3 ms·

I think books, in general, are too long. The points the author tries to make takes too many words. I think most books probably can communicate their core messag

• ghaff 7y ago
  Whether or not we agree on what constitutes "fluff," I don't really disagree. A lot of fiction would be better if it were tighter and a lot of non-fiction, especially business etc. books, do have padding. A lot of it is publishing economics. For non-fiction, most mainstream publishers are looking for 250+ pages. And that often means adding more examples, more background, more... There can definitely be a sweet spot between a magazine article and a typical published book. But that's hard to get published through mainstream channels which still have both real (and perceived) value relative to doing it independently. When I did a book about a year ago, I was certainly aware of hitting page counts. I don't think of it as having a lot of fluff but it's not as short as it could have been either.