> A book should be as long as the content merits. A lot of self-help books in the 200-300 page range (including index, notes, etc.) could be summed up in a dece

> A book should be as long as the content merits. A lot of self-help books in the 200-300 page range (including index, notes, etc.) could be summed up in a decently long blog post. People repeat that all the time, but I'm skeptical. I think a "summing up" would likely be less effective or persuasive than some version of the full, "repetitious" book. Repetition is usually key to actually absorbing and idea. Also, a particular formulation of an idea is unlikely to connect with every person, so if an author wants to connect with the maximum number of people, they would have to express the same idea in different ways. It's not like a book can customize itself to its reader, so every reader is exposed to all those versions, including the ones that don't connect especially well with them. ----- I present you: The Hacker News Self-Help Guide to Weight-loss: Eat less food. Exercise more. Any reasonably competent person should be able to figure out the rest from those key ideas.