smartphones--that actually lines up fairly well with the
| observations, since having home Internet access didn't break
| the 50% mark in the US until after 2000.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| mc32 wrote:
| To my eyes schooling and academia have been trending toward
| "passing everyone" and not so much about educating and
| getting the kids to reach their academic potential. What we
| vulgarly call "dumbing down" of things. It looks like it
| dovetails with Bush's policies, or it could be part of a
| wider societal trend precipitated by mass/crass media, the
| emergence of texting as an acceptable mode of communication
| as well as terseness being seen as "alpha" (Jobs and Bezos
| being examples). Presumably society will adapt and us adapt
| back.
|
| On the other hand, I will look forward to the comfort of not
| having to hear adolescent takes on Nietzsche or Kant.
| CadmiumYellow wrote:
| "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).
| mc32 wrote:
| Here is one example:
| https://nceo.umn.edu/docs/presentations/nceo-lep-iep-
| ascdhan...
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| Did you link the correct document? This is about reading
| comprehension and the previous poster was asking for a
| source about class length (i.e. changing from the standard
| 50 minute class to classes of 10 minutes)
| zwieback wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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 shortchanged
| paying regular book price for a 75-100 page book. But, as a
| publisher, my costs are pretty similar whether the book is 100
| pages or 300 pages.
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| According to some Sam Harris podcast I vaguely remember
| listening to years ago, publishers generally don't want to
| publish short (like <200 page) books because they don't make
| enough money. Longer books are more profitable because the
| perceived value is higher so consumers are willing to pay
| higher prices for them, even though they don't cost much more
| to print.
|
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| mathattack wrote:
| 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.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| 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.
| IMSAI8080 wrote:
| I mainly buy books online and I don't really actively look at the
| page count before I buy a book. I can see that if you buy a book
| in a store you get a sense of the page count from the thickness
| and maybe some people dislike long books. Presumably though most
| books are now sold online and I wonder if other people do not
| check the page count either. I therefore wonder about the
| author's conclusion that it's reader driven or if it's more
| publishers choosing to publish shorter books and readers are just
| getting what they are given.
| soneca wrote:
| My speculation is that shorter books are read more often to the
| end and are recommended more often and more positively.
|
| Recommendations that I get from short books often come with the
| added argument _"and it's so quick to read, you will finish it
| in a week"_.
|
| Accordingly, when the recommended book is very long, it always
| comes with the caveat _"it's long, though, worth it, but long"_
| rr888 wrote:
| I have had the same problem. Open the package you already feel
| like you've been scammed. Its almost makes it worth paying the
| extra to use regular bookshops again.
| klodolph wrote:
| 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 means that they have
| less filler.
| moolcool wrote:
| Oh man, it's SUCH a problem with non-fiction. Books like Atomic
| Habits and Deep Work are great, but both feel like they could
| easily be about half as long.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Indeed, many non-fiction books seem to be really solid long
| form essays that were inflated with needless filler content to
| 100 pages. (Note I'm saying 'many' not 'all').
| rqtwteye wrote:
| 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.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| 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."
| rocketbop wrote:
| He doesn't write those, but he works with a team of writers
| to deliver books at the cadence he does, so probably he
| meant _someone else_ writes those.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I don't think so. I think he meant "that doesn't appear
| in my books." I'm sure he reads them over critically
| before sending them off.
|
| anyhow, I'm not even sure he's the one who said that.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| 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.
| klodolph wrote:
| I've heard that if you write a technical book on programming
| and work with a publisher, they'll encourage you to stick
| code listings in your book.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| 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.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| If you are correct, then the decrease in page length could just
| be the result of more people using ebooks, where the physical
| size of the book is of no consequence.
| jyriand wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| 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.
| grogenaut wrote:
| 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 12, got is like the same size
| don't be afraid."
| vkou wrote:
| 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 double-chins as wedding
| guests are gorging themselves on large pies, wide as wagon
| wheels, stuffed almost to bursting with carrots, onions,
| turnips, parsnips, mushrooms, and chunks of seasoned pork
| swimming in a savory brown gravy.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| 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.
| bluedino wrote:
| This going to sound silly but I hated reading the Pragmatic
| Programmer series of books because of the font and the size.
| stocknoob wrote:
| 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?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| 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.
| pythko wrote:
| 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.
| klodolph wrote:
| People like content. More content is correlated with longer
| page counts. Longer page counts are correlated with higher
| retail prices. Someone said "I want to make more money" and
| the result was a set of incentives to pad out books with more
| pages of filler.
|
| Consumers have no reliable way of telling how much actual
| content is in a book. They only know the page count.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| 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.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| 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.
| msmenardi wrote:
| It could also be caused by authors getting better at expressing
| themselves succinctly.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| What kind of book did you put out? Do you feel like it was
| bloated as a result of going the traditional route?
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| recuter wrote:
| An ancient affliction / a hopeless optimist wades in / the
| sound of denial.
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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 think "they couldn't have cut
| out a single word!" Instead, it's "oh, this author has enough
| power that they can just ignore their editor."
| trey-jones wrote:
| 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.
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| > We analyzed 3,444 titles that were ranked top3 on NYT weekly
| bestseller lists from 2011 to 2021
|
| A little less than never.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've narrowed the scope of the title above. Thanks!
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Hmm.. I think they only got that long is because the writers were
| encouraged to do so. People expected higher word count to go
| along with higher prices.
|
| Books didn't used to be all that long.
|
| Agatha Christie novels were 40 - 60K words.
|
| The Great Gatsby was around 50K IIRC.
|
| Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskerville was 60K
|
| Jaws was about 80K
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I recently finished a 1000 page biography about Willem van Oranje
| (not very interesting if you're not Dutch). I doubt the guy who
| wrote it will get rich but some books need to be written.
| nineplay wrote:
| 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 ever said longer books are better than shorter books and how
| could they possibly justify that?
|
| There's also trends that could easily account for this. Trilogies
| everywhere and one could argue that reading a trilogy is reading
| 1 large book vs 3 small books. Are graphic novels included?
|
| It's all so silly
| elliekelly wrote:
| No one said longer books are better? Good writing is often
| concise. And the article doesn't at all conclude "society is in
| decline". You seem to be the only one making these leaps and
| drawing these conclusions.
| ngoilapites wrote:
| "Good writing is often concise" is flawed logic when relating
| to long books, except for myopic planners.
| trgn wrote:
| Reminds me of this joke https://www.reddit.com/r/writers/co
| mments/x4427j/todays_writ...
| ngoilapites wrote:
| You don't get it, and you won't until you learn to enjoy
| literature at scale, that is reading authors by their
| complete works.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| 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 see that bestsellers are going from short
| to shorter rather a decline in the publication of long novels.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| > 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.)?
| comfypotato wrote:
| 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.
| gumby wrote:
| I don't see the conclusion in the data. 30 years ago people were
| complaining that best sellers had become too _long_ (think of A
| Suitable Boy or Infinite Jest).
|
| The data are interesting, but the conclusion of "because
| Internet" is neither supported or overturned by the data -- they
| don't explain that at all
| bogomipz wrote:
| Relatedly:
|
| "The Murky Path To Becoming a New York Times Best Seller":
|
| https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a42189320/the-ne...
| thenerdhead wrote:
| 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.
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